Month: September 2005

are audiobooks accessible? A TAP report.

Posted on by jessamyn

Accessibility Trial of the Downloadable Digital Audio Book Service from netLibrary and Recorded Books LLC. At least twelve libraries providing content to the print impaired participated in this project. Upshot? Responses vary, though mejor hurdles mentioned include interacting with the website, dealing with DRM and usability of the Windows Media Player.

The volunteers who participated in this two-month trial had a wide variety of experiences and reactions to those experiences. Some volunteers thought this was the best digital audio book system they had ever tried…. Many of the volunteer testers noted that the quality of the texts, the narration, and the sound was very high.

Others thought the overall system was barely functional and marginally accessible. The content website, the digital rights management system, and Microsoft’s Windows Media Player software presented substantial accessibility challenges for a large portion of the group of volunteer testers.

me in Indiana, recap

Posted on by jessamyn

I’m here in Michael Stephens’ basement posting this. Here are the notes for the two talks I gave over the past two days:

CHOICE: Empowerment Through Information Technology [seriously]. See also liveblog, photos and blog post

Hot Hot Robot: Sensible Approaches to Technology in Libraries. See also photos which we took, uploaded, tagged and added notes to during our presentation about Flickr. Update: liveblog too

As a fun side bonus, LibraryMan was also in South Bend tonight and we all got to sit around scheming about our ideal future library utopias. Hot!

public access computing vs. OPACs

Posted on by jessamyn

How does your library determine how many computers to “set aside” for OPAC-only use? Is that decision based on anything? At the library I used to work at, we had about 15 public access computers with fully five of them OPAC-only. The other ten computers were mobbed. TechnoBiblio looks at whose using which comptuers at San Francisco Public and has some questions as well.

information visualization aesthetics @ Seattle Public Library

Posted on by jessamyn

The article begins “From now on, whatever you check out of the Seattle Central Library will play in color-coded streams across six big plasma screens on the library’s fifth floor.” but don’t freak out, that’s actually not what happens. Read more about the new art installation in the Seattle Public Library’s main branch. Of the three other major artworks in the library, two aren’t working currently, they need new projectors. [thanks matthew]

Alternative Media Day at Johnson State College

Posted on by jessamyn

I know it’s a longshot, but if any readers are in the Vermont area and have next Friday the 23rd off, I’ll be one of the panelists at Johnson State College’s Alternative Media Day along with Seven Days’ journalist Cathy Resmer and a lot of other local bloggers and media types who I haven’t met personally. All events are free and open to the public, if a bit remote.