Library Web Chic

While of my other 5 Weeks organizers have posted their own reflections on the 5 Weeks experience and since I’m a little late to the game I won’t reiterate what they have said already. Instead I’d like to talk a little bit of what I got out of 5 Weeks.

When I got involved in 5 Weeks to a Social Library I thought that I would provide technical backbone support for the project. Ironically, it didn’t work out that way. While it was my intention to be more involved in getting Drupal set up and running, my time disappeared into the morass of projects at work. Most of the time I ended up making suggestions but not really doing much backend stuff.

Instead 5 Weeks led me down the road of screencasting, podcasting, and digital video. While these topics have been interest to me for a while, I hadn’t yet had a reason to explore them in any depth. 5 Weeks provided that opportunity and challenge.

What I’ve learned about digital content will definitely help UH Libraries in the future. We are just beginning our own forays into screencasting and learning painfully how to do it effectively. The software you use DOES matter and you need to choose carefully based on your needs. While I like Camtasia a great deal, I believe it is overkill for simpler screencasts in which are primarily browser or other application screencapture. For these Captivate is likely a better choice. However, if you want to combine and blend different forms of media (Powerpoint, video, screencapture, audio voice over, etc) then Camtasia is a great piece of software because it allows you to lay tracks like a traditional editing program. Final file size versus quality was also an issue that we struggled with and ultimately I think to serve the needs of users best we may need to provide them with several options (streamed, different sizes, resolutions).
The experience also made me think a great deal about the preservation of digital objects. What happens to all our 5 Weeks content if Blip.tv disappears? Where will screencasts, podcasts and videos that libraries create be archived for the future? I’m grateful to the Internet Archive for providing people with space. However, I think that libraries need to take a larger role in providing space for preserving this kind of content. Not just what they are creating in-house, but what faculty, staff, and students are creating as well. If we don’t live up to this obligation much will be lost.

More than anything else, Five Weeks taught me want a humbling experience it can be to work with passionate, smart, and dedicated people. My co-organizers constantly amazed me and made me feel like I could be doing so much more. At the same time, the participants interest and enthusiasm was a blast. It is rare for me to come away from a conference session knowing for sure that it was worthwhile for those adding. With Five Weeks I never had those doubts and that is very gratifying.

As to whether or not I’d be willing to do something like this again, yes and no. Putting together and putting on 5 Weeks to a Social Library was an exhausting experience. The weeks of the course itself ended up coming at a really bad time in my life this year and if there is a next time I will have to do a better job of scheduling so I don’t feel like I’m losing my mind. The whole production and medium intrigue and excite me greatly though. So it is likely you will see my name attached to similar endeavors in the future if only because I haven’t quite completely scratched the running free online education and programming itch yet.