Here's something kind of neat we're doing in my library: our Children's Room has eggs in an incubator so the kids can watch them hatch, and then our IT person got the idea to livestream the eggs (and subsequent chicks) to our website.
The eggs came from a farm in Western MA, and the chicks will go back there a couple weeks after they hatch. In the meantime, the incubator has been sitting on the Children's Desk - and of course has been very popular with kids (and the local paper).
After they hatch they get moved into a larger cage, and that's when the livestream should get more interesting (watching eggs isn't actually that much fun).
Here's our setup - the incubator is inside the cage, along with water, food, and a heater for after they hatch. Maybe a bit "hands-offy" for my taste, but you know kids, I guess.
Setting up the livestream was surprisingly easy too. First I contacted our webhost to see if they had any issues with this or any suggestions, and they said the best route for them is to use YouTube's livestream feature. That way, we're just embedding a video, and not really bogging down their servers.
I found some instructions for YouTube Stream Now and first verified our YouTube account (which was a click of a button). Next our IT person installed an encoder (he chose Wirecast Play) on the computer we were going to use to host the camera. We decided to dedicate an extra computer to this, so it didn't slow down a staff desk computer.
Next on the YouTube livestream dashboard, we could edit things like the stream title and other basic information. This is also where you get the key for the encoder, and also where you get the embed code (like any other YouTube video).
The one change I made was to make the embed code permanent by including our Channel ID, based on a StackOverflow article:
You can find your CHANNEL_ID at https://www.youtube.com/account_advanced
Our IT person did all the hard work of installing and configuring the encoder, and setting up the computer with the camera, but really, none of this was difficult. Nonetheless, I was still amazed when I embedded the livestream code and it just worked:
Neat. I was also thoroughly entertained coming up with a title for this post that sounded click-baity yet accurate. "Live Nude Chicks" was my second choice.
I am by no means a YouTuber, so the tips I just figured out might be common knowledge, but I thought I'd share anyway.
Do you ever want to link right to a specific spot in a YouTube video? Say a video is five minutes long, but the part you want to highlight starts at 3:14 - I knew there must be a way to start the video right at 3:14 so people didn't have to sit through the beginning portion.
After a bit of web searching, I found two ways to do this - one for a link, and one for an embedded video. And to give my examples some context, here's our situation: You have a video of ten book reviews, and the review you wanted to link to (for Neil Gaiman's Interworld) starts 1 minute and 11 second into the video.
Link to Video
To create a link to start at a specific spot in a video, just add #t=0m0s to the end of the regular link url. Then, change the 0's to the minute and second you want to link to.
Embed a Video
Starting a video embedded in your webpage at a specific spot is a little more work.
Grab the embed code from the video's YouTube page and paste it into your webpage where you want the video to appear. The code will look something like this:
You have to translate the start time into just seconds - so 1 minute and 11 seconds becomes 71 seconds
A lot can happen in 1 second, so the content you want might actually start in between 1:11 and 1:12 - I don't think you can fine-tune any more than seconds. Another hiccup could be the way video files are encoded, so the start point might not always be exactly split-second precise every time
Enjoy:
The next logical step for this example is to also set a stop time. YouTube doesn't seem to have a native way to do that, but both Splicd.com and Apture.com's Builder provide this feature. Neat.
In the last few weeks, I've seen a lot of announcements concerning video content being added to online resources. Both InfoTrac and NewsBank have recently made email announcements about content they've each added to their databases.
InfoTrac added many full-text resources to the General and Academic OneFiles, some of which include video segments. NewsBank's announcement was more thorough - here's an excerpt from the email:
In response to the rising demand in libraries, NewsBank is adding video news content to our online news resources-at no additional charge to our customers. The complete package from respected media distributor Voxant includes the following sources: The Associated Press, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, local affiliates of ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox, as well as coverage from Canadian Broadcasting, Agence France Press and more. Your institution will have access to video clips from all or a select group of these sources, depending on your subscription.
Beginning on Monday, October 20, the videos clips will be added to NewsBank resources. Users will be able to:
Play news videos within the NewsBank interface, in the same space used to display text articles
Select specific videos from a comprehensive results lists that also includes NewsBank articles, or restrict their search to "video only"
Access recent and archived news videos at your institution or remotely
Email links of specific videos to friends, or embed them in a presentation
I find it curious that they say this is in response to demand from libraries. From the few tests I did, most of this newly added video content is already available free online, so I'm not sure where this demand was coming from (or why the vendors choose to listen to this particular demand instead of other things libraries have been demanding).
If a patron wants to watch a news show online, I can't see myself showing them how to navigate the library website to find the right database, log in with their library card, navigate the database for the right title, and then find the episode. It is just easier for me and the patron to use the station's own website or YouTube as a resource.
And speaking of YouTube, Library Stuff linked to a YouTube announcement on c|net today: "YouTube will begin offering feature films produced by at least one of the biggest Hollywood movie studios possibly as early as next month." Combine that with Hulu.com and other websites, and that's a lot of available video content.
For the database vendors though, I would prefer they concentrating on making their resources more user-friendly and useful by "uniquing" them, instead of providing content that is already available from other sources.
I noticed this interesting juxtaposition of the difference in the way the Democratic and Republican parties are approaching technology at campaign events.
The Arizona Star reported that the GOP wanted to prevent any attendees of a Tucson fundraiser from recording the event, out of fear of what might show up on YouTube. Bush himself asked the attendees to turn off all recording devices, and was quoted as saying
I don't know a lot about technology...but I do know about YouTube.
On the other hand, an email from the Obama campaign goes in the exact opposite direction. The email mentioned an upcoming rally in Massachusetts on August 4th (Obama's birthday, incidentally), and read in part:
...remember to bring your camera and snap a few photos! You can share them with us at [email protected]. We'll start posting photos soon!
Not that there is any one right way to approach technology, but I did find this contrast telling. The Bush Administration has a long reputation of trying to suppress and control information and keep things behind closed doors, whereas the Obama campaign has embraced modern technology and has put effort into learning it to use it to their advantage.
Politics is politics, but I am all for being encouraged to participate. Besides, I like taking pictures of things I do and places I go, and would kind of resent being told I couldn't because of someone else's misunderstanding or fear.
This is a reference question I've been holding onto for awhile, hoping I'd have an answer to share. I don't, so now I'm hoping someone else might.
A patron came to the desk asking for help with YouTube. He's one of our regulars, and has a bit of a compulsive personality. He's also a big fan of The Doors: he's working on a book, buys whatever merchandise he can from eBay, and watches any related video on YouTube - or rather, tries to.
One day, he came to the desk and said:
When I search for "the doors" on YouTube, there are over 79,000 videos. However, It only shows the first 50 pages of search results, which is only the first 500 videos. How can I watch the rest?
I had never clicked this far into any search returns in my life. So I tried it out, and sure enough, he was right. I played a bit, but couldn't find any way to get past this barrier to the rest of the videos.
I searched their Help Center with no success, and so sent in the question via their Contact Form. I also searched the general internet, but couldn't find anything relating to this issue.
This was on April 25th, 2008. So far, I haven't heard anything back from YouTube or Google. I resubmitted the question a couple weeks later, but again, no response.
I've played with this search limit again recently, and it looks like now YouTube cuts off the returned videos in the 540's, which is on page 28. The pagination shows out to page 31, and implies there is more, but when you click beyond page 28 the pagination and video numbering starts over at 1.
I can understand the technical limitations and the necessity of an upper cap on returned search matches. But with no explanation or message that there is a limit, and this confusing/resetting pagination, this patron feels YouTube is teasing him personally, and cheating him out of these other 78,500+ videos.
Does anyone have an answer I can pass on to the patron? Thanks.
A librarian in Maine recently posted to MELIBS-L that one of their local patrons was a finalist for the 2008 StoryTubes contest. I had never heard of this contest, but I like projects where patrons get involved, so I checked it out. I loved it.
Kids make a video of themselves reviewing a book on a particular theme (that week's was "Facts, Fads and Phenoms") and submit it to StoryTubes. Finalists get posted on the website (via YouTube), website visitors vote, and four winner win $500 in books (and their sponsoring school or library receives $1,000 in books).
This year's contest is winding down, and I'm sorry I missed it. It's sponsored by publishers and libraries, and the finalist videos are great (my two favorite are below, and more here).
But even outside this contest, I think this would be a fun thing to do in the library. All it would take is a basic digital camera and a YouTube account, and I can see parents, kids and librarians getting really into it. It gives kids an opportunity to create, and in a public way. You always hear the phrase, "it'll be something to tell your grandkids about." This gives kids something to be proud of and tell their grandparents about.
Your Chickens: A Kids Guide to Raising and Showing
Here's something kind of neat we're doing in my library: our Children's Room has eggs in an incubator so the kids can watch them hatch, and then our IT person got the idea to livestream the eggs (and subsequent chicks) to our website.
