Elizabeth B. Thomsen

This video shows several different celebrities speaking out in support of the New York Public Library. They reminisce about their childhood library visits and the role the library played in their lives, and talk about why libraries are essential to building strong communities.

I found Malcolm Gladwell’s words particularly moving: “My last book ‘Outliers’ describes success in terms of opportunities, and one of those opportunities is a library…Whenever I hear the words that libraries are being cut back, I feel like people’s lives are being cut back in a very real way.”

Most of us don’t have access to celebrities like Barbara Walters, Nora Ephron, Amy Tan and Bette Midler, but any library could make a similar video featuring local celebrities and members of your own community who could be equally eloquent and effective in delivering the message.

Wordle is a popular online tool for making word clouds based on almost any kind of text. It’s easy to use, and there are lots of options for colors, font and layout. There’s a reason that Wordle won this year’s Webby Award in the Typography category!
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Embedding content from sites like Google Maps, YouTube, Hulu and Slideshare has become a popular way to enhance posts and pages. Embedding gives your readers direct access to recommended content rather than just providing them with a link to follow. Now we can provide that kind of direct access to books from the Internet Archive, a site which has an amazing collection of public domain books on nearly any topic, scanned from participating library partners and other sources.

See the example below, the 1880 Visitors’ Guide to Salem. Readers can use the up and down arrows on the right to flip through the pages, click on the plus and minus signs to zoom in or out, click on the title to go to the book in the Internet Archive for more information and download options, or click on the Internet Archive logo to go to the main page of the Internet Archive site.

Embedding the book in your page is as easy as 1-2-3:

1. From the book’s page on the Internet Archive site, click on the link to Read Online.

2. Click on the embed icon on the top of the page. It looks like this: < >.

3. A box will pop-up with the code you need to copy and paste into your page.

Libraries have traditionally dealt mostly with two-dimensional objects: books, maps and pictures and other objects that are inherently flat. But the world is not composed of two-dimensional objects, and computer technology now makes it easy to present information in 3D so the user can explore different angles and viewpoints. 3D systems are important now in all kinds of geographical work, including meteorology and ecology; in community planning, architecture and design; in forensics, medicine and science and many other fields of study.

Young people typically get their first experiences working with 3D systems in the world of gaming, but there are now powerful, simple, free programs that allow users to explore 3D information in the real world, including Google Earth, which is a 3D mapping program, and SketchUp, with can be used to create models of buildings and much more.

Google Maps

Although Google Maps is not a three-dimensional program, but it is an interactive, highly mixable application that allows many different types of data to be presented geographically. It also has one very important 3D function — it gives you an easy way to create files that can be read in the 3D Google Earth program.

• New York City Photo Map — Historic photographs from Shorpy, the popular history blog
• Diners of Massachusetts — An example of a map in progress

Google Earth

Google Earth is a free software program that you download to your PC. It’s normally used online, and is the best-known example of a virtual globe program. It’s an interactive, three-dimensional geographic program. Anyone can create and share files in the Google Earth format (KMZ) — one way to do this is through Google Maps. Google Earth files are collections of placepoints or markers. These markers can include text, images, links, etc. Additional content is added to Google Earth through layers, which can include travel information, news, images, YouTube videos, historic maps, environmental data, and anything else that has been or can be geocoded.

Google Earth Links

• Google Earth — Download the software, learn how to use it, visit the gallery
• Google Earth AIA Layer — Frank Taylor’s demo of the Google Earth AIA layer
• AIA Google Earth Demo — Program with interviews and demonstrations about the AIA Google Earth project
• Google Earth Blog — The official blog
• Google Earth Blog — Frank Taylor’s unofficial Google Earth blog
• Ogle Earth — A blog devoted to Google Earth and other Virtual Globes

Google Earth Community

• Phillis Wheatley : Slave, Poet, American — LuciaM’s Google Earth file combines history, literature and biography
• On the Road with Jack Kerouac — Another biographical and literary Google tour; this one is by Dorseyland

SketchUp

SketchUp is a separate free program that can be downloaded from Google. It’s used to make 3D models of all kinds, including photorealistic models of real buildings that can be placed on Google Earth. SketchUp can also be used for any other type of 3D models, including household objects, people, animals and imaginary creatures, etc. SketchUp is a simple, versatile and extremely powerful 3D program that can be extended through the use of plugins. The SketchyPhysics plugin, for example, lets users create moving models that obey the laws of physics.

Google has created a lot of interesting content, including models of the American Institute of Architects 150 favorite works. Members of the Google community also contribute individual models and whole collections to the Google 3D Warehouse. These shared models are a great learning tool and are one of the reasons SketchUp has been so successful.

How to Make a Simple House — A very helpful, basic demonstration by a young user — great for beginners!

• Google SketchUp — Download the free software, find videos and other training material, resources for teachers, the 3D Warehouse and more
• Official Google SketchUp Blog — Information and tips
• SketchUp for Dummies videos — Aidan Chopra’s video examples to go with his book, “SketchUp for Dummies”
• SketchyPhysics Examples — A showcase of some interesting models created with the SketchyPhysics plugin
• Project Spectrum — Google teamed with parents, teachers and kids on the autistic spectrum to do some interesting projects using SketchUp. The video here shows how kids used SketchUp to design their dream houses, and the manual of lesson plans has some great ideas for using SketchUp across the curriculum. (Most of these ideas could be adapted for working with any group of kids.)

Old School: Paper Models

• Pinhole Cameras — Folded paper cameras
• Download, print, fold, paste

3D Replicators

• Real Life Replicators — Highlights some of the 3D replicating devices available today
• Printing Ball Bearings — Demo showing a Zcorp printer
• Shapeways — Upload a 3D file and order a model; use Creator tools to make some simple projects using a wizard
• ThingLab Zprinter 3D Printer — A business-class printer [See it on YouTube]

The Novel World of Digital Storytelling
Wednesday, May 6, 2009, 4:00 – 5:15 PM
Massachusetts Library Association Annual Conference
Springfield, Massachusetts

Program Description : The digital world is a literary playground. Japanese schoolgirls tap out stories on their cell phones and end up on the bestseller list; blog novels become the new serial fiction; fictional universes cross the boundaries of media and jump from canon to fan fiction; Machinima turns gaming into digital puppetry, and new fictional forms emerge on every social media site including Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, as the digital and literary worlds collide.

Fan Fiction

Fan fiction isn’t really new — its roots go back to folk literature and the oral tradition. The web has just made it much easier for people to form flourishing participatory communities of interest to share their work.

“Scarcely had Arthur Conan Doyle begun publishing his tales of the deductive detective when an avid fan base sprang up, the first of a new breed of followers. These early Sherlockians weren’t content simply to read the books. They wanted to enter the world Conan Doyle had created, puppeteer his characters, and design their own mysteries for Holmes to solve…They wrote stories. Lots of them.” [Scott Brown]

“Contemporary Web culture is the traditional folk process working at lightning speed on a global scale. The difference is that our core myths now belong to corporations, rather than the folk.” [Henry Jenkins]

• Twilighted — Fan fiction site devoted to the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer.
• FanFiction.net — General fan fiction site for hundreds of different books, movies, television programs and more.
• SVU: “AU. Olivia dies. Elliot cries.” — This is a YouTube FanFiction alternate universe video for Law and Order SVU

From Blog to Book

Blogging can give writers a way to get more experience and attract a following, and may lead to a published book.

• Mom’s Cancer — In 2004, Brian Fies began writing a web comic about his mother’s battle against lung cancer. “Mom’s Cancer” won the 2005 Eisner Award for the Best Digital Comic, and in 2006 the comic was released as a book by Abrams.
• Anonymous Lawyer: From Blog to Book — In 2004, Jeremy Blachman, a third-year Harvard Law School student, began writing a blog in the voice of a senior partner at prestigious law firm. The blog became so popular that it became the basis for Blachman’s first novel.

Extending a Book

Here are a few ways that authors and others are using social networking tools to promote a book or present it in a different way.

• Websites for book characters is a marketing ploy too far — Linda Jones writes about Steffi McBride and other fictional characters on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Samuel Pepys Diary — The famous diary from the 1600s posted as a blog

Brevity is Wit

Twitter, texting and other communications technologies can be used as a creative medium for individual or collaborative work.

• I ♥ Novels: Young women develop a genre for the cellular age — Young Japanese women started writing stories on their cellphones and posting them online, some of which eventually became print bestsellers.
• Six Word Memoirs at Smith Magazine — The basis for the book “”Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure.”
• Six Word Stories — Flickr group for picture stories
• Protagonize — A collaborative writing website, with tools to write “addventures” or branching stories like the old “Choose Your Own Adventure” books
• How to Start a Twitter Novel — Writing a novel 140 characters at a time

Machinima

• What is Machinima? — A machinima film introducing the basic concepts of making machinima using the variety of settings and resources in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas
• Jabberwocky — A machinima version of Lewis Carroll’s poem made in Second Life

Oral History

• Depression Memories on Video — My blog post about two projects to capture personal stories of life in the Great Depression : The New Hard Times from the New York Times, and Depression Cooking with Clara on YouTube

In Conclusion…

“I know only one thing about the technologies that await us in the future: We will find ways to tell stories with them.” — Jason Ohler

It’s spring! Birds are singing, trees are blossoming and flowers are blooming. It’s a good time to take the camera outside and take some pictures of your library in all its spring loveliness to put on your library’s website or post on Flickr or Facebook.

Sometimes we’re so focused on taking pictures inside the library, showing our services, displays and programs, and we don’t think about stepping outside to take pictures of the library building and grounds. But these outdoor shots show the library as members or our community experience the library every day as they walk by, drive by or come for a visit. And if your photographs showcase trees and plants, be sure to identify them in your title or description — consider it preventative reference!

These seasonal pictures are nice additions to Flickr groups. Many libraries add their pictures to library groups, like Libraries and Librarians That’s great, but pictures there will mostly be seen by other librarians. Consider also posting them in regional and local groups, like Boston and Surrounding ‘Burbs or North Shore, Massachusetts. There are also groups for many individual cities and towns. Adding your library photos to these groups helps them be seen by members of your own community — just another way to remind them we’re here!