Erbert & Gerbert's: Making of the Human Flipbook on YouTube

Stop motion animation has always appealed to me which is why this particular video on YouTube caught my eye. People in general seem to learn and be drawn to images and video over text and lectures so there is a great potential for providing video content within the library catalog and webpages as another way to attract and reach out to library users. YouTube appears to have fully embraced Web 2.0 given all the reference links and user-interactivity built in (related videos, more from this user, tags, comments, etc.). I can see why it's such a popular site!

Flickr

Copy (2) of P1010896
Originally uploaded by gerberadaisy

I'm attempting to post a picture of the Parliament Building in Budapest from my recent trip along the Danube River on my blog. It's neat that Flickr can connect to one's Google account enabling a blog entry to be posted on Blogger software (I wouldn't have guessed 3 different programs could communicate so easily with each other!).

I was quite surprised to see there are several other pictures of the Parliament Building on Flickr (some are very professional looking!). Makes me wonder what other images might be hosted there!

Podcasts

I glanced at a couple of the library podcast sites and I noticed that podcasts are used for storytelling, lectures, interviews, updates, etc. Podcasts are another means of providing information and are especially convenient when live program attendance is not possible. Unlike audio tapes or CDs, podcasts are downloaded from a server - one less physical item to be handled and carried around. At Mayo, the availability of grand rounds and other presentations on podcast would be a nice option in addition to video and webcasts as many people can listen and learn while multitasking (driving, exercising, eating, etc.).

PubMed Mashups

I took a brief look at XplorMed, PubMed Gold, and Ali Baba. The results in XplorMed are sorted by general categories based on MeSH headings such as Information Science, Psychiatry and Psychology, etc. This is an interesting way of arranging results, however, the entries are displayed only by the unique ID which means each entry must be clicked individually to view the title and abstract information. I'm not sure if PubMed Gold has a bug or, if it's just me, but I could only see one result for my search, even after broadening the limits. The concept is useful though as most users want free and immediate access to full text articles. I briefly checked out Ali Baba but did not want to download the necessary software on my personal PC. Again, the concept behind it (visual relationships among terms) is quite interesting and may aid individuals who learn best through the use of information presented in a graphical method.