#22 To Audio or not to audio,

Wandering around the world book fair I find a section in the internet archive oh my!! heaven is up there. 220,000 ebooks internet sites and cultural artifacts available to researchers and the general public now this is really talking. (pun intended) Google books cannot compete on the quality of the scanned works some are just beautiful to be hold. Curious isn't it that it is new technology that saves the beauty of the old letter press images. The open content philosopy and Googles "don't be evil" seem to be on a similar track but the tools used by Google namely their own search engine and locking people in to viewing sponsered advertising seem contrary. The internet archive provides the option to "flip view" a version of a book that flips over to turn pages to give the feel of a real book. The claim that the internet archive makes key word searching difficult was not found to be true. In fact the way it is done (in the flip view )with a little search box unobstrusively to the side in similar colour tones and pacing tabs on the pages where the term is used is more in tune with the way that researchers study a book. I liked the flipper book viewing options because it retained all the best qualities of a books beauty,and the sense of a solid treasure of ideas in front of you. The options available were to read it yourself or hear it read to you. You could also magnify sections, great if you are studying illustrations. At last I can have my cake and eat it too.
See A short relation of the symptoms of the plague of Marsaiiles

#21poddling

Pod casting as a tool in libraries,well I suppose it works, people are time poor and multitasking seems to be the order of the day. Talking books are racing out the door and not just for the vision impaired. A quick teaching tool at the Opac or podcast from the website may just fit in to a persons lifestyle. Virtual Dave's pod casts (found via Yahoo's podcast search and added bloglines) touch on the concept of the library as a conversation and that the podcast is an important part of the development of that conversation.