Thursday, March 01, 2007

netLibrary Tutorial on YouTube

Kudos to the North Metro Technical College Library in Acworth, Georgia which has posted a 2:32 video on creating a free account for netLibrary. That's the one that caught the attention of people at OCLC this morning, but NMTC Library has eight DIY videos posted to YouTube. They are all about two and a half minutes long and follow the same pattern..."How do I find....?" and cover tools to create citations to how to find print materials.

This isn't the only innovative thing the library is doing...they have a wiki for policies and procedures, and a blog since May 2005.
What I can't tell from rummaging around the NMTC library web site is how these videos are promoted to students. Nor can I tell what human is or humans are responsible for these good things.

But it's the border collie that's featured in three rotating promotional photographs on the main page that I particularly like, especially the one where it is wearing a nurse's cap and is participating in what looks like rounds at a hospital. There's a link to a video in which I am sure the dog is featured, but I haven't been able to view it. That kind of humour is rarely seen on academic web sites and I find it refreshing.


if you want to lose a couple of hours, just use "border collie" as a search term in YouTube and Flickr.

My border collies, Bonny and William, and Hamish the handsome mutt.

7 comments:

Alice said...

Alane! Ahem...just a Public Service Reminder for all the busy people like Alane out there: the N of NetLibrary is now capitalized and has been for quite some time.

(Not that I'm curiously obsessed about brand or anything...)

Alice said...

But I did mean to say. Hamish IS quite handsome, although Bonnie and Will are also quite near and dear to my "St. Alicia Patron Saint of Pooches" heart!

Alane said...

Ooops! Old lowercase habits die hard.

Anonymous said...

Hi Alane,

We don’t know each other, but I am an old friend of your brother, Callan. We worked at the Elora Mill together for several years and both attended Centre Wellington District High School.

I hadn’t thought of Callan in quite awhile, but today, whilst cleaning out some dusty drawers and cupboards, I came upon some old newspapers, one of which was the Fergus-Elora Express from February 25th 1987. I wondered why I had saved the entire newspaper, but as I leafed through it, it became readily apparent. I found a new home for the old newspapers—a different drawer, but my thoughts of Callan found no home and occupied my brain for the rest of the day.

Living away from Fergus at the time, I hadn’t even learned of Callan’s accident until several weeks afterwards, long after the funeral. I hadn’t really had a chance to grieve properly or eulogize him in a fitting way. Until today that is—nearly twenty years ago to the day. Today I wrote down some of my thoughts and memories of Callan and posted them at a site that I maintain for my casual genealogical interests. (My screen-name for the site is “Peter”, my middle name) I wanted to share it with someone that knew Callan well, preferably family. And amongst the Wilson kids you have the highest Internet profile and therefore the easiest accessibility. I hope this simple memorial meets with your family’s approval. Please have a look and let me know. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Marty Bootsman

PS I mentioned Callan’s interest in music in the memorial and the fact that we often shared albums back and forth. If you are looking for your Beatles’, “Rubber Soul” album, I have it. It has “Kathy & Alane Wilson” written on the cover in either yours or Kathy’s handwriting. :-)

PSS I realize that this is a personal matter and that you will understandably want to delete this message from the public forum. I apologize for not finding a more discrete method of delivering this message to you.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the kind words. I'm trying to stay "behind the scenes" as the NMTC Librarian but I am Kate Stirk - kstirk (at) NorthMetroTech (dot) edu . My philosophy is to make these "institutional" not personal. Thank you very much for noticing them - I'm not "pushing" them at school as much as making them available.

Anonymous said...

Another thought :)
I have posted the link to the YouTube videos on my http://del.icio.us/NMTC_Librarian del.icio.us site under How Do I Find for each program area. AND I've posted the link to the NMTC_Librarian MySpace http://www.myspace.com/nmtc_librarian
And students can find the How Do I Find through the Library page http://www.northmetrotech.edu/library.asp
-Kate Stirk, NMTC Librarian

Anonymous said...

AND I've been editing the brand name for NetLibrary...

-Kate