Thing 18: Communicating through photographs

I love communicating through pictures. I'm the type of person who loves leaving a picture with no caption and having people guess whats going on. Or, embarrasingly, loves announcing a dramatic hair style change by not telling anybody about it beforehand and then posting a 'look at me' type picture. I used to not be so hipster and petty. I used to hate pictures of myself. But then, you see i got a taste of people caring where I went, what i wore and who i went with when hanging with some unashamedly camp fellows. It's eased off a bit in recent months, but for awhile (and snapchat is partially to blame) I got a lil bit obsessed with photographing everything i was eating, every place i was and every cute animal i saw. It just became habit. I think my phone not being able to handle the update to Snapchat saved my soul just a little bit.

But i've gone a bit off topic. I've used Flickr a bit, mainly in an observational way but i've never used Instgram (you don't want to know the un-pc alternative name i have for it, though this particular group that should be offended named it). I have however used pictures to communicate whats new in the library, primarily new books, and i added some pictures of the library to our own page after our previous librarian left because i felt it needed more colour. Therefore i can understand how Flikr might be useful to tell the library story - i have no problem with people saving pictures which i understand as the only benefit of Instagram except filters, though i'm willing to give both a go.

Flikr is something i can across, like most things, through fandom, where other fans had posted film set images or fan art. It also somewhere I used recently to look at pictures of a marathon i was very proud my sister took part in. I didn't know that it could search for creative commons pictures so i now realise one particular advantage of using it in our field, particularly with regard to reference questions we might get about copyright free images. It is also, as i've said in previous posts about images, a good way of sharing event pictures and its useful that a group of people can post the same place. Who would ever need more than a terrabyte of storage! At least not for quite awhile! Tagging and gathering images into topics is a good tool - though people may vary in their wording - so maybe only use our own Library field standards if possible? Then the interactive nature of the site allows users to add their own tags thus broadening the findability. I certainly agree that photographing fragile items is a good idea - much like leave no trace with nature, you can take a memory of the item for more to see without exposure to more people.

It's hard not to get sidetracked with all the groups and topics and albums and chatrooms (oh and the metadata!) but i finally got to the task at hand. I thought the NLI photostream was a good place to look for a photograph, particularly since i love old photos and they saw in their Flikr commons statement that none of the photos have copyright only attribution. I scanned it abit until i found the photo below. It reminded me of myself posing with a friend of mine - me awkward and my friend posing like a pro. It was only after i saved it i realised something crazy - the awkward guy has the same surname as me! Major General Ennis on the left. I kind of want to find out if we're related now, and the NLI is a good place to start.....

Instagram is something, ever by its name, that gives me the feeling of a hipster app trying to be cool and cultured by using something like anything ending in gram. It also throws up associations of selfies, ridic filters and apple products, but i have decided to approach everything with an open mind. But then i realised you need to download the mobile app for it to work. My phone doesnt have that kind of space, no matter how much i delete - will i be failed on not competing this task? Would that be fair as not everyone has a smart phone?

I guess i'll enquire and find out - returning to this task at a later date. I have enjoyed looking at New York Public library account - those book covers connecting with the people behind - never gets old.

I think instagram is a bit flashy for our library, though it might help connect with the younger undergrads and i've yet to really look at it. Flikr would work for us because there's lots of embedding features and you dont need an account to view the images. I think we could use it to regain that student updating service we lost with a more awkward Moodle website  - on the old website it was designed with a front page that was useful for posting information and updates as well as a more useable library page but with the new website there seems to be more restriction on who views what version of the front page and its harder to work out how to post things there. Also our institutions marketing team has taken over other roles as late so cant spend as much time updating about the instiution as a whole on the institution twitter.

A flikr account could be useful for posting images of new items in our collection, promoting services and displaying those posters i like making that we cant put on the  wall in the new building because of new paint etc.

Thing 14: Augmented Reality - to be continued

This is a term I've heard only briefly, and usually either on my cert in computing science or in nerdy circles. I know the information profession is connected to evolving technology but this is far out of my normal realm of everyday librarianship. Most people in Ireland's everyday librarianship I'd wager. The most contact I've had with this concept is probably QR codes, which in my experience aren't what they're cracked up to be.




Needless to say, I was a bit sceptical starting this module as to how relevant or useful it could be to me and my job. The mere mention of downloading something 4D kind of made me giggle. I understand how apps such as field trip, or at least apps that exist around the same idea of providing additional information about what somebody is looking at, may be useful, but some of the apps such as Aurasma seem a bit frivolous on the outset. They are interesting developments in lenses etc but much like popart on your old Nokia they're fun but don't really add anything useful.




The Anatomy app could indeed be useful but I can barely update the apps I have at the moment, never mind download a new one. I will give it a go later though.




Testing out either or these apps, realistically, either involve the user setting up an account or me paying money. I'd be inclined to agree that Layar would be the better option for a real project but as it's only a tester I'd be more inclined to consider Aurasma. For a second I thought I'd seen the Summer Buzz bee in Maynooth library, but I thought it was just that; a picture of a bee.




>Update<


I later decided that if I want to do this for a purpose, i.e. for my fan blog, Layar would be better, but I'd have to set it up so it only runs for a month.
As I began to use the AR I also began to see what Niamh was talking about as regards it being a way of teaching young people digital literacy, a big part of our job. It could be something more fun or interesting I could use to promote library use in my own institution but obviously only for a short period. I will try it for my own mini fanblog project first and see how I get on.


I will update once I use it and also once I take a look at the librARi demo....

Update 2: 

Much like with Screencast, my lack of decent technology has limited my ability to try these things out. No matter hoe much I delete, my phone doesn't have enough room to download Anatomy 4D or Layar, meaning I can't truly try them out. Layer also doesn't seem to have a less than 6 months/extortionate charge option but the free one month plan seems cool enough if only I could actually get the app to see the results. Anybody want to take a look and tell me? https://www.layar.com/campaigns/W9DAXTR0F6

The demo for LibrARi is pretty cool with the related texts and latest additions in given topic. At first I thought it was for lazy people with the "your book is here" function though haha.

Thing 9: Video

I know one of the first rules of blogging is never apologising for being away a long time, but, yeah sorry guys.

And I still didn't make a podcast. This week for sho.

This topic is a bit scarier again. I've no problem sharing videos I've taken (like recent ones of Dublin Comic Con which I have up on my YouTube) but recording myself  (which I'm sad to say I've done before for silly things like trying to promote my old blog, and there was that time I was on RTE news that is unspeakable!) that is truly terrifying.

I already have an embarrassing YouTube channel (embarrassing despite the 500,000 views video that I had to take down due to copyright infringement a la sigh) so even if Vimeo were better I'd still chose YouTube. I;ve watched many screencasts on Youtube in my time - how to code this thing, how to use this app, watch this idiot play this game. But never recorded one. It is slightly less scary than the here is me talking option I was expecting. Also, as change is inevitable in my library, perhaps it would be useful for a 'how to' use our electronic resources video. I can also understand how a more personable approach can be gained by recording videos, as well as appealing to that visual generation once more.

Once more into the breach, my friends, and I will post my results and experience as soon as I make my screencast....




Update:
So I was gonna do a soundless one at work as it's a bit slow today, but as with every technology ever you need the latest version of Java, which I cannot download because it messes with our non-updated LMS. At home it is!


update 4th September
So I finally got the latest version of Java so this could work and lo and behold my archaic netbook takes almost 3 hours (I kid you not) to confirm that it will not work on any of my browsers and just loads forever but I finally got the app downloaded so I will give a screencast a go later, finally!
later that week I recorded a few soundless screencasts showing how to use the instiutions electronic resources and now I just need to set aside a few hours to captioning them on youtube, stay tuned for that!

Well that messed up and the video is frozen on the one screencapture for nearly two minutes cutting out the most important part of the search demonstration. Need to see if any others do that:
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SSWlLT8GJYM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


THING 8: Curation

It's true that we indeed sort, classify and try to make thing accessible everyday. I for one try to keep the noticeboards and Moodle homepage fun and visual to help students find information or even just know when we are open or who to ask a question to. The closest thing to a fun book display we have is our serial desk, which due to cuts is looking less updated and shiny, but I still put effort into keeping everything looking tidy and visible.

I have come across Pinterest in passing, but it follows that type of boxes of images display that I find counter-productive to user friendliness. It is a form of visual information overload. It's that type of display that turns me off Windows 8 through 10. It also means that people like myself with lower internet speeds can't display it right. But it's the way of the future and I have to admit the images array is pretty. It's also nice to get a break from words. Young people seem to be more drawn to this set-up aswell so it is in keeping with trends in the field. As many people have said in their blogs, Librarians will continue to be necessary but need to adapt and evolve.

My main concern with all these different types of media is the time-consuming nature of their use. Yes, Pinterest is good for pinning and book-marking in a visual way, but I already use Twitter for useful links and for images. My opinion has more to do with simplifying my use of social media to a few sites and I happened upon Twitter first, so therefore I use it. Also the fact you need an account to even view these pages, and there is no sign in with Google option, is a bit discouraging.

Ok, so I have an account. Picture overload with like 11 following. Though it is a nice source of images. Rapid City have put their page to good use with different programs they've run. Could I use it to display some stuff about us? I just need to work out how to upload something original. Just one question though - good God, why did they shred books!???
I'll update when I've had a chance to look around.


UPDATE, the next day:
Wasted like a half hour searching different terms to see if there's a way to find all the stuff I want to buy when I get paid and pin them to a board as this would be useful for me. Still can't figure out how to upload my own pictures/links so it might be actually useful for promoting our library.


I didn't even try flipbook because the thoughts of setting up another account i'll never use again happened. I did try storify as it seems useful for searching terms across social media and creating the course of an event or news story. And I could sign up using Twitter!
It could be useful and is easy enough to use but I couldn't really work out how to filter results bar narrowing the search term. I'll have to spend more time at it I imagine.


UPDATE, Much later:
There's actually something I found on my own called paper.li that's good for sharing news. it's a bit finicky as regards it automatic streaming sources in, but it's useful for sure.