Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Call to Action!
The free flow of information is again being threatened by capitalism. As if librarians don't have enough to worry about from copyright and its ever-expanding legislature, the OCLC (the Online Computer Library Center) is adding to the fire. The OCLC started out as a way for librarians to share information and to ease cataloging woes. Founded by librarians but recently turned over to entrepreneurs, the OCLC is taking advantage of being one of the few companies to provide these services. It boasts a very impressive catalog and has worked to make itself indespensible to libraries all over the country. Now, however, its policy changes are hurting libraries through its ridiculously high search fees and by pressuring libraries into using its services completely. Read more about this at Aaron Swartz' blog at http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/oclcscam and sign the petition if you feel this is wrong. Libraries already work so hard on ever-tightening bugdets to try to provide American citizens the access they deserve to information they need.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Podcast Reflection
I actually finished up my podcast last week but I didn't get around to recording my thoughts about the process. I have to say, I definitely felt empowered when I re-posted my web page with my podcast and it worked- I feel like the techno-savvy queen! So, the first problem that I encountered while trying to get my podcast to work was finding a microphone that functioned. I have a headset of my own with a microphone. It work wonderfully with my original computer- a super-awesome high-performance machine which recently bit the dust thanks to a motherboard failure. I've been meaning to fix it but I haven't had too much time and the little Gateway desktop I have seems to do the job so far as word processing and internet searching goes. So, my headset did not work with the Gateway, a fact that was revealed only after hours of unplugging, re-plugging and failed recordings. I ended up swiping my roommate's USB microphone. Success...sort of.
My next problem was that every recording I did, even when I was practically screaming, was super quiet. It turns out I needed to go into the Control Panel and adjust the output on the microphone. Finally, I was set to go! I recorded my little intro a couple of times before settling on the final one, even though I sound like a dork and the words "Freedom to Read Statement" came out with entirely waaay too much emphasis on the dentals. Sounds like I'm totally angry at the Freedom to Read Statement. Like we're going through couples' counselling together or something. Ah, well.
After this point, everything went well! I picked out some background music that sounds like the beginning of an action sequence in a movie. I did this for a reason. I am trying to engender a more activist feel in my portfolio and I wanted music that was motivating and active but didn't have any vocals. After perusing through freeplaymusic.com's alternative selection, I settled on this one. The first thing I noticed was that the music clip was much louder than my vocal clip. I had to play around with it in Audacity in order to fade it out enough so that it didn't overpower me. My other challenge was moving my vocal clip to the center of the music clip so that there would be a nice musical introduction and end. It took me forever to find the little "move-it" tool but I did. After I played with the crescendo and the decrescendo, I was pretty pleased with the result. Now, to embed it into the web page.
I was glad that I messed around with the template web page because now I'm fearless when it comes to webpage editing. I was careful initially to include the exact same line of code that the sample webpage did in order to make sure my player was embedded in the webpage, eventhough it was held there by a dummy mp3 file. I double-checked it against the web instructions, however, just to make sure I knew all the possible play options. I certainly didn't want my short introduction looping on in the background so I made sure the loop was set to false and then inserted my podcast. I also embedded the podcast onto my original portfolio page, though I'm toying with the idea of creating another podcast with an entirely different tone for my other page, seeing as it is a little more laid back than my template portfolio page. We'll see, I guess. Anyway, I was pleased with the outcome after I re-posted my webpage. I checked it on a couple of computers that I didn't work on, just to make sure the podcast was working for everyone.
I have to say, I can definitely see how much of a tool podcasts are for instruction and information. I never had too much experience with them before but having done one myself, my interest is peaked. You know, I think is vocabulary that isolates people from new technology. I, myself, had heard of a podcast but never thought to figure it out because it sounded so space-agey. If someone had told me it was a way to make audio files available over the internet because they are compressed and downloadable, I probably would have been more open to them. I did a little research into them and found USF's own library podcasts, Library Guy and Library Girl. Wonderful and informative. I also like the supposed mobility of podcasts. It is entirely possible to download them and take them with you. I think it would be so helpful to have instructions you can download and take with you to the library, whether it be research guidance or microfiche instructions. It's another way to empower the patron.
My next problem was that every recording I did, even when I was practically screaming, was super quiet. It turns out I needed to go into the Control Panel and adjust the output on the microphone. Finally, I was set to go! I recorded my little intro a couple of times before settling on the final one, even though I sound like a dork and the words "Freedom to Read Statement" came out with entirely waaay too much emphasis on the dentals. Sounds like I'm totally angry at the Freedom to Read Statement. Like we're going through couples' counselling together or something. Ah, well.
After this point, everything went well! I picked out some background music that sounds like the beginning of an action sequence in a movie. I did this for a reason. I am trying to engender a more activist feel in my portfolio and I wanted music that was motivating and active but didn't have any vocals. After perusing through freeplaymusic.com's alternative selection, I settled on this one. The first thing I noticed was that the music clip was much louder than my vocal clip. I had to play around with it in Audacity in order to fade it out enough so that it didn't overpower me. My other challenge was moving my vocal clip to the center of the music clip so that there would be a nice musical introduction and end. It took me forever to find the little "move-it" tool but I did. After I played with the crescendo and the decrescendo, I was pretty pleased with the result. Now, to embed it into the web page.
I was glad that I messed around with the template web page because now I'm fearless when it comes to webpage editing. I was careful initially to include the exact same line of code that the sample webpage did in order to make sure my player was embedded in the webpage, eventhough it was held there by a dummy mp3 file. I double-checked it against the web instructions, however, just to make sure I knew all the possible play options. I certainly didn't want my short introduction looping on in the background so I made sure the loop was set to false and then inserted my podcast. I also embedded the podcast onto my original portfolio page, though I'm toying with the idea of creating another podcast with an entirely different tone for my other page, seeing as it is a little more laid back than my template portfolio page. We'll see, I guess. Anyway, I was pleased with the outcome after I re-posted my webpage. I checked it on a couple of computers that I didn't work on, just to make sure the podcast was working for everyone.
I have to say, I can definitely see how much of a tool podcasts are for instruction and information. I never had too much experience with them before but having done one myself, my interest is peaked. You know, I think is vocabulary that isolates people from new technology. I, myself, had heard of a podcast but never thought to figure it out because it sounded so space-agey. If someone had told me it was a way to make audio files available over the internet because they are compressed and downloadable, I probably would have been more open to them. I did a little research into them and found USF's own library podcasts, Library Guy and Library Girl. Wonderful and informative. I also like the supposed mobility of podcasts. It is entirely possible to download them and take them with you. I think it would be so helpful to have instructions you can download and take with you to the library, whether it be research guidance or microfiche instructions. It's another way to empower the patron.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Victory!
I finally finished! I revamped my website using the free web page template I downloaded! I couldn't get rid of the original page (I'm proud of it!) so I added a link onto my new homepage to include it. My new web page is located at http://aiuliano.myweb.usf.edu/ and I think it is a little more professional-looking. I have mostly dummy links up until I have completed all my projects but everything else is perfect. I had to mess with the code a bit to get the chipmunk picture to come up and the editing process was time-consuming but I think my efforts paid off and I'm very happy with the outcome! When you design a web page based on a template, you need to include all the components in the folder or else it won't show up on your page. There was a component labelled 'css' and I over-looked it at first because I was using SSH Secure Shell, not CSS but my page kept coming up all funny-looking. Once I added it, even though I don't have the CSS software on my computer, it fixed all the layering problems. I definitely learned a lot about posting a web page! Now for my presentation project...
Addendum
Also, I figured out what I want to do for my presentation project! I'm going to create a power point about how to do research on the Internet. It fits into my library theme and it is also something I might use in the future as a teaching tool, depending on my job. I'm still drawing up the storyboard but I feel like this is a perfect topic and I'm truly excited about it!
Web page wrangling...again
So, I feel like I can't move on until I've figured out how to use a web page template. I downloaded a cute-but-professional-looking page and I'm currently futzing with it in Seamonkey. Actually getting the Seamonkey software to run was an adventure in itself. I don't know if you know this but after you install Seamonkey, if you open the program, it takes you to a web page. You can easily spend hours, clicking on every link on the page, trying to find the editor. Thankfully, there is a super tiny, hard-to-see button at the very corner of the page that kicks it into editor mode. I finally got to where I wanted to be and I loaded up the template. Right now, I'm writing in all my text and trying to re-name links and headings, etc. Though, I notice that when I view the html source, that same line of code that wreaked havoc on my original page when I opened it in Internet Explorer is also on this template. I am hoping its a simple matter of deletion, just like my original page, but I'm nervous because it is a template. And, as easy as Seamonkey makes the editing process, I'd still rather be using Notepad. We'll see. Back to work!
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