When I was asked to be one of the Top Tech Trend experts, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to attend the actual panel session this year, because I was slotted to be on another panel at the same time. I knew I’d at least post something to the LITA Blog, but I wanted it to have the “Meredith flavor.” I assume I was asked to be on the panel to add a somewhat different point of view. I have a different focus than many of the folks already on the panel; probably because I spend at least half my time in the public services realm. My trends don’t mention the OPAC much (and I don’t actually use the word OPAC at all). I also describe some examples, because I always like to see how a trend is starting to actually take shape in libraries and I thought you might too. But I’m also a visual learner. I like to actually see what someone is referring to while they are referring to it. I decided that the best thing to do would be to create a screencast of my trends. So you can either read the script of my screencast, or you can listen to me give the talk while watching the applications I’m discussing.
You can watch a full-screen version (recommended) or you can just watch it on the small embedded player on the LITA Blog. I’d recommend the full-screen version because it’s hard to make out details on the itty bitty embedded player.
I like doing screencasts, because it feels like the closest thing to actually being there. I was so happy to get to listen to a podcast of the TTT panel at Midwinter since I couldn’t make it to the conference. It’s great to make this stuff accessible to folks who can’t attend conferences. It makes me feel good about being a member of LITA. And the Social Software Showcase really makes me happy to be in LITA! (Hey, what’s up with all the alliteration in LITA? Top Tech Trends? Social Software Showcase? I like it!)
I came up with a lot more than four trends, but it would have been an hour-long screencast if I’d kept it up! Besides, I’ve got to save something for Midwinter.
Wow, that was really well done, thanks Meredith! Didn’t catch a single mistake in your narration either 🙂 Know what would be cool? Upload that presentation to Viddler.com and tag the individual trends as “chapters”, but also each of the libraries mentioned as they’re mentioned in the presentation.
Great presentation! Nice organization of trends and interesting examples. Thanks so much for sharing this. Now share with us your secret to finding more than 24 hours in your day. 🙂
Cool presentation, Meredith! I’m going to pass it on to my library manager! ^_^ PS: what tool do you use to take your screenshots/put those yellow boxes around things?
This is a wonderful presentation! I especially like the open source information. I wish all the administrators in my library system could see it.
Hi Timothy. I use Captivate (now from Adobe — used to be Macromedia) to create the screencasts, which has quite a lot of tools for annotating the presentation and creating neat effects. In fact, it can do a whole lot more than what I did in this little screencast. It’s a very fully-featured tool, but it has a pretty hefty price tag to boot. It’s great though for creating online instructional content.
Polly, wow, I wish I had the answer to that! The truth is that I put a lot of things on the backburner (exercise, fun time, laundry, etc.) to work on stuff like this. This is why I’m planning to cut down on the library-related committments and focus a little more on having fun and making sure I can walk from one end of my house to the other without tripping over junk. 😉
Great presentation, and nice to see the shout-out to Champaign Public (the “only” library in Champaign-Urbana, according to my daughter).
More time for fun and all the rest – those are important goals! Clearing up junk on the floor – that’s on my life goal list too. May never get there, but I’ll keep trying. 😉
I loved the screencast. That’s a great idea. What software did you use? I’d like to use something simple to do some library instruction screencasts for our community college students. I’ve tried to download a Mozilla Firefox extension called Linky that does small screencasts, but I’m having no luck getting it to load.
dawn