Sunday, September 30, 2012

Patrick Rothfuss and The story board

Patrick Rothfuss, author of The wise man's fear and The name of the wind, has started a Geek and sundry series of videos called The story board.  In these videos Patrick Rothfuss talks with leading writers about some really interesting ideas.  These videos would be great for people to use for readers advisory professional development.

The authors are key writers in different (mostly fantasy based) genres, talking about writing. They also seem to be having a lot of fun. It is also a way of demonstrating what can be done with a Google hangout. Enjoy.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

branch discussions about librarians around the city

I found out about branch thanks to Justin Hoenke. There seems some great potential with this as a discussion tool. I will have to play around with it a bit, but am excited by the possibilities it presents for (lightly) structured public discussion. Have a look at this discussion about librarians around the city.

Friday, September 14, 2012

#learn12 : links for my presentation for Learning for all conference


The following links are for my presentation for Learning for all.  I would suggest reading my paper as well (once it is published).

Statistics on video game use in Australia 

Board games
Library games
Changing thinking about games
Science games
Museum games
Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing ideas to consider including in education programs
Ice cased Adelie penguins after a blizzard at Cape Denison / photograph by Frank Hurley  
and for some more ideas about libraries and games see my paper Playing with readers Information Online, January 2011 

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Someone removed my metadata before reusing some photographs

I know this sounds weird, but someone stripped the metadata from some images I have on Flickr and reused without any acknowledgement on their blog, which was then pinned on Pinterest.  I am reluctant to give the blog which did this more traffic, but looking at it makes the point.

I have been thinking about this for a few days, just on and off.  They created more work for themselves because they removed the metadata.  The real artists are the architects and designers who created the TU Delft Architecture Library, and they don't rate a mention in the blog post either.  The name of the library is not even mentioned.

The same image had made its way to Pinterest already

Source: flickr.com via Ann on Pinterest

along with several others which people had pinned from my Flickr account. I make my photographs available with Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, share alike licence, so they are easy for other people to use.  It would have taken more time to remove the metadata, than to leave it with the image.

The same images have been used before, with attribution, for example on Alloway Library News and Recylart which shows how easy it is.

I am really happy to have my images reused which is why I make them available with Creative Commons Licences.  I also do it so that people don't have to ask,  they can see from the licence what is possible, and use it.

I came across the example of metadata removal when I was looking for something for work this week on Pinterest which had nothing to do with information desks.  I was initially really pleased to see that other people had been photographing the TU Delft Architecture Library as it is a very beautiful library, but then I realised that they were actually my photographs with no attribution.  I realise that there would be other examples out there, but I tripped across this one.  It was the pettiness of removing the metadata which had me thinking.  Flickr makes it really easy to share images and keep all the metadata intact (which is brilliant).

I am going to continue to share my photographs because I think it is helpful, and I know I benefit a lot from other people who share their images for reuse. 

If you would like to see more image if the TU Delft Architecture Library, have a look at the slideshow below