Multimedia: Podcasts

I only have a couple of podcasts that I subscribe to. Neither of them are particularly library related:

Stuff You Should Know - It's like Wayne's World meets the Discovery Channel. They just present research on different themes.
Welcome to Night Vale - a fictitious community radio station for the town of Night Vale where weird and suspicious things happen.

 

There are others I check in on and only download if the topic interests me (most of them are CBC and are about information in general, information sources or information issues):

CBC's Ideas - documentary style episodes on topics in science and social studies.
CBC's Quirks & Quarks - mostly popular and new science.
CBC's Rewind - a look back on older broadcasts and how they covered specific events or themes.
CBC's Spark - kind of like Ideas, but covering more tech stuff.
Nerdist - pure pop-culture. Usually interviews with comedians or actors.

I try not to download too many because I'll get stressed out thinking there is too much I am missing if I don't get caught up on them all! I am always up for recommendations, though.

Multimedia: Videos and Professional Development

Embed a video. Check.
I love this short animated video, "Out of sight", about a little girl who is blind and discovering the world through her other senses.


out of sight from kynight on Vimeo.

Find a video or podcast that relates to libraries. Check.
In this TED talk, Andrew Blum talks about Discovering the physical side of the internet. He was the keynote speaker at Library Journal's Digital Summit.



I also like some of the free professional development videos available from American Libraries Live and Overdrive's annual webinar about new devices you can use with the Electronic Library.

The next hour-long Booklist Webinar is a pretty timely topic. It is on "Reaching Your Patrons in the Digital Age" and it will be March 4 at 2pm. I will probably register to reserve a seat even if I might not make it because it is free and they email a link to the archived version after the talk. 

I often use the Share or Embed option on video sites so I can copy and paste the code since I don't really like the search feature for inserting videos in Blogger. I also like to customize the size of the video so they are all the same. Because I'm anal like that. :)

1st Catchup

The best is yeti to come by ILoveDoodle on Flickr.
 

Felt winter appropriate.

Creating a Pin It button

The PR Daily Newsletter sometimes has interesting tips and tricks.  In January they had an article about Pinterest.

You can create your own Pin It button to add to blog posts! You need an image that is posted online somewhere (so you can use the URL for the image instead of uploading it from your computer), but once you have that then filling out their form is straight forward. They create the code for you to copy and paste into the HTML to put the button in your blog post.

Pin It buttons are great because they let people know you encourage them to share an image you've created or posted. It also makes it easy to share.

I created this printable Jane Austen themed Fortune Teller (when I was in elementary and middle-school we called them Cootie Catchers) for Valentine's Day. Right click on the image to select Print Picture and it is sized to fit on letter sized paper.

Images, Part 2

I seldom use my Pinterest account for library related content (I have one generic "Library Stuff" board). I pin a lot of recipes and illustrations.

I follow a few libraries, mostly for reading suggestions:
Library Reads - a pannel of library staff pick the top 10 books released every month
Bookish - Pinterest account for a sort on Reader's Advisory, book review, book article blog

Most accounts I follow are for general library or book stuff and promoting reading:
Harper Collins Canada
Epic Reads
Delightful Children's Books (there are a lot of children's activity ideas as well)
Out of Print

There are a lot of great ideas for campaigns, displays, promotion and activities and some things that are just cute like...

From Heels and Pearls Tumblr

I don't know the original source or the author of the poem to give proper credit. I saw this pin and traced it back to the blog it came from and the blog didn't have any further information.

This leads me to a somewhat related mini rant about sourcing:

Meme from theotherausten on Tumblr

Images, Part 1

I can't help but notice most of the "animals reading" on Wikimedia Commons are cats.

Image by Eleassar via Wikimedia Commons

Some of my favourite sites for free images:
Fotopedia (just make sure your search is for items labeled for reuse)
Google Images (with Search Tools set to "labeled for reuse")
Icon Finder
Stock.xchng
fuzzimo
Vecteezy
Vector4Free (despite the fact that the ads on it are insane. Don't click on any of those)

I created a Wordle, but it was way too annoying to post the image here. You had to post an image that was a link to the image on Wordle and that image was too small and poor quality. Why do they get to keep and host the image? I guess because it is free. So yah, Wordle fail.