Podcasts, Video and ebooks

You Tube

Today I checked out Youtube and some other similar sites like Vimeo. I liked youtube and I thought it was a great forum for people to post information. What I didn't like about it was that some of the videos posted on there were such low quality that they were hard to watch. Conversely, some of the videos were such high quality that they uploaded really slowly and so were hard to watch. I've embedded a video below of an interview with Cecily Von Ziegesar, the author of the teen series of novels Gossip Girl. I thought libraries could use youtube, in that they could post relevant author talks/clips on their book club blog to enthuse their book club members.



Podcasts

Today I explored podcasts. I am interested in music so I subscribed to the Indie music blog Indie Kids Bible which I found through podcastalley.com pod directory. I watched the podcasting in plain English post on youtube and found it helpful. I guess TV on demand is a kind of podcast in a way. I looked up teen books inthe podcastally.com directory as well and found some good book review pod casts and podcasts which specialised in interviewing authors.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheBookcast - this podcast provides interviews with authors of new, bestselling books.

e-books, e-audio-books and downloadable media

I looked at Auckland city libraries digital collections for ebooks and e-audio books. The collection of e-audio books is not huge but my guess is that it is growing. I did manage to find an e-audio book of The Canterbury Tales, nice. There are a number of e-books available on the auckland city libraries catalogue and some of the digital databases have e-books as well. This is great if you are in a book club and you want to read a book but you can't find a physical copy in the library (because all the other book club members have taken them). Now you can just read an e-book of it.

I made a netlibrary account and added five e-books and e-audio-books to my page. I noticed there were cliff notes available on the site which I thought would be good for students. I have linked to it here http://www.netlibrary.com/FavoritesAndNotes.aspx

What did I think of the ACL web 2.0 programme

I enjoyed this web 2.0 programme, it is a good way to keep up with fast moving technologies and in turn be able to keep up with our customers. I particularly enjoyed exploring you-tube and the pod-casts. I run a teen-book club at my library and I think some of them would get a lot out of listening and watching author interviews on-line, especially as some of them are budding writers.

One suggestion I have is that links that are provided on the Web 2.0 instructions blog of sites to look at etc should pop up in a new window. It is eternally frustrating to have to keep reopening a new tab for the web 2.0 instructions while you are looking at a website it has linked to.

Thanks!