This Weekend in SecondLife

Each week the Humanists of SecondLife get together for a field trip to some interesting place in SecondLife and then a meeting for discussions. (It's rather hilarious that we meet on Sundays, just like the Christians.) This weekend we visited the Star Trek Museum of Science, which was great. It was very well put together and coupled information about the television shows with actual scientific information. I achieved a lifelong ambition by making myself a science officer. I told my husband that I had gotten a Star Fleet uniform and he suddenly said, "Not the red one?!" No, of course not. Those people in the red shirts in the away teams are the first ones to die! This would be a great resource for teens who might accidentally learn some facts. Unfortunately, it's not on the teen grid (there is a separate SecondLife for the underaged). Or maybe it is. I'm not allowed on the teen grid, so I don't really know.
One of the best (and by "best" I guess I mean "funniest") exhibits at the STMofS is a display of How Has Star Trek Changed Your Life? In it the "communicator" is compared to the cell phone and so on. Of course, the cell phone doesn't have a little dial on it like radios in the 1960s. Sorry that the "photo" of the display isn't all that clear.* You can almost read everything. If you are really interested, go there and look at it yourself!
SecondLife is not all gamers shooting each other or "lusers" gettingthe virtual sex that they can't get in Real Life because they are lumpy mousepotatoes. There's something there for us old folks who like to chat with people in real time, while being lumpy and eating Doritos.
That's me in the science unit costume and the white hair. My handle is Lludmila Mirrikh. Drop by some time and chat with me.

*I've added what I hope is a clearer copy.

Poetry Readings in SecondLife

Poetry readings at the Blue Angel Cafe, a supportive group for those who just have to get that poetry off their chests and spit.

Being Social in SecondLife

BookMoochers gather to virtually eat virtual snacks and discuss books, etc. My, how good our posture is!

Further Adventures in SecondLife

Salamander Clary relaxes in the dark in Magnatuneland at the BookMooch Sunday Social.

Adventures in SecondLife

All-around gorgeous gal Mossflower as virtual geisha and Simeon being dapper as ever!

shelfmonkeys: "free pencils"

Sometimes I feel like the biggest, meanest ogre in Fairyland, but, I mean, it just gets on your nerves!

Why I'm Videoing My Dad

A big change comes over both of us when I turn on the camera. He may be 99 10/12, but he knows a camera when he sees one and he knows a little light on the front as well. He makes an effort to remember. Nuances we haven't heard in a while come out.
This whole "project" makes a difference in me. When I was little, my mom used to threaten to charge Dad for "old time stories." He was allowed one a day and then he'd have to pay each listener five cents for each story over that he told. While this may have slowed him down, it never stopped him, and I nor anyone else in the family ever realise a penny out of him for all the stories we had to listen to.
We used to tell people never to mention wine or milk products because the simple question, "Say, Bill, what kind of cheese do you like?" inevitably ended in a long, drawn-out monologue about "keows," butter, and the making of cheese. The same thing with wine. Dad was raised during Prohibition by non-drinkers so naturally he learned to make his own. He talked about using a hydrometer to make a reasonable facsimile of gin. There's a college education for you! None of this willy-nilly bathtub gin! One of my earliest botany lessons from my dad is of juniper berries and how they were used to flavor gin.
We heard the stories so often that we stopped listening. Then, after Mom died, I realized that parent lost equals information lost. I debated writing it down, getting some history major at the local college to write it down, or tape-recording it the way he recorded his own father's farm stories (on spools of wire). The spools of recordings have since been lost. Yes, Dad's stories were still boring, repetitive, and increasingly inaccurate, but when he was gone, the stories would be as well.
Dad's stories, well some of them, can push all my buttons while I run screaming up the walls. But something happens when I turn on the camera. The act of recording changes both of us. Dad turns into a performer and I become some kind of journalist: asking questions, prompting, editing.
The saddest thing for me is that Dad is the last of my immediate family. My sister died six years before my mother went. There is no one else. When Dad goes, so goes the memory of my birth. One of the few times I went home was for my birthday. Mom would tell the story of Dad being in and out and the nurses asking her if Dad ran a floating crap game. Dad talked about leaving my sister with a neighbor who got all excited and started exclaiming, "Ohhh, we're gonna have a baby! We're gonna have a baby!" Somewhere in there is also a story about my sister going out wandering in the woods and stepping in a yellow jacket's nest and winding up in the hospital at the same time as our mother. Dad continues to this day to marvel at how tiny I was and adds that I was all paid for. He even found the receipt from the hospital one day. I can't tell you how heartwarming it is for a member of our tribe to have a paid-in-full receipt for their birth. But soon he will not be able to vouch for my erstwhile smallness or my debt-free character. I will be so very, very, very sad. But I will have the video.

HA!

You thought you could escape my tacky videos by not clicking on the links, but HA! Mwah-ha-ha-ha-haaa! I have now imbedded them (well some) in my blog! Phew! I just followed the instructions on the main page and whaddayakno', but it all worked! I'm just so happy now!
Of course, this may mean I now have to stop complaining about New Blogger. Oh well.

What I Learned from the Previous Post's Workshop

Now, what was there that I didn’t already know or that I can use at our library? Oh, ye of little faith!

I’ve got a scavenger hunt to do this summer and I might just make them search in the e-titles for stuff and set up a NetLibrary account.

We should have a demo mp3 at each branch (I guess Ref handles that in our main one) to show people how it works.

We should take this on the road, every time we set up a table or the bookmobile or something at a function, we should demo the e-titles and hand out info.

We should demonstrate it to Fran’s book groups.

The One Book, One Community should be a NetLibrary title.

I’m going to check out Project Gutenberg and Librivox.org to see what is available.

While dithering with my notes, I visited the Project Gutenberg site and am currently listening (that is, at home) to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden read by computer. This was an excellent choice because of the Yorkshire dialect, which the computer-generated voice cannot deal with and ends up spelling out: “Tee-aitch-apostrophe …” And it simply cannot deal with the name of the manor, Mistlethwaite, which comes out sounding like a person: Miss Thelthwaite. Clever of it to not call it Mist Lethwaite, though. Despite the lack of emotion and the dialect problems, I find the story (which I’ve read many times) very engrossing and can’t wait to get back to it and download another section. And that is a teeny problem, it downloads one piece at at time (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/8812) and there are over thirty pieces. But that’s nice, too, because you can just download a bit of it if you don’t have a lot of time to wait for it to download. And then, at least on my machine, it’s still there when you download more, so it accumulates.

I have not yet listened to any of the volunteers read on Librivox because I want to finish The Secret Garden first! They’ve got the Quijote being read on that, which may be helpful to our summer high school readers. It’s also being read in Spanish. Wheeeee! I’ll blog that later for y’all.

I’m going to go through our e-titles (and maybe Gutenberg) and compare the Summer Reading Lists for District 50 etc. to see what we have e-vailable that could can be recommended to the older kids (who don’t do the SC Book Award nominees) … isn’t Frankenstein one of those? And I should make a sign or a bookmark for this.

Next time I go on vacation, I’m not going to check out so much hard copy to carry with me when I can download something when I am away and read/listen to it from a laptop (which I’d better get out and buy but I’m not going anywhere until August, I think). And then I’ll probably need new glasses.

How kosher would it be to buy an annual out-of-town card from RCPL (what is that, $50?) and then check out, download, and burn all the Rabbit Ears and Weston Woods stuff?

Downloadable Media Workshop, 30 March 2007

Downloadable Media for Libraries (audiobooks, music, movies oxfordcomma* and more

Ellan Jenkinson of the Richland County Public Library

Works in Extension Services

*I approve

So, why did I take this class when I’ve done the Staff Development Thingy and I had to do the mp3 thing and then we were supposed to already have experimented with NetLibrary? Well, as I recall, I didn’t really enjoy the mp3 thing. I downloaded music and a short children’s book. I “checked out” e-books and read them. I even have the mp3 player I got for finishing the staff development thingy and there is more stuff on it. But do I really use these things? No. I can waste time perfectly well on the computer without downloading stuff to read/listen to. I have sound going on most of the time in my life and I don’t really need to have it constantly. Every now and then I like a little silence. So, why did I take this class? I guess I figured I was missing something.

Downloadable Media consists of

Print, audio, and video content that can be downloaded via the internet

E-books, podcasts, digital audiobooks, music, games, video files, etc.

It’s been made possible by larger bandwidth and ubiquitous Portable Listening Devices, libraries offering e-books and digital audiobooks to which has been added music and video titles (well, at RCPL anyway)

Digital audiobooks are downloaded and listened to on a pc, laptop, or what is laughingly designated Personal Listening Devices (PLDs, such as mp3 players)

Why would anyone want this?

Benefits: 24/7 access for patrons (Hey! I’m often up late unable to sleep because of injudicious caffeinated beverage consumption!)

They don’t take up extra shelf space (RCPL is running out of space despite four floors of 1 acre each!)

Downloadable digital media (DDM) can’t be returned late, so there are no fines (win for patron)

There are no moving parts (none the library is responsible for anyway) to get lost, separated, or damaged

Pulls in new patrons (who just aren’t “book people”)

Men can safely “check out” books they would ordinarily not be caught dead taking to the Circ Desk, like Nora Roberts stuff.

RCPL “encourages” (which is a nice way of putting that they discourage the opposite) patrons to download at home so as not to tie up the library computers, suck bandwidth, or attach foreign devices to the computers.

RCPL is now phasing out audiocassettes. Who isn’t?

RCPL first added DDM in 2005. They use NetLibrary/Recorded Books. They started out with 500 titles plus the Pimsleur Language Series (which is surprisingly popular, but not if you consider how hard it has been to keep up with the demand for books on cd or language instruction materials), the Bible, and a “bonus” of 200 “classics.” 30 titles are added each month. After a year they decided to separately add 20 titles/month of children’s and YA (don’t they prefer to be called “teens”?) titles. Usage was initially low, but had increased substantially over time. They’re running about 450 titles/month downloaded.

In 2007 they added OverDrive. While NetLibrary runs very much like a lending library, individual titles are “purchased from” OverDrive, but stay in the keeping of OD. So, only one person can check out a title at one time. RCPL has never offered e-books.

Note to self: Create sign for language area: “We Have Language Instruction in Digital Audio Format That Are Always In!”

Promote One Book, One Community with a digital copy!

Sign for Summer: “Summer Reading List Books Available in DAF!”

OverDrive brands their site to look like yours to “fool” the public into thinking the site is actually a part of your library. They’ll spend ages setting that up.

Why go to OD when you have NetLibrary? Well, OD had titles NL didn’t (NetLibrary is a part of Recorded Books and so they use only the ones they have licensed), as well as music and video. There is no annual fee. Titles are purchased outright and there is a one-time set-up fee. Some titles can be burned to cd. Video titles are limited, but they have Rabbit Ears and Weston Woods videos which come with public performance rights (noted right on the website). RCPL only has 6 music titles and they don’t seem to be going anywhere. They have less than 200 titles from OD total.

What equipment do you need to enjoy this bounty?

A computer with internet access (how much does that run?)

Windows Media Player Version 9 or higher

For OD you need to download (for free and only once) their media console program

From a pc you can transfer to a laptop, mp3 player, PDA, or a SmartPhone.

There is a wide variety of compatible devices (check out the Best Buy web page)

What about them Portable Listening Devices? What do you need?

It must be able to play .wma files (so an iPod is right out, which makes many patrons unhappy and is an on-going issue with RCPL)

It must be compatible with Windows Media Player 9 and up

Optimum Usage requires:

512 MB minimum storage

Pause/resume functions or a book marking feature

Both services test and recommend devices. There is a list on the NL website of compatible and incompatible that is continually updated. In their experience, RCPL has had the best results with brands Creative and Samsung. All iPod and Mac products are incompatible.

“Challenges” (RCPL avoids the word “problems” – ha ha ha ha ha)

Staff was largely unfamiliar with downloadable media and unable to answer questions (not to mention the eye-rollers you get in every group)

Patrons were also unfamiliar with the medium

Solutions

The staff was given hands-on training and an opportunity to play (we had the latter)

Mp3 players were purchased for staff use and demos (now, there’s an idea! Have an mp3 at all branch desks to show a patron how to do it!)

They provided a “quick start” bookmark for patrons and staff (pretty huge! You’d need an atlas to justify the size of that thing – Forgot to pick up)

They did demos for patrons at library events (book festival booth, book clubs – so we could do that at Fran’s book groups or when we appear at some public function. I’m learning lots of stuff!)

Yet More Challenges and Solutions

Whaddaya call this? They started calling them Digital Audiobooks, but they added other media so now they call them Downloadable Media. All the terms seem to be lengthy and awkward as well as unfamiliar. This makes them difficult to label on bookmarks, etc. So they still haven’t hit on the perfect name.

Where do you put it on your website? RCPL put them in at least three places: the main page, the a/v page, and the Book Buzz page. What, no blog page? We blogged ours!

Do you promote them together or separately? They opted to do separate PR (because they operate so differently) but put them together on the website. Now, what the heck is PlayAway??!!

Those who don’t have the computer/internet connection/mp3s, can check out books on PlayAway. It’s a digital player pre-loaded with a particular book. Of course, the patron needs to provide their own earbuds/headphones (or can purchase from library for $1) and it runs on AAA batteries that need changing, sometimes right in the middle of a book (but they’ll do that at the desk, or the patron can insert their own). This is also on the webpage with the DDM.

Technical Challenges

They’ve had problems with patron access to the NL site because of the patron’s firewall (been there! You have to tell your firewall to accept from that web address as I have done with SecondLife.)

RCPL seems to have this problem with NL co-branding (bundling) with Recorded Books, causing confusion in their patrons. We don’t have that on our NL, but we have e-books and I’ve found that annoying that when I’m looking for an audiobook, I don’t want to see the e-books and vice versa.

They also have had a problem with the advertised download times (how long it will take to download the item) not coinciding with Reality. That turned out to be a NL server problem … er, challenge.

Solutions

Patrons are encouraged to set up their NL account at the library (they have to at our library).

They have an on-going dialog with NL about joint site improvement.

When launching OD, they did far more development and testing (by staff) before going live. We had a couple of months playing with NL before it went live. I wonder how many of us actually played with it?

Challenges Continued

iPod incompatibility: The Most Popular Portable Listening Device does not work with library media.

Y’see, iPods don’t support the files with the .wma copyright protection. They have their own proprietary copyright protection (also used by Mac computers), .AAC. If you want media, you have to go to iTunes (they have books and video as well). Public domain materials are available in both formats.

Solution?

There isn’t one. No library products are compatible with iPods.

Apple and MicroSquash need to reach an agreement.

In the meantime, MS has muddied the waters by creating another proprietary player: Zune! Boo to Gates with nobs on!

Other Options

PlayAways, the self-playing audiobooks where there is no downloading necessary; computers, internet, portable devices unnecessary; titles are purchased individually, prices are comparable to book titles on cd (or less!) And you can buy them at airports! (But they need batteries! They have parts that can be lost or broken! This is a step almost backwards! Book technology is so easy!)

Free Sources

Project Gutenberg: http://gutenberg.org/audio/

Librivox: http://www.librivox.org/

All titles in public domain and usually read by volunteers without the proprietary copyright protection, so anyone can use it.

That’s the solution! Undermine the soandsos!

The Future

Digital natives (cute – I call them mip3rsnappers) are coming of age and that will raise the demand for downloadable content

We’ll keep having to deal with compatibility issues and changing formats (let’s go back to Betamax!)

Library’s need to be more away of digital copyright issues, and not make the errors of the libraries that set up NetFlix accounts and iTunes accounts.

Hands-On:

We visited the RCPL website (which I compared to ours) to see what their DDM looked like. Get this, they have to enter their library card and PIN numbers before they get the log-in (which is confusing, but RCPL likes to remind them that this service is Brought To You By The Library. Hoo-hoo! Wait till they find out that they don’t have to do the card and PIN number!)

She showed us the Recorded Books/NetLibrary confusion, but we just don’t have that.

NetLibrary can renew a title once without downloading. Of course, they can check it out again (forcing a second download) and practically have it out in perpetuity, but whom does that hurt?

Also, they are limited to having out 10 downloaded items, and these are out for the 21 day “circulation” so they can’t be checked in early (same here). They could even set up multiple accounts (with different and probably bogus e-mail addresses) to get around that, but, again, where’s the harm? It’s all good for statistics.

What is the effect of this on book circ statistics? Well, it’s not the same thing. It’s more like a CD check out, so it might affect those.

As for statistics, the only info RCPL gets is the number of downloads in a given period, not a title by title accounting, although exceptionally popular titles might get a separate stat.

Looking more closely at OverDrive. Neither OD nor NL show up on the patron’s library card. Public Performance permission right on the individual entry! Also, it says whether or not you can burn the title to a cd (this is set by the publisher). There may be a limit to how many times you transfer the title, and it says it there as well. This is also set by the publisher and the numbers are all over the map, one time, 21 times, 8 times. This could be handy if you want to teach a class. You can check it out once and download it to a specified number of devices for your students.

Holds, which lined up quickly on OD, last for 48 hours after the notice (by e-mail message) and then the chance to check it out is lost and it “moves” on to the next in line.

The program that you download to use OD enables you to transfer directly to your device without going through Media Player. Easy use. You can also download only parts of the title, to save time. It could take ages to download a whole thing. Maybe you only want to listen to the first four chapters. Maybe you don’t have the room on your PLD.

And you can do this from anywhere that you have access to the internet. One patron’s family was downloading material from vacation in Europe. What about service people in Iraq, etc., do they use this? They could.

One confusing thing about OverDrive is that it is more like shopping than checking out material. You put items into your “cart” and actually checking them out is a separate operation. This, however, gives you time to look over your cart and decide if you really want something in case something better comes along (remember, you can’t check something back in early).

Ellan thinks there is more use of OD than NL, but then the staff was more prepared when they went live and OD themselves provided more promotional materials. They do sort of cross-pollinate each other, though. Awareness of one will increase awareness of the other.

Noted on web page: OD E-Book of the Month. Ha ha. Which one is that, the one title that isn’t on hold? This is a good idea for NL, though. You can feature an e-book/digital audiobook each week/month on your web page just to increase awareness. A picture of a book and a blurb attracts more attention than the blog chatting about a new service (which is now way down on the blog list and away from view). Also, you can feature the new e-titles each month as they arrive (or the “best of”).

Ellan’s PLD is a Zen by Creative with 6 GB memory and cost about $170 when she bought it. She loves it. It has a bookmarking feature.

shelfmonkeys

Merely wishful thinking ... sigh!