All Mashed Up with Nowhere to Go

I love the idea of mash-ups and I generally think the ones I've seen are clever or amusing or even useful. The problem is in coming up with ways in which I could use a mashup in my working world (or even in my private one).

I think of this as being like cooking. In general I have a small list of dishes I can make without consulting a recipe. These are things I've made many times and because of my familiarity with them I'm able to change things up and still have some success. These would be the mash-ups I'm knowledgeable enough to improvise and create. In the library world they'd include the things talked about in Project Play. Library catalogs that add data from LibraryThing or maps that combine census information with geographic layout. Both are familiar to me and could be possible suggestions I'd make for my own workplace.

The problem is, that list of known mixes is small. And when I venture out, I get the same results as with my cooking. If I don't know the recipe for something, I need the recipe. I'm not intuitive enough (or experienced enough) to move past the recipe. When I most frequently err on the side of adding too many ingredients to the point my dish is inedible. But more often, I can't think of things to add. I can't brainstorm it on my own.

That's what mashups seem like to me. I know there's a world of possibilities out there but because my knowledge is so limited, I can't envision them. I welcome the chance to explore them more because familiarity will hopefully bring some creativity. But as it is, unless someone gives me the exact recipe for mashing something together, I'm probably not going to be able to come up with it.

Just What are those InterTubes?

Back in the early stages of my blog I made my first attempt to embed (sounds so militaristic!) a YouTube video of Elvis Costello singing my theme song in the blog. And I found the task pretty simple. This pointed up how easy it would be to include this kind of content in library endeavors. The handy thing about YouTube is that it serves as the host for all the videos your library might want to create. This means less server space used on your end. As an example one of the MPL branches did a video about a music program they had for kids. Once the video was done, how easy it would have been to load it onto YouTube and make it available on the library's website. What a nice way to promote your library, not only to your own community but to the wider web world. Think of a fundraising effort you may be undertaking and making a short film to sell the idea. The possibilities are immense.

All my cogitating aside, I'm not going to embed a video from YouTube today. Instead I'm going to embed an episode of my very favorite SF show from the new movie/tv service called Hulu. Hulu in their own words: "Hulu offers full-length episodes of not only current hit shows like The Simpsons and The Office but also classics like The Incredible Hulk, Miami Vice and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and in some cases, as with Arrested Development, Firefly, and Friday Night Lights, we have every episode ever aired. Our expanded library of full-length movies has something for everyone, from The Usual Suspects to The Big Lebowski, Me, Myself & Irene, Mulholland Drive and (one of my personal favorites) Three Amigos!." Their movie selection is still pretty small but I'm thrilled with the tv shows on offer.

And without further ado here is one of my favs (and with this tip for embedding - paste the embed code into a Word document first otherwise the full code doesn't always come through):

Casting for the Screen

Of all the things we've looked at this semester (and we've looked at some fun things), I think screencasting is one of the most potentially useful for libraries. Being able to wed sound and slides in an instructional way is perfect. Screenshots with a voice telling you where you would click and what to look for is great for the learners who learn visually and those who learn aurally. Think of talking someone through setting up an email account and how often you do that in a week or month. I know some thought a podcast would be the way to go, but a screencast does it one better. The uses are limitless for instructional purposes.

And to prove it, I'll admit that this week's shiny object wasn't limited to the screencasting software. I was also thrilled with Cueprompter. Just seeing the demo via screencast gave me ideas for future presentations. Nice.