What is filling it up:

PBCore training materials, four videos of slideshow webinars.

Creative Commons Newsletter Jan – March 2010 is available.

Peter Jaszi’s commentary on UCLA re-starting their streaming videos.

Waikiki and Diamond Head

Toes

Sails

Sunset

I was one of the main organizers of the screening at our library, and it was a good learning experience. I worked with some of the publicity, getting announcements out to various mailing lists on campus and highlighting the event on Sinclair’s Facebook page. I helped plan the food, test the technology, and even figured out how to project the Twitter #wireside feed to the side of the main lecture so we could what people were saying and asking during the talk.

A few observations:
-There were some technical difficulties on the Harvard end. The video feed was pretty low-quality, even though as a “registered” venue we had access to a private, higher-quality feed. They also started late, which I think was connected to feed issues. We didn’t really mind (more time to eat and chat!) and really, I think it made a lot of us feel better – even HARVARD has problems sometimes!
-An awesome crew of helpers can definitely help make an event . . . well, awesome. I had three or four people helping me (student workers and other staff) whose competence I had complete trust in. And this made SUCH a difference. No running around like head-less chickens for us!
-This was the first event I’ve been at with a Twitter “backchannel” projected alongside the main show. Overall I really liked it, though I can see how it might get distracting if I got so involved in the backchannel conversation that I lost track of what was going on in the main talk. I was happy to have the chance to show a group of people at UH how this could work.
-The talk was great. Lots to think about, and lots more I need to learn about.

Digitize This! (Honolulu Weekly).

Library Maintains Vital Visual Archive with SnapStream (case study by SnapStream, the company that makes the server we use for recording off-air)

It’s really small stuff, but it’s kind of cool.

If anyone reaches this page after reading the Honolulu Weekly article looking for more information, there are a few pages explaining the project at http://www.sinclair.hawaii.edu/video/streamingvideo.html, or you can email me at emilyea (at) hawaii (dot) edu.

The espresso machine at Manifest, a bar Frans has become very fond of as a place to hang out and wait for me after work until I show up and the adventure begins:

Gold Gate Lounge sign:

Frans and Nuuanu Ave sign:

Shop display:

Lawrence Lessig:For the Love of Culture: Google, Copyright, and Our Future (The New Republic). I’ve been meaning to learn more about copyright reform possibilities and Creative Commons. I’ve already downloaded Lessig’s book Free Culture to my Droid – now I just need to read it.

Our video reformatting project makes it to the UH Blog! (But why did they un-capitalize “keiki hula”? They took the text directly from the page I made about the project, where it’s capitalized! Like it should be!)

Abigail Adams by Benjamin Blythe, 1766

Abigail Adams by Woody Holton.

My first biography of the year – I got interested in Abigail Adams because Frans watches the HBO John Adams documentary over and over, and I like it portrays the relationship between the two of them. That, and how Abigail is alway putting John in his place. Very good book, and I appreciated how Holton emphasizes how Abigail challenged the notion of coverture (the idea that a woman was legally/financially invisible once she married) by making investments, going into trade for a little while, and, towards the end of her life, making her own will. Also fascinating was the huge amount of correspondence going on between Abigail and John, as well as Abigail and her other relatives and many friends and acquaintances. Many of the letters between Abigail and John are available digitally on the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Adams Family Papers Archive. I just picked up a copy of My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams – not sure if I’m going to have time to read the whole things right now, but I’ll definitely browse through it.

I don’t know if the over- part is true, but I certainly do feel like I’m constantly analyzing things, thinking about how things work, how people work, how interactions work and don’t work, how essential timing in the kitchen is and planning ahead is and making lists is. Okay, maybe I do overanalyze. But I like doing it, and I think I do save myself some time and effort, and at every traffic light on the way to work I always know the order of the lights so I’m never surprised when it’s my turn to go. And I can almost always tell Frans where his missing keys or wallet are.

Anyway (I promise, I’m going somewhere with this), I just started taking a course in the library science program with my staff tuition waiver. The course is called Systems Analysis for Information Management, and while the focus is on digital libraries, it also looks like we’re going to get a good introduction to systems analysis in general. I read the first two chapters of Systems Analysis for Librarians and Information Professionals, and got so excited by the introduction to systems analysis that I texted my dad, “I’m reading about systems analysis! And I like it!” His reply wasn’t quite so enthusiastic.

Maybe my dad is a little older and wiser than me. Or maybe I’ve just found my calling in life.

For the last six months I’ve been working on a project to digitize and stream old videos from the collection here at Sinclair. We finally have about 300 URLs linking to streaming videos in the catalog, and today the press release for the project came out! I’m pretty excited.