Old idea helping solve new problem.

As a librarian I am always watching to see what’s new in the field or related fields, and being a normal every day human I missed the start something interesting (at least to me). In 2017 the Community Standards for 3D Data Preservation was formed. Now being a amateur 3D artist, an absolute fan of the medium, and a librarian discovering this group intrigued me. I had to stop and think about it…3D data has been around a long time now and I think this is the first time I have heard of anyone working to preserve the data. I know I did a post in the past about preserving defunct MMO games. (Copyright Office for Free Video Games), but this is an entirely different approach. These folks are preserving the 3D data itself regardless of the origin. Say a archeologist 3D scans a artifact, uses the model in their research, and then simply stores it in a file for future use or just forgets they have it after years go by. These folks are working to save such 3D digital models from the jaws of digital death, and provide a set of standards for keeping the models accessible to all in the future. Part archivist part 3D digital programmer part data salvager is quite the job description. Maybe some day we can tour a 3D / VR / AR digital museum full of the data they help to preserve. I know I would go – how about you?

P.S. New additions to the Free Stuff page: Indigenous Digital Archive: Treaties Explorer, LibriVox, Victorian Serial Novels.

Things to Do at Home

More great lists of things to do from your friendly neighborhood librarians.

• Carver Memorial Library – At Home
• Brown-Daniel Library – Tennessee State University – Covid-19: Things to Do While Practicing Social Distancing
• Waterville Public Library – Guide to Online Resources 
• Association of College & Research Libraries – Pandemic Resources for Academic Libraries
• American Library Association – Graphic Novel & Comics Round Table – Guide to Reading Library Comics at Home

Be well and safe…and enjoy the resources that are at your fingertips.

 

The Most Bang For Your Digital Movie $

I recently purchased a Blu-ray bundle of movies and they came with a free digital edition.  Free is always good right?  Well this digital movie source was not your typical VUDU or Movies Anywhere options for download…this one sent me to Spree Movies.  I was quite surprised to see this site as all I could think of is the one dollar and five dollar bins at Walmart and the DVD movies and bundles you tend to find there.  If your looking to stretch your digital entertainment dollars Spree Movies is an interesting option.  As long as you don’t mind movie classics like Ultraman, Benji, and Gammera the Invincible your in the right place.  There are even cartoon series for kids too.  So in these tough economic times I thought I would share a way to get a lot of movies for very little cash.

Get out the popcorn & enjoy

Feel free to post your interesting finds, or other useful $ saving sites.

 

A Long & Long overdue library post

(Fines paid via sharing this information in lieu of $$)

Most of us are probably working from home right now given the rapid spread of Covid-19 around the world.  Since online communication is now a lifeline for everyone; in this post I will highlight all the amazing resources that have been flying past my inbox for a while and hopefully you will find them useful.

Are you a librarian with a great idea that you just want to share with the world then IFLA Global Vision Ideas Store is the place for you and your wonderful idea.  Not only can you post and share you great idea you can peruse all the other ideas that have been submitted.  This is a great site when you are seeking inspiration or just want to stay up to date on trends in the library world.

This bit proves how overdue this post is.  In September 2019 Fast Company posted an article about the New York Public Library releasing full text novels on Instagram.  Now that is an amazing idea in my book (pun intended) seriously it allows those with different learning styles to read books that may be otherwise very difficult for them to get through.  A great merging of old and new technologies, and currently a great way to read a great book without having to interact face to face with folks.

If you have not already thrown your support behind the Digital Equity Act now would definitely be a great time to do so.  Staying connected in times like these is crucial for our mental health.  This virus will not only test our physical, mental, and economic health it is also pushing our internet connections to their limits.  The Digital Equity Act is designed to help fill in the digital divide in the U.S. and allow those stuck on the other side of the divide (with no internet or computer) to have access to the same resources the those with internet and computers enjoy daily.

Since many of us are now connected online in more ways then ever before security certainly becomes a concern.  Turns out all our little voice assistants have more ways to take orders than we thought after reading this article I think I will be moving mine away from any windows…just in case.  Who knew you could use a laser to give Alexa or Google commands?

Looking to continue your Library education while working from home?  You can head on over to the RDMLA (Research Data Management Library Academy) and take their free course.  “The Research Data Management Librarian Academy (RDMLA) is a free online professional development program for librarians, information professionals, or other professionals who work in a research-intensive environment throughout the world.” (quote from site) Never hurts to learn new things.

Is your furry four-legged home office mate suffering from screen glare / bad posture / horrible mouse use habits well they are not alone.  Turns out UX professionals are working hard to keep our canine and feline friends happy and healthy with new innovations in user experience.  Worth reading to provoke interesting ideas or just for a laugh…you can decide.

Below are a ton of great resources (in no particular order) from all over the world now made available free (some only temporarily) due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

• Get Free Resources for Remote Learning with CBLDF (Comic Book Legal Defense Fund)
• Best Android Apps for DRM Free Audiobooks (from Bookriot)
• Open Education Resources: Courses from the former Boundless – now hosted by Lumen
• Topsham Public Libraries stay at home MEGA List
• Screen Actors Guild: Storytime reads – Actors reading books for kids.
• National Digital Equity Center: Free online tutoring – Thanks to my friends in MELIBS
• KIRKUS goes free! – Thanks to my friend Marcela – Director of Lewiston Public Library
• 70+ things to do with your kids – from Jay Marks – again discovered thanks to MELIBS folks.
• Bailey at Home: Virtual Field Trips – From my friend Richard at Bailey Public Library
• Junior Library Guild – Home: Reading Resources – More from MELIBS
• Wonderopolis – More MELIBS finds– our Maine librarians really pull together when needed.

To all:  Take care, remember your social distancing, and never forget that we are all in this together.  We may not be able to physically each other at this moment in history, but we can stay in touch in a thousand other ways.

PS… If you want to see me virtually I am manning the CMCC Learning Commons Zoom meetings from 12:30 – 4:30 Monday – Thursday…drop on and say Hi.

 

Tons of new free e-books hit the web.

Yes the title of this post is a bit to much like click bait for my tastes but none the less it is true.  A article from Vice recently highlighted the work being done by the New York Public Library to provide access to Millions of books thanks to a quirk of copyright law.  feel free to read the article for more info.  What this means for us is we have access to a lot more free e-books via the NYPL and Hathi Trust.

As if Millions of e-books being added online for easy access via NYPL wasn’t enough a recent bit of news highlighted on Bookriot shows that the Vatican libraries digitization project is moving along brilliantly.  All their hard work is freely available over at Digivatlib, and yes it stands for the Digital Vatican Library.

It always makes me happy when I can help people find the information they are looking for easily and for free (free usually makes them happy too).  So a hearty thank you and congratulations to all the folks out there who have worked so hard to share these resources with the world.

P.S.  My free stuff page does now included all the free e-book resources mentioned here, and many more.

Staffless Bookstores & Open Research Libraries

The future of books has been changing for a while now, and there are no signs of it slowing down any time soon.  Audio-books, e-books, play-a-ways, read a longs, to say the format of the story is changing is an understatement.  Now it appears that in China the techniques of selling books is also changing.  According to an article by Stéphanie Michaux over at the Bookseller more than 20 staffless bookstores have opened in China.  These stores even have robots to offer suggestions to readers.  Apparently more and more Chinese citizens are taking to ordering the books online via WeChat so naturally someone decided to carry this style experience into the real world.

I find this both fascinating and terrifying.  If readers are relying on online store reviews and retailers to help inform their reading choices then the entire system is going to make a drastic shift into the realm of being popularity contest driven instead of balanced and (usually) well informed professional reviewer driven.  This could, to steal a term from online searching, shadow block lesser known and new authors from having their books seen let alone purchased.  I can only hope that there are some people out there willing to put some humans behind some of those automated robot answers instead of solely relying on search algorithms.

Speaking of putting some humans behind some technologically created problems the folks over at Knowledge Unlatched recently (May 2019) released a beta version for a, for lack of a better term, open content aggregator search site.  They call it Open Research Library  (yes there is also a link on my free stuff page) and it is in my opinion amazingly useful.  Their is a great article on this over at No Shelf Required that explains the whole project way better than I can so feel free to go read it for more details.  For my two cents on the topic I would love to see as many open access information libraries and websites  link into this project as possible…it would considerably shorten my free stuff page.

Would love to hear your thoughts on where books, publishing, and book selling are heading.  Maybe together we can work out a path for providing a great user experience for all this.

 

 

Image is everything…when searching.

Ever have a picture and you just can’t remember where you got it, or who’s (or what’s) in it?  Well the internet can actually search more than just words. I know you’re saying I know I look for videos, music, and pictures all the time…but I am willing to bet you use words to do that.  Here are a few helpful tips on how to search using pictures instead.

The great and powerful Google has a built in search by “Images” (image is the magic word to remember) feature even if it is kind of small and out of the way on the Google search screen.

Once you’ve clicked on the “Images” link in Google you will get a slightly different search box.  This one will contain a tiny little camera just before the microphone.

Clicking on the little camera will give you the option to paste in the URL (aka: web address) for a picture you found online that you want to look up more info on, or find similar pictures.  You can also upload a picture from your computer (or the device of your choice) and search using that.

You’ll get a Google worthy “Best Guess” at picture identification, and a link to search for visually similar Images.  So this is cool bit of web search magic that can come in handy.

There is also a site called TinEye that has a very handy How To page right below the search box.  Tin eye allows you to search using a picture and see what websites may be using it online.  This is very helpful for artists keeping track of their digital work, and finding those who may be copying it without permission.

On a related note for those wanting to know which pictures shown in search results can be used freely (without violating copyright laws) Google has a feature for that on their standard search results page.

After you have done your keyword search knowing you wanted pictures, and have hit the “Images” (yes still the magic word) link option, just below the search bar on the right will be a “Tools” button (#1 in above image), this will bring up a ton of options to filter the search results by.  We are focusing on “Usage Rights” for this post so you can click on that option (#2 in above image).  Once you do this you will see a bunch of different options you can choose from.  The default “Not Filtered by License” is not a safe to use option.  I tend to choose either “Labeled for reuse” or “Labeled for reuse with modification”, (#3 in the above image), and yes both of those mean what they say…you can reuse…or modify (aka: edit) and reuse the pictures freely.

There are a lot of image search options online the above are just some of the more useful ones I have found (or read about).  Feel free to comment with your favorites.

Library Tools and Game Accessibility

Librarians are always looking for more resources to make their job easier, or update their skills.  The Library Toolshed is a very useful resources for just such endeavors.  Created and hosted by our friendly neighboring Canadian librarians the library toolshed has tons of useful presentations, programs, and training resources for librarians to discover.  All of the resources you find in the toolshed are also created under the Creative Commons licence so feel free to do what you like with them.  I’d love to see an American / Canadian (possibly global) team up for this site eventually so we can all add to the tools in the shed.

On a only partial side note… video games and libraries are becoming more and more commonly linked together.  With library game nights, nights of code … making video games… and all sorts of other library events I think it’s time we paid a little attention to a problem most gamers don’t think about much, but we as librarians should.  Video game accessibility is a major issue for anyone with physical or mental disabilities, and thankfully our friends over at the Library of Congress’s National Library Service dept. have made a amazing list of resources to assist us all in enjoying some game time.

The NLS Reference Guide for Video Game Accessibility
“Playing video games can boost creativity, improve problem-solving skills, and cultivate teamwork. People with disabilities, however, have limited opportunities to enjoy video games. People with visual disabilities may not be able to participate in highly graphic games; people with mobility disabilities may not be able to use a standard game controller.

Still, many resources are available for gamers with disabilities. Individuals and organizations have taken up the challenge of adapting or modifying controllers for people with disabilities. Computer programmers have developed audio games (or audio adaptations of games) that can be played by people who are blind or visually impaired. In addition, there are video game experts who publish accessibility reviews of new games.” (quote from site)

Hopefully now all you librarians out there will have some great tools to assist you in your work.  Possibly even making a video game night for the disabled…I think I should go talk to someone about that idea now myself.

 

Expanding Educational Opportunities & Browser Functionality.

This is a two part post because some times you discover too many good things in one day and you just have to share it all at once.

First: From the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Public Libraries are Reinventing Access to Higher Education.

Public libraries have always been big on giving everyone equal access to educational materials (it’s one of our main reasons for being), and now the Brooklyn Public Library & and Bard College are taking things one large step forward.  Bard & Brooklyn are working on providing accredited college courses to disadvantaged peoples through services offered at the public library and managed by the college.  This (in my opinion) is an astounding first step to giving everyone equal access to higher education.

Imagine if every public library in the country offered free college credit classes, or testing (via services like CLEP) to the general public.  This would make another route  for anyone to earn a college degree, aside from traditional colleges and their associated ever growing costs, thus improving their chances of finding a great job.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve helped people try to continue their education because they are stuck in a job with no advancement options all because they don’t have a college degree which would allow for promotion.  Even when these individuals have more than enough years experience doing everything the job they are applying for requires…no degree…no job is all they hear.  It finally looks like some forward thinking folks at Brooklyn Public Library& Bard College found the right door to open for these people, and I can only hope it catches on everywhere.

Second: Google Chrome Browser has a Library Extension…who knew, and why am I only finding out now!

Turns out some fine bookrioters knew and shared their discovery with their online readers.  Here’s what the Library Extension does in Chrome: Say your looking for a book on amazon, but your running a bit short on cash, the library extension rescues you by showing you if your local library has a copy running around for checkout.  The extension works with more than just amazon too.

“Currently Supported Sites:
* Amazon (amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.de)
* AR BookFinder (arbookfind.com)
* Barnes and Noble (barnesandnoble.com)
* BookDepository (bookdepository.com)
* Chapters/Indigo (chapters.indigo.ca)
* Good Reads (goodreads.com)
* Google Books (books.google.com, books.google.co.uk)
* LibraryThing (librarything.com)” (quote from extension download info)

So anywhere you might go looking to find your next read is now linked to your local public library (or libraries if you use more than one).  A nice handy feature for avid readers and library users.  You can even set the extension to search for books, e-books, or both…which is handy for those of us who care more about stories than format.

Now go find your next great read and enjoy.

 

Copyright Office For Free Video Games??

An online news article posted on Digital Trends recently got my attention.  Apparently the U.S. Copyright office is considering adding a new exemption to U.S. copyright law.  Exemptions are where we librarians live so needless to say we try to pay attention to new additions; because maybe we can offer new services or products to our patrons.  This new consideration got my attention for another reason too because it’s all about abandoned MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) games.

In other words all those virtual games where whole countries of people spent countless hours living out their fantastical adventures.  I personally always wondered what happened to all those virtual worlds (or universes) when the companies decided to no longer support their games. As it turns out not much does.  They just sort of suffer digital stasis as their servers are unplugged and stored away, or possibly even (horror of horrors) get deleted—Digital Apocalypse.  Now we find out that maybe, just maybe, we can start walking those worlds again for free.

If the copyright office adds abandoned video games…video games no longer supported by their creators…to their list of exemptions that would mean that anyone anywhere could play them online for free (or possibly a small donation to their virtual server maintenance fund).  For most folks this will only add to their recreational time online playing retro video games.  To libraries it means a whole new world, or worlds, of possibilities.  From free video games nights for all ages to history of video game classes with playable examples.

As a librarian I am hoping that the copyright office adds these exemptions to their lists, and that the companies that own the games are willing to comply (as they are no longer making profit on unused games).  As a gamer I am looking forward to cruising around my favorite virtual worlds again, and I’m sure my virtual neighbors in Star Wars Galaxies (one such abandoned game) will be happy to see me again.

…or maybe not.

*fingers crossed*