The National Library Week videos keep com­ing. Track them at AL Focus.

Super Sized

Recently Sarah Houghton-Jan high­lighted an issue that I’ve been think­ing a lot about myself lately as I’ve noticed changes in my own tv-watching behav­ior. She high­lighted a soft­ware pro­gram called AnyTV for watch­ing tele­vi­sion shows (and other mul­ti­me­dia) on your com­puter and won­dered what oppor­tu­ni­ties pro­grams like these might pro­vide for libraries. While it’s not the first such appli­ca­tion, this type of ser­vice has really taken off dur­ing the last year, and there are now more ways and places to watch tele­vi­sion than ever before. On web­sites, on cell phones, on portable play­ers — they’re mul­ti­ply­ing like rab­bits. Watch­ing tv shows in real-time on an actual tele­vi­sion may be down, but my sense is that it has shifted to other medi­ums and become a niche mar­ket. To name just a few ways I watch tv:

• Fan­cast (sum­mary from Infodoo­dads, but this is essen­tially a Hulu clone for Com­cast subscribers)
• Hulu
• Joost
• Each of the major net­works streams recent episodes of their shows on their websites

All of these ser­vices require you to be con­nected to the inter­net in order to stream the video, but there’s also Bit­Tor­rent, Net­Flix, iTunes, Tivo to Go, and libraries for tak­ing shows with you on the go. I worry a lot less these days about record­ing shows I’m inter­ested in since I can usu­ally catch up with them at some point, often on the web. Some of these sites require a down­load (Joost), oth­ers don’t (Fan­cast). Ama­zon, iTunes, Net­Flix, and MovieLink all offer movies-on-demand ser­vices that let you pur­chase and watch a film imme­di­ately on your com­puter. They gen­er­ally require a sep­a­rate soft­ware pro­gram to view them, but how long will it really be before there’s a Hulu-like movie site that plays in your browser?

All of which is to point out that view­ing habits are chang­ing, and that the cur­rent debate about band­width issues and fil­ter­ing of social net­work­ing sites is just a pre­lude to the com­ing con­tro­versy about watch­ing longer-form video on library com­put­ers. Expect to see this soon, as more and more peo­ple start using our com­put­ers to watch whole shows, movies (Hulu offers sev­eral free ones), and live events.

It’s also going to re-ignite the debate about judg­ing con­tent con­sumed by our patrons. It’s easy enough to say we don’t have the band­width (sadly, that’s usu­ally true in the U.S.), but it’s more dif­fi­cult when you base pol­icy on judg­ment calls that some uses of a for­mat are okay while oth­ers are not. Kind of like when we impose our per­sonal pref­er­ences that Lit­er­a­ture is bet­ter than trashy romance nov­els. Is it really the librarian’s call that I should not be using my library’s com­put­ers to watch that episode of “Lost” I missed last week? What if I’m watch­ing PBS’ “The War” — is it okay then?

And what about some­one like me who is a huge Kansas Jay­hawks fan, who just wants to watch her team in the big dance? CBS didn’t show my game last week­end, but I was able to log in to the free NCAA Sports site on my lap­top, hook it up to the TV, and still watch it. I usu­ally miss Big 12 games because I live in Big 10 coun­try, but now the inter­net is finally lev­el­ing that play­ing field. I still had to watch the ads, but I’m more will­ing to do that dur­ing a live event online. If I didn’t have broad­band inter­net at home, though, would it have been accept­able for me to bring my own head­phones and watch it at my library? Head­ing into a pos­si­ble reces­sion when it’s quite pos­si­ble that peo­ple will be cut­ting costs by can­cel­ing cable sub­scrip­tions, it’s an inter­est­ing ques­tion to ponder.

If you think the YouTube, social net­work­ing, and web-based gam­ing debate is grow­ing now, just wait until the gen­eral pub­lic real­izes they can watch tele­vi­sion online, too. As Sarah says at the end of her post, “I know I am open­ing a can of huge worms…[but] this seems like a very cool addi­tion to me.” I’ll agree with her and hope this coun­try gets its act together and starts installing fiber con­nec­tions the way it should be. In the mean­time, though, it’s help­ful to rec­og­nize that this is some­thing that is going to start hap­pen­ing at your library, and your staff should prob­a­bly talk about it in a “here’s a heads-up” kind of way so that you’re prepared.

The Mux­tape site is cur­rently all the rage, and of course the librar­i­ans are at the fore­front. Exhibit A: Library mux­tape by Jes­samyn West. Find lots of mux­tapes (online mix tapes that don’t require any plu­g­ins or down­loads) to lis­ten to on the site’s home page or on the Mux­tape Wiki. It’s a great way to hear some new music, espe­cially when it’s posted by some­one you know.

Hat tip to Aaron for first twit­ter­ing about the site and then hav­ing some fun with it (hurry and check it out before he changes the audio selections!).

Adden­dum: Check out Mixwit, too, which has a fancier inter­face and some extra fea­tures. [via the lo-fi librar­ian]

Jon Udell (non-librarian of Library­Lookup fame) con­tin­ues to pro­vide ser­vices for library patrons that libraries and their ven­dors don’t. We can debate whose role it is to pro­vide this, but I wish my home library would adapt this and make it work for me. Speak­ing from the patron side of things, these kinds of light­weight solu­tions that do the work for me fit into the way I live and work.

Library­Lookup by Email!

This page offers an email-based ver­sion of the pop­u­lar Library­Lookup ser­vice. It will alert you when a book on your Ama­zon wish­list becomes avail­able in one of the Keene libraries.

If you want to try this with your own Ama­zon wish­list, you’ll need your own wish­list code. To find it, sign in to Ama­zon and fol­low these steps.…

Lucky Keene Library patrons.…

Sorry, Jon — had to out you. The needs of the many out­weigh the needs of the few.

• Inland Libraries Bring­ing in Video Games as Part of Teen Offer­ings
  

  “At the Fontana Branch Library, teen librar­ian Mike Jimenez formed a video game club that draws up to 50 play­ers every Thurs­day. A new, soon-to-open library will host gam­ing tour­na­ments run on a 26-computer net­work in the teen area, he said.

  Ali­cia Dok­tor, who is in charge of the teen ser­vices at River­side Pub­lic Library, said the comic book-formatted graphic nov­els are strate­gi­cally placed under the plasma screen to lure prospec­tive read­ers. ‘Most of the time they’ll check out a book,’ she said.

  Rosas, a senior at Riverside’s North High, dri­ves down­town to the library every day after school. Besides com­ing to check MySpace, he reads fic­tion, espe­cially the short sto­ries of Larry Brown. But at 3:15 p.m. Tues­days, he’s ready to take on Gui­tar Hero. ” [The Press Enter­prise]

• Idaho Turns to Chess as Edu­ca­tion Strat­egy
  

  “Mrs. McCoy does not do this because she is pas­sion­ate about chess; she barely knew how to play before this school year. But she began teach­ing it as part of an unusual pilot pro­gram under way in more than 100 sec­ond– and third-grade class­rooms across Idaho.

  On Thurs­day, state offi­cials will announce in Boise that the pro­gram will be extended in the fall to all sec­ond and third graders — mak­ing Idaho the first state to offer a statewide chess curriculum.…

  There are no stud­ies show­ing that teach­ing chess has ben­e­fits for chil­dren, but there is anec­do­tal evi­dence, Mr. Luna said.

  ‘One of the things that we hear is that too much of what we do is based on rote mem­o­riza­tion,’ Mr. Luna said. ‘The part I really like about this pro­gram is that kids are think­ing ahead.’…

  Some of the ben­e­fits of the pro­gram, Mrs. McCoy said, came in unex­pected areas.

  ‘I actu­ally have one stu­dent who is orig­i­nally from Rus­sia and two His­panic stu­dents who have lim­ited Eng­lish skills, and chess kind of lev­eled the play­ing field, and it kind of helped their self-esteem issues,’ she said. ” [New York Times]

• Tak­ing Play Seri­ously at the Pub­lic Library With Young Video Gamers
  

  “And you thought libraries were sup­posed to be quiet. Not on Friday.

  Under the Beaux-Arts arches of Astor Hall at the New York Pub­lic Library’s flag­ship build­ing on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, thump­ing hard-rock beats mixed with tennis-ball thwacks and the screech of burn­ing tires late Fri­day after­noon, as the library showed off the lat­est addi­tion to its col­lec­tions of books, films, music and maps: video games.…

  ‘What we’re see­ing is that in addi­tion to sim­ply help­ing bring kids into the library in the first place, games are hav­ing a broader effect on play­ers, and they have the poten­tial to be a great teach­ing tool,’ Mr. [Jack] Mar­tin said. ‘If a kid takes a test and fails, that’s it. But in a game, if you fail you get to take what you’ve learned and try again.’

  ‘In a lot of these games you have to under­stand the rules, you have to under­stand the game’s world, its story. For some games you have to under­stand its his­tory and the char­ac­ters in order to play effectively.’…

  Across the hall, Rad­hames Sal­divar, 16, a 10th grader from upper Man­hat­tan, ripped through a blis­ter­ing ren­di­tion of Heart’s ‘Bar­racuda’ on Gui­tar Hero III. After­ward he said: ‘I never thought I’d see this hap­pen. I might have to check out the library some more.’

  A few feet away, Car­los Rivera, 16, said he helped orga­nize the reg­u­lar Fri­day after­noon game ses­sions at the Jef­fer­son Mar­ket library branch in Green­wich Village.

  ‘I thought a library was just for books, just for study­ing, just for a lot of things I don’t nor­mally do,’ he said. ‘But when I found out the library was start­ing to have games it was great, because it’s really good to hear that the library is pay­ing more atten­tion to the youth and what we’re into.’

  He paused. ‘And it’s also good because I can just say to my par­ents, ‘I’m going to the library.’ ’ ” [New York Times

• Check out this video of a gam­ing tour­na­ment at the John­son County Library, in which librar­ian Chris Kop­pen­havor talks about the ben­e­fits of gam­ing. Go JoCo, my child­hood library system!

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Naomi, a school librar­ian who won the Wii from the fundraiser Michael Stephens and I held for LISHost. Blake wrote a script that ran­domly gen­er­ated a name from the list of donors, and hers was the name that came up.

Thank you to every­one who donated money for this cause. With your help, we raised $823 with just one Wii!

With National Library Week right around the cor­ner, AL Focus will be releas­ing a series of videos to help pro­mote it this year. Amer­i­can Libraries’ edi­tor Dan Kraus based them on some of the sta­tis­tics from ALA’s Quotable Facts about America’s Libraries brochure. Watch for the rest of them to appear on Focus dur­ing the next few weeks.

National Library Week: Ref­er­ence Desk

You’re wel­come to use the intro to cre­ate your own pro­mo­tional videos for NLW. To grab it, fol­low these instructions:

• Go to alfocus.blip.tv and click on the Episode Archive.
• Find the video you want and click on it, in this case the NLW Intro­duc­tion.
• Scroll down a lit­tle and click on the “Files and Links” area on the right-hand side to get a link to save it to your com­puter. For this one, it’s http://blip.tv/file/761553?filename=Alfocus-NationalLibraryWeekIntroduction834.mov.
• If you do end up using it, please leave a com­ment on the video on AL Focus so that we can high­light your work. We may end up doing some­thing with the best ones.