Proposal: To maintain a current technological impact on the community that the Buena Park library system serves, we believe that designing a video blog would effectively promote library services as well as be an invaluable tool in training and outreach to the community.
Libraries, by many people, are considered antiquated institutions, unable to keep up with the current technological revolutions that are seemingly occurring on a daily basis. This is indeed a sad state of affairs if it were true. While libraries often have a resistance to change, as do many likeminded government agencies, libraries are one of the best institutions suited to adapt to the current technological and informational needs of the public. Computer usage and proliferation have been encouraged by the libraries, since their inception, as new tools to assist in cataloging, and maintaining large archives for the public to be able to use. From Microfiche to the current OPAC system, libraries have attempted to maintain up to date ways of information maintenance and retrieval. The current trend in information storage and retrieval is the World Wide Web. This vast collection of pages stores numerous amounts of information on any subject imaginable. The proliferation of this resource to meet the need of almost anyone in the general public has meant that anyone who does not currently utilize the internet has or will become hopelessly behind in this new "Information Age." It is with this view of the current state of affairs that we recommend development of a video blog.
Successful Implementations of the Technology
A well maintained video blog reaches out to vast amounts of people, extending the scope and reach of everything an operation does. There are many well maintained, successful video blogs. Here are but a few of them:
MedLibrary.org - http://medlibrary.org/medwiki/Video_clip
This site uses video clips to be able to talk about services that they provide as well as up to date information about all things medicinal. This particular article discusses the use of video blogs for libraries and how video blogging is becoming a very popular means of communicating to a mass audience.
CNN Money.com - http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/05/01/8375939/
This article talks about the proliferation of videoblogs in today's society. There has been an exponential increase in the technology with the posting of videos since the recent Iphone boom. As the popularity of these blogs has increased there is now a market for such blogs on the net. One such company and their blog, Rocketboom, was able to generate a 40,000 dollar ad buy from people looking to put ads onto these sights. If advertisers see the possibilities of this medium and are willing to invest money in it, one would think the library should at least consider the possibility of using it.
Quilt Block Library Video Blog - http://www.quiltblocklibrary.tv/
This is a website/blog that it totally dedicated to designing quilts. As our interest is designing a blog where the primary method of communicating information is through videos, this blog succeeds in just that fashion. It informs, similarly to the way we view our tutorials page about library usage will inform, about how to do basic things with quilting. It does this instruction primarily through video feeds.
Otis Library - Maberry, S. (2009). Archiving 2.0: Problems, Possibilities, and the Expanding Role of Librarians. Art Documentation, 28(1), 40-3.
The Otis Library has been able to develop a video blogging system of a sort, being able to create video for the professors for their classes and being able to post them to a blog. The upside is the advent of this technology has enabled professors to more easily and cheaply produce videos that they can use for multiple classes. The downside of this technology is that it presented a problem when it came to actually archiving and cataloging the feeds that it created. I believe this may not be as large of a problem for us as our tutorial will be limited to services that the library provides. However, at some point there might be an archive problem with past tutorials as things change in the library. Hopefully, a good way can be developed down the road to successfully archive and retrieve the information that is generated.
The Wine Library Video Blog - http://tv.winelibrary.com/
These blogs on this site are developed to be able to give the users a lot of information about all things about wine, from tasting to different types of wines and vineyards. This is an effective method of instruction, however it may have something to be desired in the trying to organize the blog. It does divide up the blog by creating a listing of wines used in each episode but does not have any other method of categorization. I suppose that this may be all one needs for wine. The real question is whether, as with the Quilt Library blog, does blogging lend itself to be best categorized when there is a limited amount of subjects that can be discussed, as opposed to the library which has a much wider variety of information to store.
Rationale
While many of the video blogs developed on the net consist of operations whose only responsibility is to maintain contact with the public through their blog, the library is a pre-existing entity with responsibilities to the tangible public that they serve. Furthermore, these public libraries also have problems, in this economic state, with shrinking budgets and minimal staff to deal with their day to day responsibilities. Despite these facts, a library who is not able to maintain an effective presence on the Information Superhighway, may end up becoming the antiquated institution everyone fears that they are. If such a popular notion takes hold in the general public about the library, it may become defunded altogether, making libraries antiquated, and out of business. The technology then should not be a matter of whether, but a matter of when and how.
Aside from the obvious reasons for maintaining a presence on the Internet the Buena Park Library has many specific reasons for publishing a video blog as well. Our library has a limited capacity to be able to publicize things to the community at large. Frequently, items are publicized in the library but no one in the community actually knows about them. A recent Oprah episode commented about the fact that the library was a place to rent DVD’s for free, and the audience was surprised to find that out. We believe our library needs to have a better more modern way of outreach to the community. Furthermore, there is great utility in the use of a video blog. We feel that creating video links instructing patrons how to use library technology and services would be a more efficient way of having people access information about the library, alleviating pressure off of already overworked staff. This information would be stored and archived on the blogs server, making it always available and ready for whenever someone needed it.
Library Implementation
This need to be modern as well as the utility of the application makes video blogging something well worth its time and effort. In this vein we recommend the following for implementation of a video blogging site:
Technology: We propose to develop the blog pages in-house on the library’s web development server. The pages will be coded in HTML and we will integrate video content via YouTube.com’s embedding source code. Our proposed areas include the following: the teen spot; the adult book club; tutorials; and the children's corner. We would like to use screencast and other video technology through webcam and other means to record video segments to be able to train others as well as publicize certain events that the library has in any situation. We plan to use and open-source screen capturing solutions, such as Screentoaster, in addition to content recorded with more traditional hand held devices.
The Service: We are attempting to create a blog to promote the services in the library. The blog will be divided into sections to publicize things in the library separately. We decided to cover three specific parts of the library, which includes separate spaces for the adult, teen and children section. We did add a fourth section of the blog site, which will include tutorials. These tutorials will include things about learning library services.
Maintenance, Policy, and training: The maintenance of the website will be done by having one staff member develop the blog and the four areas the blog went into. The Children's Librarian, the Adult Librarian and the Teen Librarian would be responsible for developing videos that publicized their various programs in their sections. Tutorials would be developed through staff cooperation. The person in charge of the website maintenance will upload the feeds and edit the introductions to the videos on the screen.
Concerning policy about the site, it will be managed by the one employee responsible for putting information on the site. The Branch manager will be ultimately responsible for monitoring whatever information is put on the site and see that it conforms to existing Social Networking policy. Blogs will be monitored twice a day and any inappropriate comment added to the blog will be deleted at that time. There will be a link to appropriate methods for posting on the blog so that everyone will know what the library considers an acceptable use of commentary is. This will be monitored for a few months and evaluated to determine whether or not the ability to comment is being overly abused. If it is, the ability to comment on the blog postings will be eliminated.
With training on the website, there should be at least three people who are able to operate and upload things onto the website, in case two people are unable to be there for any apparent reason. Each person should spend a few hours on the website, and receive some light training in html, and understand what HTML and CSS are, and how they interoperate. Thankfully the website itself does not require a great deal of understanding in its programming so it will be more a matter of style than actual substance to the site. A person should also learn how to operate Screentoaster, which is an online service for creating videos while recording your screen. The blogs themselves are easy to operate so it should not be a large learning curve to operate the system.
Assessment: We will review everything at the end of a three month trial period. Provided there seems to be an "acceptable" amount of usage of the blog space (acceptable meaning at least 100 visits per month), the blog will continue being made. The blog will then be re-evaluated at the end of 6 months to see that the visits to the webpage continue and the appropriate use of the blog space and commenting are maintained. Provided that the blog maintains an "acceptable" or better use of the blog, the blog will be re-evaluated every six months for blog usage and evaluation of what things seem to be working and what things seem to be failing.
Possible Hurdles
We believe that the implementation of the video blog for the Buena Park Library or some other similar project is necessary. Despite the ease of the software technology and training to use it, there are some considerations about the technology that one must consider before initiating such a project. We believe the primary roadblock to such an undertaking is staff motivation. To be able to maintain a blog, there must be consistent use and monitoring of the site. Librarians and staff frequently have many different things on their plate that they need to accomplish. Things that staff deem to have a lower priority frequently gets put off, never being accomplished at all. To operate a blog, considering its need to be constantly updated, staff must believe that it is a vital part of a library’s operations. We believe the best way to maintain such an interest is to be able to develop and maintain a feedback system. Promotions of the blog via brochures at the library and posters need to be put up. There should be positive and negative feedback posted about the blog through the comments that people make to the blog on the site. Every month there should be several comments posted in the library, letting the staff know that not only is the system being used, but there are ways for refinement.
While staff motivation is the primary reason such a project can be derailed, there are other issues with the technology as well. While we plan to develop the blog pages in-house, the possibility may arise that this approach may prove to be too time consuming too continue. If this turns out to be true, we plan to use the blogging platform Wordpress as an alternative. Wordpress is one of the most highly used blogging platforms, and it is used by well-known and intellectually varied bloggers such as Perez Hilton or Michelle Malkin. While we may not be tied to the use of either in-house developed pages or Wordpress, there should be a discussion about library needs and what best suits the library, so that everyone understands why the Buena Park Library system is using a particular software solution. Balancing cost, man hours and ease of use will weigh critically on which solution the library ultimately decides to choose.
Finally Video Blogs using other people's blog technology creates an archival issue. As the library does not have access to the archives it does not control much of the information that it stores. Once it is uploaded it is left there without a sufficient means of archiving the information. While this may be a problem it is somewhat overblown as most blogs create date stamps. It is an archival method of its own. And as most information in promotion will be time sensitive, it may not be necessary to create a cataloging system of information. However, since the training section of the site will not be a time sensitive issue, but an information issue, there must be some way of organizing the information to retrieve that is not alphabetical. All of this could be eliminated if we were generating our own website, but this would create a time issue of its own. We recommend maintaining a copy of the videos on file at the library, organizing the training videos with some categorical scheme, either Library of Congress, or Dewey decimal. This is somewhat impractical and confusing on a website however.
Conclusion
The library cannot and must not become an entity of the past, holding on to previous ideas of acceptable information sources, and limiting its resources and time and energy to those things that are tangible. While books may not become a thing of the past, one has to consider all of the ways "books" may now be read. Likewise, promotion cannot be limited to posters and some bookmarks on the counter. The library must consider other promotional methods. We believe that the Video Blog for the Buena Park Library will fill both those concerns. It will move us in a forward looking direction, both technologically and promotionally. For the Library, both the past, and the future should all exist in the now.
The Technology Prototype URL: http://buenapark.lib.ca.us/development/layout.html
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