Happy Halloween! This month we met and discussed a few tools in preparation for the Milwaukee WLA Conference in November. (And we had Halloween treats!)
Ian started off the discussion by demonstrating the PhotoSynth http://photosynth.net/ application and the ways that you can use your mobile device’s camera to capture images to compile into a rotating 3D image. (Ian used his iPhone to take continuous images from a central rotation point, and then used PhotSynth to mesh them together into a continuous 3D image.) Very cool!
Nancy discussed the Memorial Library Reference “iHelp2” roaming librarian project. They visit various areas of the library and use iPads http://www.apple.com/ipad/ to help students working on projects. The iPads are fitted with a “HandStand” http://thehandstand.com/ to make it easier to carry the iPad without breaking it. The HandStand also works as an angled prop if the iPad is set on a flat surface. Nancy and the other roaming librarians (the SLIS students are helping with the project too) have found that students in some areas of the library want help with research and in other areas they are studying for tests and do not seem to need help. A significant portion of the assistance is directional.
Carrie R. recently joined the group as a new member. Ding! She described the Wisconsin Uprising game/tour project that she had been working on for some time. This project uses the ARIS tool http://arisgames.org/ to organize and present images, audio, and video about the 2011 protests into an interactive narrative. The media and dialogue text came from a variety of contributors, including herself and other Folklore Program affiliates. In total, there are 90 media assets in the project. It took a lot of time and work to put it together. It looks great!
Nancy also mentioned the new Ask A Librarian SMS Texting project. It was recently featured in a news release. The SMS text chat is handled via LibraryH3lp. As usual, each text string (both incoming and outgoing) is limited to 140 characters. We can only imagine the spike in usage that will be forthcoming!
See you all at WLA!
No comments:
Post a Comment