A drop in a bucket

Lately I have been hearing of creative types; writers, musicians and the like raising money on their own through direct sales - or requests for donations. In the Middle Ages, artists survived upon the mercy or generosity of rich folk. Then it became the artist, the middle man, the audience. Some musicians, especially folk musicians, were an exception to this. Their tireless touring meant they sold the albums as much as any record company did and probably more.

But the internet has changed everything. The Long Tail (see a post of mine many years ago now) allows creative types to reach out directly to their audience. And who appreciate the audience reaching back.
The first up was this one. Catherynne M. Valente - a writer recommended by Neil Gaiman And Warren Ellis, both on Twitter. Her work sounded like something I'd like to read and I appreciated her practical approach to raising much needed funds. Since her significant other is out of work and she is not making enough to live on, they are in dire straits. So, she is writing a book and publishing a new chapter each week. And asking that if we like it, to pay what we think it is worth.
So I tossed in a donation and look forward to a new installment of the story every week. Shades of Dickens.
At the start, with the interest generated by Gaiman's 600,00 followers I'm sure a lot of people donated. Now, I'm wondering if it has fallen off. And what she, or any of us, can do, to keep interest and donations high.
I can't write. I greatly appreciate those who can. They deserve our support.

I've moved on

I like Blogger. It lets me change my name and change the name of my blog. I had started this as part of an assignment. Once it was over, so, mostly, was the purpose of the blog. I keep another blog as part of other work I do. And that one has a flurry of activity for a few months then sits dormant. It has almost reaches its dormancy period now. So, I think of this long neglected page.

Week 8 YouTubing continued

You Tube is being used by a lot of libraries already. It can heighten the library's profile and send out information in a new way. We don't yet think in a audio/video way very much but I could see some of our more photogenic librarians doing online booktalks.
Or getting people like Nicholas Campbell to not only pose for a poster but do a booktalk.
We can do storytimes online.
Have YAGs create little videos of what the library can offer teens.
Yes, I think there is a lot the library can do with YouTube.

Week 8 YouTubeing

I inadvertently jumped ahead a few weeks ago- I posted a video about The Long Tail. Definately worth seeing. This time I went looking for interesting videos and found one from a PEN Canada/TPL event. Bruce Cockburn is in it, so I knew it would be good.


I also knew that London Public Library had used YouTube for some of the Summer Reading Club this past summer. This is their Week One video.


And finally, although it has nothing to do with libraries, I include a speech by Joss Whedon about why he writes TV shows and movies with strong females characters. It is funny and powerful.

Week 7: Podcasting

I've actually been listing to podcasts for a couple of years now but I have gotten to them by using a downloader - jpodder in this case. I didn't realize that I could use Bloglines.

I subscribed to one I already knew about -Fireflytalk and one I didn't - Library Geeks. The subscribing was not as straightforward as indicated. The URL you get includes Podcast Alley's URL as part of it and so adding the feed doesn't work until you take out the inital URL and leave juts the URL of the actual podcast.

I also don't like that Bloglines does not indicate in my list of feeds which are podcasts, and which are regular websites.
I didn't add any more podcasts because I do already have 4-5 which I listen to regularly.

Week Six Online Office Tools -Google Docs

This started as an exercise in frustration. I could not get it to save. Then it wasn't obvious how to take a look at it as a published document. I closed it and opened it and yet it wouldn't save. I never could upload a picture from the computer. I'll try that later.

Since we have the S drive, I don't know how useful this might be internally. Externally, absolutely, it could be useful.

I haven't explored it enough, but I didn't see any spreadsheet capabilities. So, that isn't really obvious either. Well, it is still beta.

Week Four. Generators. Feel the Power!

This is the results of a mosaic maker from Big Huge Labs. My search term was "library" in Tags.

I also created this one from Big Huge Labs. The image is from Librarian Avengers.