Thanks!

I just saw in my aggregator that Zephyr recognized Lansing Public Library for innovative funding and technology application for library user podcast downloading at Lansing Public Library. Thanks Zephyr! Thank you again to our Friends group for making this possible.

http://www.mls.lib.il.us/cats.cfm?catid=175&mid=990

So what's coming up?
We've gotten permission to podcast the presentations from 2 local authors that are coming in April 4th & 10th (expect the podcasts the following day)

Our annual teen poetry cafe is at the end of April.. listen for that too.

And we will have special podcasts EACH DAY during National Library Week.

Shiny Carnival Button

It seemed about time that Carnival of the Infosciences had an appropriate button, and the next host, Tinfoil+Raccoon likes shiny things.



Have you hosted or contributed to Carnival of the Infosciences?
Would you like to promote Carnival of the Infosciences and have a handy link to the current location and the archives of previous hosts?

Add this button to your website or blog template!

You can download this image from http://www.kellistaley.com/images/carnival.jpg

Link this image back to http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_68.html

Carnival #30!

Greg hosts Carnival of the Infosciences this week at Open Stacks.

Be sure to grab his podcast Open Stacks #21 about sessions at Computers in Libraries too!

Somebody's Listening

On my library's blog...

Friday, March 17th, I posted a podcast of some interviews with teens at one of our gaming events.

Now that Feedburner has features that will count downloads of the file, I can tell you that there have been 49 downloads of that audio file.

A podcast about Managing your borrower account (how to see what you have out, renewing online, reviewing holds, etc.) was podcast March 21st and has already been downloaded 23 times.

I would have been blown away if I ever had 23 people come to a computer program at the library, but 23 downloads in less than a week? Wow!
Then I wondered, how many listeners are you librarian types who are subscribed to Lansing's feeds out of curiosity. (If you are don't feel bad!) We have some great stuff coming in April!!!

If you'd like to give me a better idea of the numbers, drop me an email nomextra [at] sbcglobal [dot] net

Congrats!

Congrats to Rochelle on her new job!

Maybe I'll see you at a CODI conference sometime!

Start reading the Gordian Knot Blog http://www.gordian-knot.org now to find out what the cool people are doing with Horizon!

High School District Bans MySpace, LiveJournal and Xanga.

Excerpt from "Quick Notes" of District 215 (Thornton Fractional South High School & Thornton Fractional North High School serving Lansing, Lynwood, Calumet City)
E-mailed to parents March 24th

From the Superintendent: We have been contacted concerning a web site called, Myspace.com. It is a web page that permits 18-32 year olds the opportunity to use a chat room to meet people. It has a poor reputation. The administration has discussed this issue and we also found several other sites similar in nature that also are not good for “kids.” These include Xanga.com and Live Journal.com. All of these sites are blocked on our District network. The administration encourages you to review all websites used by your children. R.K. Wilhite

Is the word "kids" in quotation marks because these high school students are typically age 14-18?

I did log into myspace, and found that the chat categories begin with 20-year-olds.

I also found there are 460 users between ages 16-18 currently enrolled at T.F. South (Lansing, IL) 211 users between ages 16-18 currently enrolled at T.F. North (Calumet City, IL), 91 users between ages 16-18 currently enrolled at Illiana Christian H.S. (Lansing, IL), 28 users between ages of 16-18 currently enrolled at Luther East H.S. (Lansing, IL)

T.F. South has an approx. enrollment of 1600, so almost 29% of the students have a myspace account. Limit it to just the upperclassmen (falling into the 16-18 ages) and it's 57.5% of the juniors & seniors have a myspace account.

Am I missing it...? I couldn't find a chat area on LiveJournal or Xanga.
So why doesn't Dist. 215 have a problem with chat rooms, personal web pages and/or blogs on AOL, Yahoo or MSN Spaces?

OK, there are definitely better uses of student time than logging onto their blogs while they should be doing their assignments in the school computer lab.
Too bad they didn't give the parents more information, or just put out a general 'be aware of what your kids are doing online' article with tips for the parents.
They are in the education business, aren't they?

Where could they have found some resources for parents? Oh yeah, on the library blog. Here's an entry about talking to your kids about using caution when posting photos & personal information online from March 11, 2006. Here's another article about blog safety tips and talking points for parents to discuss online usage with their teens from January 16, 2006.

Will the way the school handled this drive more kids to these websites?
Will some of these teens close their accounts?
And... who contacted the school about myspace?
?

Library Article from NJ

An article from the Courier Post Online (South Jersey)

Check it Out by Robert Baxter [March 17, 2006]

Why why why why do writers always begin the articles this way?

Visiting a library used to be simple. Walking into a quiet room, you consulted the card catalog, found your book and checked it out.

If you had a question, a bespectacled reference librarian would answer it. Besides rows of shelved books, all you could find were reference works or a reading room with newspapers and periodicals.

Once we hit Library 3.0, will the articles say...

Visiting a library used to be simple. Launching Firefox, you consulted the OPAC, downloaded your e-book or consulted the online database and logged off.

If you had a question, you text messaged the librarian who was roaming the stacks (of items in multiple formats) who retrieved the information and uploaded it to your pocket sized computer (which happens to make phone calls too.)

The article gets better though--that photo of the library branch at the mall is cool. Check out the display along the wall!

Tom is not my friend

I heard about this on cnet's buzz out loud podcast. [feed]

Available at busted tees.


There is another version on ebay.


If you're not laughing, sign up for a myspace account and Tom will automatically be your friend.

DDR tip

I recently emailed Eli...

At the gaming events at MLS and the symposium...
I don't recall you having to reset the game: going through the steps of selecting "game mode", 2 players, and choosing characters.
What's the secret?

We are using DDR Extreme and after 3 songs we have to select everything all over again.

and the master said...

You're looking for event mode. Go into options, then game options, and turn event mode on. That ought to do it. We also usually set game over to 'end of music' to keep really bad players from the shame of failing in the middle of the song.

Thanks Eli!

Tags:

• gaming


• gaminginlibraries


• ddr

Constant Lemony Presence

Thanks to our Friends group, we've got a branded version of Juice which comes pre-loaded with our feeds. Even if people later unsubscribe to our feeds, our logo (which hyperlinks back to our website) remains. Lemons have never been so sweet!
Our announcement.

Are we the first library to do this? Comment if you're making subscribing this easy!

Tags:

• juice


• podcasting


• library2.0


• marketing

Improve Podcast Sound Quality for Less than $50

Wow!

I'm (finally) testing out my new computer gadget.
The Griffin iMic (PC or Mac)

I'm still using the same ($10) microphone as before, but what a difference in sound quality!

It's basically an external sound card, and a lot of the background static in previous recordings is gone. It seems to record at a much higher volume too, as I did have some feedback that a prior presentation was too quiet, despite the fact I had tried to boost the volume in Audacity on the parts that needed it.

I heard about this gadget on a podcast about podcasting (sorry, I don't remember which one...it may have been Podcast Tools.)

You can pick up one of these from Amazon (via Target) for less then $40.

Hear the difference on my Griffin iMic Test

No editing was done to the clip. Same microphone used both times. Same distance from the mic. The middle part that is really hard to hear is without the iMic. Recorded with Audacity.

You'll have to listen to the sound clip to hear what other cool things you can do with an iMic.

Tags:

• podcasting


• iMic

Gaming Special Interest Group Meeting at MLS

Over 40 people turned out for MLS' Gaming Special Interest Group Thursday.

Matt Gullett from Bloomington PL "crashed" the meeting.
Matt said their tournaments are 3 hours. The first hour is open play, and the competition is the remainder. Prizes have included gift certificates from Best Buy and EB Games.

Jenny will be posting information she gathered from those in attendance to the Library Success Wiki in the category Programming: Gaming creating a common resource for everybody doing gaming, or wanting to try gaming. The rest of you libraries out there doing gaming, please post your stories to the wiki to help out the ones who are just starting out!

Lots of websites were mentioned in the discussion!

The online game Second Life is offering free memberships right now. (age 18+)

ESRB Entertainment Software Rating Board is a good resource to find out if a game is rated "E" (Everyone) "T" (Teen) etc.

Game Informer has reviews, cheats and more.

Dance Dance Revolution Fan Site DDRfreak.com
Looking for good prices on dance pads? Try DDR City.

There's an online version of DDR called Flash Flash Revolution

Board Game Geek Board game discussion & trading site.

Monopoly offers a free kit to host a tournament. Website also sells replacement parts for a variety of Hasbro games.

Online games discussed were:
Runescape
NeoPets a virtual pet site popular with girls
and Kingdom of Loathing (not for kids, perhaps good for the 20-somethings or older)
Ghoulash was described as a combination of D&D and Battleship.

Create your own games with GameMaker.

Gaming In Libraries Symposium will be Dec 3-6, 2006.

Tags:

• gaming

Google Blogs About Superpatron!

Cool! Congrats Ed!

Google's Blog Post

Carnival

Stephen hosts this week's Carnival of the Infosciences

Tags:

• carnival


• infosciences

Library Catalog Firefox Search Plugin for Horizon Information Portal

I got to wondering how hard (or easy) it might be to create a Firefox search plugin for our library catalog.

I found some instructions Seminole Co. Library posted a while back.

They included the sample code to start with (and Blogger isn't letting me paste it here, visit them for the code)

Change the italicized parts to match your site's catalog URL.

My first attempt was unsuccessful. When I ran my edited code through the error checking link also on their instructions, it said it could not find the index "BTW"

After a quick general keyword search in HIP, I scrolled through the address bar to find that our GenKW index is ".GW"
Edited that in the code, and it worked!

The error checker also advised changing the last line of code to updateCheckDays="7"

Thanks Seminole Co. for posting this code!
Programming experience=none.

I'll be placing some links on the library website this week, and I'll add the link here then.

Update:
For the search plugin and links to all the other L2 things we're doing, visit our user tools & resources page.

HUGE thanks to Chris at Clam Chowder for debugging the problems with the download script!

Tags:

• Horizon


• HIP


• Dynix


• Firefox

Feedburner Pumps Up the Volume

You all know I'm a fan of Feedburner.

Have you heard they added a shiny new feature to the standard stats package?

Podcast download stats. WooHooooooo!

You DO need to login to your Feedburner account, then click on the standard stats link on the left, and check the box to track the downloads, and click save.

From their announcement Feb 28:

StandardStats

• Uncommon Uses: This is a new concept we're introducing that really begins to leverage the critical mass of feed readers, bots, search engines, news filters, and other common feed sources that we observe. Uncommon Uses identifies and highlights places where your feed content is referenced or clicked that FeedBurner does not recognize as a common feed service. Uncommon uses includes contact with your feed by non-subscribers.
• Podcasts: We've (finally) added the ability to track the number of downloads of rich media enclosures within a feed, including audio and video, in addition to the number of subscriptions.

StandardStats remains free!!!!!

Thanks Feedburner! :)

On Bourbon Street on Mardi Gras Day

On Bourbon Street on Mardi Gras Day
Originally uploaded by nomextra.

This pic was taken by www.nola.com on the "Bourbocam" webcam on 2/28 a.k.a. "Fat Tuesday" or "Mardi Gras" Day at 7 p.m. They had live feeds of the action, and archived some photos.

Mardi Gras was definitely less crowded than it was 2 years ago, but people in the service industry were genuinely happy to have the tourists there. As our airport shuttle driver said, "Thank you for coming and putting your money into our economy." She said New Orleans' top money makers are Mardi Gras, Conventions, and the Port.

We did notice some differences in quality of service at some places we visited. Many of the hotel and restaurant workers were evacuees and have not returned. Many restaurants were operating with shortened hours and limited menus. Saturday night at 9 p.m. it was difficult to find open restaurants! Almost every place we went had signs in the window that they were accepting applications. A lot of shops were not open, but a lot of others were (and keep in mind that some are closed anyway during Mardi Gras.) I imagine this will get better as more people return, or others decide to move to where workers are needed. Many "Fat Tuesday" costumes were political, but showed the remarkable sense of humor they have about the hurricane.

The water & local fish had been tested by the EPA and approved for consumption.
The city smells the same as it did when we visited 2 years ago. (My firefighter friend Kevin, who went down to help post-hurricane Katrina said it smells much better now.)

If you are going to ALA, here are my recommendations: if your schedule permits, go to brunch at The Court of Two Sisters (make reservations!) Take the (free) ferry over to Algiers and visit Mardi Gras World. Shop til you drop to help boost NOLA's economy, and remember to pack your sunscreen. (I'm sunburnt!)

More pics on my flickr account.

I had tagged some websites in del.icio.us for the rest of our group to access, here are some links for New Orleans tourism and some for dining