The Listening Librarian

Friday Fun Video: Penguin vs. The Orcas

2008-11-21T12:59:00.006-05:00

This has been bouncing around the Internet for a while but it's worthy for my first Friday Fun Video. You see a penguin pursued by several Orcas but it ends happily for the penguin.

I posted the extended version because the Orcas are awesome to see.

James Patrick Kelly on Podcasting

2008-11-20T16:52:00.005-05:00

Over on the Podiobooker blog there is a post about Asimov’s on podcasting fiction with links to columns written by James Patrick Kelly in Asamov's Science Fiction. Kelly's new article follows on one he wrote three years ago.

Here's what Podiobooker says about the new article:

This time around, he’s including conversations with Mur Lafferty, J.C. Hutchins and Tee Morris. This article not only covers the evolution of the podcast novel format, but also delves into the role that social media plays to the author taking this non-conventional route.

Lafferty, Hutchens, and Morris have all podcasted stories that I enjoyed tremendously. They are also among the authors who are exploring a new model for marketing their work by building a large fan base.

These are excellent articles and I highly recommended them.

While you are at Podiobooker you should check out what they have available for download. Podiobooker is a wonderful source for podcast fiction. The aforementioned Lafferty, Hutchins and Morris all have works there and they have given me much listening pleasure.

Monty Python gets a YouTube channel

2008-11-19T09:42:00.006-05:00

We saw Spamalot last weekend - grand fun if you are a Python fan and enjoy live theatre. One of the actors described himself as raising champion Norwegian Blue Parrots. Imagine how thrilled I was to learn that the Pythons have started a YouTube channel.

Here is how they describe it:

For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It's time for us to take matters into our own hands.

We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell. But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we've figured a better way to get our own back: We've launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube.

No more of those crap quality videos you've been posting. We're giving you the real thing - HQ videos delivered straight from our vault.

What's more, we're taking our most viewed clips and uploading brand new HQ versions. And what's even more, we're letting you see absolutely everything for free. So there!

But we want something in return.

None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.

Corduroy Mansions, Alexander McCall Smith

2008-11-18T21:54:00.003-05:00

This is old news but Alexander McCall Smith, famous for the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, has a serial novel named Corduroy Mansions running at Telegraph.co.uk. The serial novel has a long history with Charles Dickens being one of the most famous practitioners.

A new episode will be posted each week day for 20 weeks. With 48 episodes currently available, it is nearly half done.

Smith is writing it as he goes along and encourages readers to make comments, ask questions, and make suggestions about the characters and plot.

The story itself is fun but I'm posting about it here because of the way it is being promoted and tools used to engage readers and give them opportunity to play a part in the project. This blog focuses on audio and video and both are pulled into the mix.

The Corduroy Mansions page at Telegraph.co.uk is nicely put together. You can experience the story in two formats. You can read it and you can subscribe to the podcast narrated by Andrew Sachs (Manuel in Fawlty Towers).

Additionally, there are profiles of the characters and comments, questions, and suggestions from readers as well as a link to the Corduroy Mansions Facebook page. And, if you are feeling creative, you can enter a contest to write a novel in twenty weeks yourself and win a lunch with the author.

Smith talks about Corduroy Mansions in this YouTube video

Well done, Mr. Smith!

Lost in Light, Part II

2008-11-18T18:30:00.002-05:00

UPDATED: Added new link to movies of a safari in Northern Rhodesia and a trip to Luanda, Angola. Jump to the bottom if interested.

In Lost in Light, Part I, I described how I found new life for my family's home movies and dipped my toe in the Creative Commons waters. I wrote how I found the the Lost in Light project and how they transferred my family's 8mm movies to DVD. The project team only asked that the submitter give a description of what is on the film and agree to share through a Creative Commons license and on the Internet Archives. I want to make the films useful so I have spent considerable time going through them and describing the scenes.

At the bottom of the post are links to the movies currently available on the Internet.

Right now I would like to discuss how I am approaching this project and the resources I use to describe the contents of the home movies. The movie that I use for this example is not yet on the Internet.

This sort of analysis is a good demonstration of the power of the Internet. Consider that I am working with 50+ year old films and trying identify locations, events, and people. I spent many hours on just the first 18 minutes of one DVD. I also gained a much greater appreciation of the photo analysis work done by intelligence agencies. I don't see how the sort of work I'm doing could be accomplished without the Internet.

Web resources I used

Google Web Search. Doing a web search generally leads me first to Wikipedia but I also locate other sites; most of which are travel related.

Wikipedia. A lot of the film is from Africa and many of the place names have changed. Wikipedia has been a great source for cross referencing old to new place names.

Google Image Search. This has been really helpful when I am trying to nail a specific location. It is also helping me develop skill in analyzing images. The scene in a photograph and the same scene in the film are more often than not seen from a different orientation, angle, and perspective. It is challenging to find out a common element. What I find on the Internet is considerably more recent than the movies and imagination is needed to compensate for the changes in building, vegetation, etc.

WikiMapia. I may use Google Earth later. Wikimapia didn't require installing anything on the computer. My father shot some of the film from an aircraft and I've had a difficult time locating aerial shots on the Internet. One recent segment I worked with was taken from the air, over a city, in what looked like an approach to an airport. There were two features that stand out and I wanted to know what they are. More about this below.

YouTube. I haven't actually used this resource yet but plan to. I am also thinking of posting some film segments on YouTube to see if anyone can assist with identification.

In addition to the web resources, I have my father's flight records so I know where the plane was and when.

Here is an example of how I used some of the resources I described above. There is a segment of film where the aircraft is flying above a city and passing over what appears to be a park of some sort and a large geometric feature covering a lot of ground that I couldn't immediately figure out. Following this segment, the scene shifted to the ground in Madrid, Spain. I used Google web search to look for parks in Madrid and was pretty sure I had found the Estanque del Retiro (an artificial boating lake) in the Parque del Retiro but all the views were ground level. I assumed that the scenes from the air were taken when the plane was on approach to the airport so I went to WikiMedia and searched Madrid Spain. The Parque del Retiro is close to the center of town and, as I zoomed in, there it was. I had the DVD in the player and WikiMedia on the laptop and I was able to trace the flight path as they flew over the park. Obviously geographic features changed but many of the buildings had the same shape and it wasn't difficult to orient. Assuming that the aircraft wasn't going to make any sudden turns, I advanced the DVD and WikiMedia and quickly found the second feature which is the largest cemetery in Europe, Cementerio de la Almudena. Here are comparison shots from the DVD and WikiMapia

Cementerio de la Almudena from DVD

Cementerio de la Almudena from Wikimapia

Estanque del Retiro from DVD

Estanque del Retiro from Wikimapia

Available Movies

With Descriptions
Cape Town Vacation, 1954
Luanda, Angola 1955
Fishing on the Zambezi
Hunting safari in Northern Rhodesia
Leaving South Africa
African Dance
Boy Scouts - not in Africa

Without Descriptions at this Time

Hunting Safari in Rhodesia - warning some scenes might offend
Trip to Angola

I'm dusting off this project and plan to process more of the movies and upload some to the Internet Archives. If you do a search on Internet Archives for lostinlight in the motion pictures category you will see all these movies with comments from viewers.

Lost in Light, Part I

2008-11-17T22:20:00.004-05:00

I am re-purposing some posts I wrote in 2007 for an in-house blog.

The Lost in Light project has ended. Jennifer Proctor and Aaron Valdez deserve much congratulations and appreciation for their work preserving small format, amateur, film. Their web site remains available as an archive.

I was visiting my parents in Florida over Christmas break in 2007 and helped my mother clean out a closet of photographs, slides, and 8mm movies. The 8mm movies posed an interesting challenge. The oldest were made between 1952 and 1956 when we lived in Pretoria, South Africa when my father was a crewman on the American Embassy's C-47. I was wondering what to do with the 8mm movies when our Media Center director mentioned Lost in Light as a possible solution. I looked them up and found an interesting project that satisfied my needs on several levels. First of all, here is what they said about Lost in Light:

This is a project about the 8mm film format. But 8mm is dead, you say? On the contrary! Not only is the format alive with innovation by filmmakers around the world, but hours and hours of Super 8 and regular 8mm film exist in attics and basements the world over—as home movies, educational films, works of art—that is slowly fading from the historical record.

We’re here to preserve that record before these films are lost, and to make those films available for viewing by the public and for use by artists seeking new, compelling footage. Lost in Light is a project devoted to preserving, showcasing, and celebrating films created on the small-gauge 8mm film format.

To that end, we provide free Super 8 and 8mm to video transfers to anyone who asks, in exchange for posting their video to the Lost in Light site and on the Internet Archive with their choice of Creative Commons licenses. In addition, Lost in Light includes articles and features by members of the filmmaking and film preservation communities, video tutorials for making 8mm films, as well as creative work, all with the goal of preserving and championing this important film format.

Alas, the opportunity for free video transfers is gone but their web site gives links to companies that provide that service.

Note the bit where all they asked was permission to post the transfers on the Lost in Light site and on Internet Archives with some level of Creative Commons license. These are the CC licenses if you are interested. I sent Aaron and Jennifer an inquiry email and when they indicated interest, I boxed up the movies and sent them off.

You might be thinking, You mean anyone can see these movies and film makers could use segments in their own works? Why would you want that? I had three reasons. First, I would get a DVD of these movies, most of which hadn't been seen for 50 or so years. Ok, the world might get to see me and my brother as goofy kids. So what? I was pretty sure there were none of me running around naked or eating boogers. Second, it is a kind of immortality, something my father did will live on. Third, I work in education and believe in the Creative commons license. I hope that the videos will help a young film maker. I've been really impressed with what I've seen done by students at The College of William and Mary since our Media Center has been in operation and I think that a project like Lost in Light and a willingness to share using the Creative Commons licenses are important for the creative process.

In Lost in Light, Part II I will write about the movies I contributed to the project, provide links to the ones selected by Aaron and Jennifer to appear on the web site, and describe how I researched the contents of the movies.

A contrast of views about homosexuality on YouTube

2008-11-16T13:23:00.017-05:00

I've been thinking about the Prop. 8 vote in California and the resulting protests. I was browsing around YouTube and I found some interesting videos. These don't have anything to do with prop. 8 as such but are interesting to me because of the open contrast in attitudes.

First we have The Daily Show. Bill O'Reilly was a guest on November 13. Bill and Jon had this exchange. They were discussing if America is truly a center right nation.

Bill: We are center right nation because we respect traditions in America. The traditions are ...

Jon: the tradition in America?

Bill: Yea the traditions of America ...

Jon: The tradition of America is a progression of individual freedoms. You know what the tradition of America would say? Gay marriage is the next step next step.

Stewart went on to say that O'Reilly is misrepresenting traditions. Skip ahead to 7:50 for Stewart's comment.

Stewart made an excellent point and there are a large number of American citizens who agree with him.

Unfortunately, we can look back forty or fifty years and see that for another segment of our population, attitudes about homosexuality haven't progressed much.

These two public service announcements came from the 50's and 60's.

The first is titled Boys Beware and carries the warning "One never knows when the homosexual is about." Sigh. We still see homosexuality and paedophilia treated as the same.

This one Perversions for Profit, was produced by Citizens for Decent Literature, Inc.

We know that once a person is perverted it is practically impossible for that person to adjust to normal attitudes in regards to sex.

and

Through this material today's youth can be stimulated to sexual activity for which he has no legitimate outlet. He is even enticed to enter the world of homosexuals, lesbians ... and other sex deviants.

The narrator, George Putnam, has a solemn and dramatic delivery that is comical today. Widipedia says in the article on Putnam that

...by the 1980s Putnam had changed his views. He stated on his radio show 'TALKBACK with George Putnam' that he felt gays were born that way, and added many of his friends and coworkers were gay and good people.

A president who understands the Internet

2008-11-14T16:03:00.020-05:00

Since one of my duties is to keep up with current technology and how it is used by our students I watch the use of the social software/social networking applications on the Internet. This is one way I justify hanging around the campus coffee shop; I'm doing research. It's common to see a YouTube video on laptops in the coffee shop and on the PCs in the library Information Commons.

This is why I was excited to see the Obama campaign using Internet tools like twitter and YouTube to connect with people. The Washington Post is calling this administration the YouTube Presidency. You can reach a large audience with content available on-demand. Did you miss seeing Obama on the Daily Show? You can watch it and make the link available to any number of people.

During the campaign, Obama used the YouTube channel BarackObamadotcom to widen his exposure beyond the traditional news coverage. The video of his speech on November 4 when he was declared the winner has been viewed 176,220 times (as of this writing).

As part of the transition, Obama's team has put up a web site change.gov and blog and created another channel on YouTube, ChangeDotGov. Here you see Valerie Jarrett talking about the state of the transition. This post has been viewed 20,893 times.

The YouTube videos can be viewed on the Change.gov blog as well.

The Obama administration is going to make the use of Internet video a part of his communication with the American people and the world. A video of his weekly radio addresses will be available after the radio broadcast on change.gov and on YouTube. This is bringing Roosevelt's fireside chats into the twenty-first century.

The Post article explains:

"This is just one of many ways that he will communicate directly with the American people and make the White House and the political process more transparent," spokeswoman Jen Psaki told us last night.

In addition to regularly videotaping the radio address, officials at the transition office say the Obama White House will also conduct online Q&As and video interviews. The goal, officials say, is to put a face on government. In the following weeks, for example, senior members of the transition team, various policy experts and choices for the Cabinet, among others, will record videos for Change.gov.

Obama is bringing a high awareness of technology and its potential as a communication tool to the White House. It is going to be interesting to see how his team manages the potential.

A new introduction to this blog

2008-11-14T15:28:00.004-05:00

Earlier I said that I was going to re-purpose this blog. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to have a Grand Purpose but I am going to expand to video so it will be more accurate to call it The Listening and Looking Librarian but I'm not going to call it that because it sounds weird. I'm going to try to limit myself to what I find on the Internet. Look for a post with actual content in the next couple of hours.

Lack of Posts

2008-10-03T09:52:00.002-04:00

Wow, I haven't posted here in over a year. I need to rethink the use of this blog. Part of the problem is that there isn't a lot of interest at my place of work for podcasts so I don't have much of practical interest to relate.

I'll have to look into re-purposing the blog.

Academia and Podcasts 2

2007-09-17T00:42:00.000-04:00

I sent Rich Edwards an email asking how his presentations on podcasts have been received by his peers. Where I have been looking at podcasts only, Rich is looking at the broader issue of new media authorship, of which podcasts are a part along with blogs and wikis.

He sent the following response.

Hope you had a nice Labor Day Weekend. I wanted to respond to your last email. Yes, you can repost my comments at your blog, and if you don't mind, I am thinking about starting this as a blog comment at MediaCommons as well where we are talking about issues related to peer review and new media authorship, and the role of libraries is quite central to that discussion as well I think.

The response to our presentations has been overwhelming positive, but then in practice, we run up against more conservative tenure and promotion review policies. Also, I gave a presentation last year at a regional New Media Consortium conference where I discussed what makes scholarship scholarship, and I made the following four points:

1. contributed to collective knowledge
2. peer reviewed
3. filtered and organized
4. preserved and archived

I feel all four conditions must be met for new media work (such as a podcast) to achieve an equal footing with peer-reviewed articles, since journal articles are able to achieve points #3 and #4 easily due to existing pipelines, standards and scholarly apparati (such as research indices). A podcast has trouble being taken serious as scholarship if it doesn't go through the same filtering and preservation steps as journal articles and yet no new mechanisms have really appeared that tackle those two areas in my opinion. Professional organizations and academic communities have some responsibility to adapt to the challenges created by these new forms of scholarship. Digital repositories like Merlot ( merlot.org) help get us to points #1 and #2, but I have always felt librarians and libraries are critical for #3 and #4.

As you can see, this is a topic I am very interested in, so if you want to continue the dialogue, I am happy to do so.

Libraries are concerned with all four of Rich's points. One of our jobs as librarians is to guide researchers to appropriate scholarly materials and certainly peer reviewed sources are preferred. Database vendors such as CSA and the Thomson Gale academic OneFile feature access to peer reviewed content. These are all geared to print materials. Rich mentions merlot.org which is a start but not in the league of the indexes that libraries feature. To be really accessible these new media scholarly materials are going to have to appear in the major indexes that are the lifeblood of library research.

Institutional repositories using tools such as Fedora from the University of Virginia combined with interfaces like VTLS' VITAL are make it technically practical for libraries to organize, preserve, and archive new media scholarly materials along with print. Budget is a matter for another discussion.

Librarians at my library are not tenured and do not have a publishing requirement so I tend to put the problem of acceptance of new media authorship within academia as outside our scope. Blogs such as MediaCommons are addressing this subject. I've just added another item to my to-do list to check with my colleagues who are on tenure track to see if their institutions are giving consideration to new media scholarly authorship. Certainly blogs have become a major means of professional communication in our profession.

The challenge is accomplish several dependent tasks:

collect and organize the products of new media authorship
get them indexed and included in citation indexes as well as the major databases to which libraries subscribe
get them accepted by academic departments as scholarly contributions

What I have written is mostly ruminations on my part at this time. I'm just getting started looking into the issue of media authorship in academia so these are my "take off" points. Our media production center has quickly become a vital campus resource and one of our students used its resources to produce a film as her honors thesis. Another of my "take off" points is that if these students start moving into academia we will see a broader definition of what constitutes scholarly authorship.

Academia and Podcasts 1

2007-09-11T22:14:00.000-04:00

I started this blog - both as a librarian and an dedicated user of libraries - because of my interest in podcasts and belief that podcasts can be used in library collection development and readers' advisory services.

As a reader, the mystery (including crime, detective, and police procedural stories) is one of my favorite genres and when I was given an iPod as a birthday present I started looking for podcasts that furthered that interest. I was pleased to find Out of the Past: Investigating Film Noir because it combines my enjoyment of film and noir/hardboiled fiction. Genre terms are tricky to describe and the Wikipedia articles on film noir and noir fiction provide a good overview.

I emailed Richard Edwards and Shannon Clute asking if they would consider allowing libraries to use Out of the Past to supplement the collection. I envisioned that a library could bundle a video of a film with an Out of the Past podcast discussing that film.

Rich Edwards' response opened an aspect of podcasts that I hadn't considered, that podcasting "would force re-considerations of how academic work is produced and circulated." Also, should libraries have a role in preserving podcasts. Rich gave me permission to include his email response.

I love the issue you raise, since it is something that Shannon and I have been discussing this topic since we launched the podcast. We have always considered our podcast as a "serialized academic audiobook," and have given presentations on the topic at both our schools and at national conferences. We recognized that as podcasting grew--especially among academics--it would force re-considerations of how academic work is produced and circulated. In terms of producing new work, the topic that gets the most interest is the role of peer review. But in terms of the circulation of knowledge, which I think has garnered much less of the critical discussion, you have problems arising from publishing in Web 2.0 forms. And one of the central issues is the role of libraries in the disseminating and archiving of academic work.

This is a topic that interests me because you can argue that unless libraries get involved with archiving (and indexing!) Web 2.0 work, a lot of contemporary academic discourse will be lost. You will have work produced and disseminated for a period of time, but then once a website, or a podcast, or a video, or a blog, goes offline, it will be difficult for future scholars, teachers, and students to access that material (if access is even possible). Moreover, while libraries have traditionally had the responsibility for keeping or archiving academic work, another very critical function is the role of libraries as indexes and information services. It can be hard to get academic recognition for a podcast if it doesn't show up in the same scholarly indices as peer-reviewed journals. How are future scholars supposed to build upon this work if they can't even find it in routine database searches in libraries? I argued in a conference presentation last year that more than peer review, more attention should be focused on how we are going to index some of these new forms of digital discourse and include libraries and information specialists in that conversation. Right now, absent a move by libraries, Google (and other search engine entities) function as defacto librarians, and that is not a good situation in my opinion.

Regarding our podcasts in particular, I have always intended to brand our podcasts with the "Creative Commons" label so that individuals felt free to use them. Shannon and I have never spoken in particular which restrictions we would place on the re-use of our podcasts (if any), but we both feel it would be fine to archive them on CD in a library for patrons to use. We did create them as an audiobook and as an original act of scholarship, so if it ends up being housed in your library, please let us know so we can use that as part of our defense of the podcasts as scholarship.

-- email dated 9/4/2007 from Richard Edwards, PhD, Assistant Professor, New Media, IUPUI Co-host, Out of the Past: Investigating Film Noir http://www.noircast.net

From noircast.net
Shannon Clute has a PhD in Romance Studies from Cornell. He currently a freelance writer with one mystery to his credit (The Mint Condition) and another in the works.

Richard Edwards is an Assistant Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at Indiana University's School of Informatics in the Division of New Media.

Lack of Posts

2007-09-09T18:48:00.000-04:00

If anyone stumbles upon this blog and notes the lack of posts, please check back later. I had to leave town unexpectedly for two weeks. Posting will resume this week.

Science Fiction 1 - Escape Pod

2007-08-22T21:33:00.000-04:00

Science Fiction is a popular print genre and you will find that many of the fiction podcasts are science fiction oriented. Horror and fantasy are also popular podcast themes but will be discussed separately.

escapepod.org is the premier, short story, speculative fiction, podcast and it has features that should make it attractive to libraries:

High production values (voices of narrators, clarity of audio, etc)
High quality stories
Licensed under Creative Commons
Stories are collected on CD
Escape Pod Classic collects the stories that do not have mature or adult only content. This would be important to libraries because many of the stories will have great appeal to younger listeners, Squonk the Dragon for example.

You will find stories by well known science fiction or fantasy writers such as Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg, Mike Resnick, and David Brin. Many of the writers will be new to you which might prompt you to look for them in print.

The authors are paid for their contributions through donations.

The supporting website is well done. Stephen Eley gives a rating for the story with a description of the type of content. Here are a couple of examples of the ratings:

Rated G. Contains gender role stereotyping, but no strong sex, language or violence.

Rated G. It’s a children’s story about a dragon raised by a bluebird. Set content expectations accordingly.

Rated R. Contains strong themes of violence and terrorism, strong language, and some sexual content.

He provides a summary of the story as well as links to any web site mentioned in his commentary before and after the actual story. These show notes are a very nice feature that many podcasts provide. If you are driving down the road you don't want to be scrabbling for a pencil because Ely has just mentioned another podcast that sounds really interesting.

Escape Pod has spun off Pseudopod, a horror podcast and soon there will be a fantasy podcast as well.

I give Escape Pod an A+, five star recommendation. Any library looking to promote podcast fiction will be well served here.

Where to Look, Part One - Podiobooks.com

2007-08-14T11:31:00.000-04:00

The is the first posting that will highlight sites that discuss and/or distribute podcasts. The podcasting community is very dynamic and you will need to identify sources that cover the latest podcast content.

Podiobooks.com is an excellent site with which to begin your search for podcast content. Their site is easy to navigate and the titles in their catalog may be browsed by category or in an alphabetical list. As of this instant, they have 142 titles with 3,048 episodes available. Fiction is the major form with science fiction, fantasy, horror, and crime the dominate sub-genres. Some nonfiction is available in categories such as business, history, spirituality, and travelogue. Most of the podcasts are for adults though there is a selection of titles for children and young adults.

I will be discussing specific authors and works in later posts. The titles I subscribe to are listed in the right column so you will have an idea of what is coming (and my listening preferences).

Most of the titles are covered under the Creative Commons Non-commercial, No-Derivative, Attribution license which means that they could be shared in a library. While these podcasts are free, donations are accepted and 75% of the donation goes to the author. The suggested donation is $9.99, which is a bargain considering book prices and I hope that a library featuring any of these titles will pony up.

The content and production values of the podcasts available here are excellent if not superb. Their authors are well represented in the Parsec Award which are presented for "both Sci-Fi & Fantasy Original Content, podiobooks and a variety of other categories dealing with the new frontiers of Portable Media."

Listening Librarian Wiki

2007-08-13T18:46:00.001-04:00

My primary reason for starting this blog is because the subject interests me. I love reading and the wide range of content available in podcast form fascinates me. I want to connect the two.

The secondary reason is that looking at looking at technologies to deliver and promote library services is one of my jobs. Actually, it is a job for everyone but I work in Library IT and feel a particular responsibility. I thought it would be interesting to start integrating as many of the freely available social software/networking tools as I can around a common topic. What better to try this with than something in which I am interested. To that end I have started a wiki over at zoho.com. You can find it at The Listening Librarian's Wiki. I have added several pages to get started and the text needs to be fleshed out. I encourage visitors to edit the entries.

If you are not familiar with the Zoho suite of applications I recommend you check them out. They are free and rich in features.

A. F. Harrold

2007-08-12T10:37:00.000-04:00

The Curious Education of Epitome Quirkstandard.

An Irregular Miscellany: A selection of essays and lectures from the Common University.

Both works are available from Podiobooks.com.

Right. I've gone on about about podcasts and how I believe they can be integrated into library collections. Let's look at two examples. I've picked particularly easy ones with which to start.

Many readers are fond of, if not addicted to, that peculiar sub-genre of literature known as British Humour. I don't know if the British use that term but I suppose not since it is only British from our perspective. Anyway, it is distinctive. To us. The British probably see it as rather commonplace.

A reader comes to the desk and says that he or she has read all of P.G. Wodehouse, several times, and can you recommend anything new along those lines? Yes you can. A. F. Harrold (pictured above) has produced two podcasts that will remind the reader of P. G. Wodehouse flavored with Douglas Adams, Jerome K. Jerome, and Monty Python.

I haven't found much about A. F. Harrold except that he was born in 1975 and is referred to as a performance poet. He competes in poetry slams and has a comedy rock band. He also "does things that aren’t quite normal on the stage and on the page and in the bath." Fans of Douglas Adams will doubtless remember that he did much of his work in the bath or took baths to avoid work. He, A.F. Harrold, has a website at www.afharrold.co.uk and a Myspace account.

Warning, spoiler alert - plot points will be described.

Epitome Nebulous Quirkstandard is a 26 year old, affable, and immensely ignorant aristocrat who finds himself without a staff as a result of the Great War. Epitome left university labeled "a dunce of fairly significant proportions." He was beaten out as the biggest dunce by Nigel Spiggot, a schnauzer and his great friend. Nigel is treated as an English gentleman by everyone. He finds himself unable to manage the "buttons, buckles, hoops, hooks, fasteners, lengths of elastic, and sleeves" required to dress himself and goes to his club dressed only in his hat and boots. At his club he finds the other members in similar states of undress. He observes the doorman instructing the young men in the art of self-dressing and is astounded to learn that there is practical knowledge to be gained.

The doorman refers Epitome to the pamphlet shop of Simone Crepuscular as a place where he would be able to educate himself in practical matters. Simone (a man in spite of the feminine name) is the author of many instructional pamphlets including the autobiographical series: What I did in India; The Behavior and habits of the mountain dwelling cattle, gorses, and monks of the Himalayas; and Things I did in an Outer Mongolian yurt. Other examples of his pamphlets are:

Gravity: What it is, where comes from, goes to, and what colour it would be if you could see it
How to make friends with influential people or be happy not doing so
Fastenings of all descriptions and colourations
The goodness of bread and other French cheeses
The birds of Hyde Park and South East Iceland: A Spotters Guide.

The episodes switch between the present and the past of Epitome and Crepuscular. How Crepuscular came to own a pamphlet shop is a highly entertaining part of the episodes. For example, he was once married to a female pirate who was fast-tracked through pirate college after she lost a hand in a tavern fight over who had the biggest ship and subsequently acquired a prosthetic hand. Her hook was made by the Swiss Army and included many useful attachments.

Another major character is Epitome's aunt, Penelope Penultimate, a highly independent woman for the time, which is the 1920s. Penelope raised Epitome after his parents died.

The story has a decidedly non-Wodehousian climax involving,death, lesbianism, and accidental incest. The final episode in which Epitome meets the end he imagined his father suffered has a poignancy about it. Only the last two episodes have elements that might be objectionable to the humor impaired.

An Irregular Miscellany: A selection of essays and lectures from the Common University is not a sequel to The Curious Education... but has its origins there. Epitome uses Crepuscular's pamphlets as the basis for the Common University which is intended for those who can't afford it. Anyone showing up to a lecture who can afford a ticket is asked to remain in the lobby until the lecture is over then asked to help put up the chairs. Degrees and certificates are acquired by accumulating lecture tickets.

The episodes in this podcast are examples of the lectures offered in the Common University.

I found both The Curious Education.. and An Irregular Miscellany... to be original, well produced, and very, very funny - laugh out loud, snort a beverage through the nostrils funny. Any reader who enjoys both Wodehouse and Monty Python will enjoy these podcasts.

Podcasts and Libraries

2007-08-08T18:57:00.000-04:00

NOTE: I am not involved in collection development or readers' advisory services though I am reading Saricks' Readers' Advisory Service in the Public Library. I am a systems librarian who happens to be interested in podcasts and who wonders if there is a place for them in libraries. If you work in collection development or readers' advisory services and think that I should go back to doing what people think systems librarians do best, i.e. finding new ways to say no, let me know where I am off base.

The materials budgets for libraries are never large enough. With that in mind, can podcasts be used to supplement collections? Can podcasts be used in readers' advisory services as in "you liked this book, you might also like this podcast."

I can think of three questions that might come to mind right away:

What is available in podcast form?
This stuff isn't published. What is the quality?
Is it legal to make podcasts available in/through libraries?

Range of subject matter: The scope of podcast subject matter is impossible to describe in a couple of sentences. Science fiction, fantasy, and horror - and some crime - tend to dominate in the fiction area. After that you can get everything from Howard Stern style of content to quality discussion an nearly every topic. My favorites are those that emphasize critical thinking. More on this in later posts.

Quality: I'm quite happy with the quality of the podcast novels, short stories, and discussions to which I subscribe. I'll be looking at specific podcasts in detail later but for now I'd say that librarians needn't feel that podcasts represent a sort of vanity press offering. There are mainstream, published fiction authors, coasting on their reputations, who churn out the same stuff once or twice a year. Podcast novel and short story writers are fresh new voices.

Legality: A great many podcasts are released under a creative commons license. The usual license is Attribution, Non-commercial, No Derivative which means you can do what you like with it as long as you say where you got it, don't sell it, and don't change anything. If you look in the left column you will find that I have applied a CC license to my blog. I did this mostly because I believe in CC and thought I should.

When I first started thinking about libraries and podcasts, I emailed the hosts of skepticality.com, one of my favorite thinking podcasts dedicated to critical thinking. Derek and Swoopy then forwarded my email to Chris Miller, co-founder of Podiobooks.com. All of the podcast I subscribe to come from Podiobooks. Chris, Derek, and Swoopy are very enthused at the idea that libraries could be interested in their works.

Validation: From Saricks., page 9, 2005 ed.

Readers' advisory has become an accepted and established service in many American public libraries, and it will continue to evolve to meet the needs of users and to incorporate technological advances.

In fact, many libraries further expand readers' advisory services to meet all adult "story" needs, whether in audio, video, or fiction and nonfiction books.

Regarding the second quote, Saricks says that story is "the underlying element that links fiction and nonfiction and their leisure readers."

Podcasts certainly fit into "technological advances" and are an extension of audio and video. It remains to be seen if they can fit within collection collection development guidelines.

In Which the Author Provides Some Background

2007-08-08T11:00:00.000-04:00

I've been a reader for longer than I can remember. In my pre-literate days, my mother says that I would reach for books and not candy in the store. So, to start with, I was first a listener as my parents read stories to me. A couple of years later and we were living in Pretoria, South Africa. South Africa didn't have television at that time and in addition to reading the Enid Blyton Famous Five series (my first mysteries) I listened to a lot of radio shows - detective, science fiction, Superman, comedy - back to listening. When we returned to the U.S., I still read compulsively but TV took over the role formerly occupied by radio. There was one exception, Jean Shepard broadcasting out of WOR in NYC. Jump ahead and I discovered audio books. Cool. Sometimes I would have both the print book and the audio book and switch between them. Listening once again assumes a major role in my entertainment. Books on tape got me through a lot of long drives and yard work.

Last year Marilyn gave me an iPod for A Birthday of Great Significance - twice the age beyond which Jerry Rubin said you shouldn't trust anyone. I had known about podcasts and even listened to a few on the PC but now I really went exploring step one being to set up an iTunes account. Later I subscribed to Audible. Yes, I know, you don't get podcasts from Audible but it adds weight to my commitment to listening. Also, the types of material Audible provides will be the subject of a later post. Oh, and I purchased a really nifty iPod accessory, pictured above attached to my iPod.

Over the past year I've thought a lot about podcasts. We started circulating iPods at MPOW. My institution also joined iTunes U. and the library started providing content. And, of course, I read professional blogs and literature about podcasting and how it can be used in education. Then a month ago I was asked to speak briefly at a joint academic/public library staff session on audio book about the types of resources available through podcasts. I wrote a blog post on my ideas for our departmental blog, Non-commercial Audiobooks. Yes, I'm still mixing podcasts and audio books. I don't care. I'm really interested in all the sorts of files that can be transfered to an mp3 player/iPod.

In subsequent posts, I am planning expand on the ideas presented in my Non-Commercial Audiobooks blog post. Do podcasts represent a kind of gray literature that libraries can incorporate?

Welcome

2007-08-06T18:40:00.000-04:00

Whatever path led you here, welcome. A longer post describing what this blog is about will appear later this week. For now, here is what I hope to pursue. I really like podcasts and I think there is a place for them in libraries. I want to explore that idea and will be looking at individual podcasts as well as sites that promote, discuss, review, and aggregate podcasts. I will also look at other sources of audio materials. I also want to see if I can sustain a blog of a somewhat professional theme and learn to write for an audience. Check back later.