A trip down to Oxford awaits David and Iain at the end of May. They will be attending two meetings during the visit. The first is with representatives from Oxford University and the second may prove to be very exciting indeed.

It is with a company from Virginia named Visionary Technology in Library Solutions (VTLS) who are currently working with both Google and the University of Oxford libraries. VTLS are supplying the University of Oxford with software for the use of Fedora in a library context and in turn the Oxford library is being given a virtual makeover with the help of books digitised by Google. The partnership between Oxford and Google is of such considerable significance that Google now have offices based on the Oxford University campus.

The advent of World Book Day on March 1st of this year provided the perfect opportunity for VTLS, Oxford and Google to provide an example of the kind of work they have been carrying out. To celebrate the day the Bodleian Library displayed original letters as well as manuscripts and special illustrated editions of the classic children’s book ‘The Wind in the Willows’. However for those that couldn’t physically visit the manuscripts it was and is still possible to explore the classic story through Google Book Search where the first 1908 edition and other in-print versions have been digitised and are available to look at online.

This partnership also opens up significant possibilities for the work that the Spoken Word is involved in. Our user licence agreement with the BBC would mean that the manuscripts of work could be supplemented with rich audio and video resources. In the case of ‘The Wind in the Willows’ a user could read the manuscript and then watch or listen to various BBC adaptations ensuring that the following of the adventures of Mr Toad, Ratty and Mole become all the more vivid for future generations.

Photo Courtesy of: ConnieG

A new website focusing on accent and dialect has just been launched by the British Library. The resource features 70 five minute recordings from across the UK and over 600 audio clips selected to illustrate interesting aspects of regional accent and language change. It includes interactive maps, linguistic commentaries, transcripts and suggestions for research activities as well as advice to help students investigate speech in their own communities.

On 12th February David and Iain go to the DELOS Conference on Digital Libraries in Tirrenia, a beach resort near Pisa. Benito Mussolini transformed this formerly swampy city into what he called ‘The Pearl of the Mediterranean Sea’. Tirrenia is now a major Italian tourist spot and is popular with young clubbers-so David and Iain are sure to have a good time.

DELOS is a network of excellence on digital libraries and is committed to a vision that digital libraries should ‘enable any citizen to access all human knowledge any time and anywhere, in a friendly, multi-modal, efficient and effective way, by overcoming barriers of distance, language, and culture and by using multiple Internet-connected devices’.

The conference aims to present the latest research and technology in the field of digital libraries and to promote discussion and ‘exchange of ideas’ through various formal and informal satellite meetings.

Clearly this is an ideal conference for promoting and speaking about the Spoken Word, with key figures from around the global digital libraries community in attendance. The Spoken Word’s colleagues, Maureen Lister, from the Universita Di Bologna and Jerry Goldman of Northwestern University in Chicago also have plans to visit the conference, which will be beneficial to continuing and furthering our ties and work with these institutions.

Spoken Word Services and the Academic Liaison Librarians met on Tuesday 16th January to discuss the issue of podcasting. This posting is an update to a previous post by Iain Wallace that outlined the agenda of the meeting and his general thoughts on podcasting in the setting of the library and can be found by clicking here. Iain started off the meeting by giving a brief introduction about what ingredients were needed to make a podcast and gave some examples of the work that other libraries have done with podcasting such as Glasgow University and Glasgow Metropolitan College. However, it was agreed in the meeting that the Caledonian University Library podcasts would steer clear of the irritating electro music that seems to grace the podcasts of other higher educational institutions in Glasgow.

Aidan Johnston and Ewan MacPhee of Spoken Word then showed the group of librarians the set of Hospitality Video Podcasts that they had made on behalf of the Higher Education Academy.

The Academic Liaison Librarians raised many interesting issues and questions regarding podcasting. They are keen to continue with plans to create a podcast based around using journals and finding appropriate articles in the library. It is thought that this will cut the time that staff have to spend showing students how to use library services without being any less informative or helpful.

The librarians seemed to be very positive about creating a podcast and a follow up meeting has been planned to discuss the issue further.

Today we are meeting with the Academic Liaison Librarians here at Glasgow Caledonian University to discuss podcasting. We will do a short presentation on what we have already done with podcasting, and then open up to a question and answer session. Our colleagues are interested in producing a podcast for library users based around using journals and finding appropriate articles. Here are some of my thoughts …..

Why should libraries be interested in podcasting? What are the advantages over traditional text based FAQs?

• Can be easily incorporated into blog environment – uses same RSS technology
• Can be accessed via browser or downloaded to portable device (music player/phone)
• Sound and video bring subject to life and give personal touch
• Screencasts can capture screen behaviour too
• Great for prospective/new students and for remote users

Some possible uses

• Library tours (can be downloaded to ipod/phone)
• Library events
• Training – How To use different library services
• Information literacy and research help
• Library updates and library news
• Collecting and indexing good free podcasts
• Archiving class lectures
• Etc

What do you need?

• Simple audio/video recording facility (or phone!) and some free software (we currently use iMovie for Mac OSX)
• A good voice, a reasonable recording that’s easily downloadable, a well-written script – and time to produce them.

Some examples

• Glasgow University Library Podcasts
• Glasgow Metropolitan College Podcast – Introduction to Library Services
• Library Success Podcasting Wiki

Podcasts about library issues

• Learning to Speak: Creating a Library Podcast With a Unique Voice
• Talking with TALIS Library 2.0 Podcasts
• SirsiDynix Institute Presentations

Other relevant links

• Spoken Word – examples of dynamically generated podcasts based on searches; Glasgow Centre for Population Health audio podcasts; Higher Education Academy Hospitaility, Leisure, Sport and Tourism video podcasts
• Itunes U – ‘a free, hosted service for colleges and universities that provides easy access to their educational content, including lectures and interviews’. Currently US only.

I’ve started a new blog called ‘Library Futures‘ for personal musings on library developments, especially Library 2.0. The RSS feed is http://libraryfutures.wordpress.com/feed/

Iain

Today David is attending the launch of the new British Library online sound archive. The archive is freely available to the UK further and higher education community via the ATHENS authentication system.

A full press release follows below:-

Breaking the sound barrier…

Massive digitisation programme by JISC and the British Library makes 3,900 hours of historic sound recordings available to students, researchers and academics

26th September, 2006.
A major new online resource available free to everyone in further and higher education will provide easy access to thousands of hours of rare and historic sound recordings. Archival Sound Recordings (ASR), launched today by the British Library in partnership with JISC, will make available to students, researchers, teachers and academics some 12,000 unique materials from the dawn of recording history to the present day.

Archival Sound Recordings breaks new ground in the delivery of digitised sound recordings for use in education and research. It features a huge range of material, including classical and popular music, radio drama, oral history, and field and location recordings of traditional music.

Highlights of the fully searchable archive include:

* Unique and previously unpublished recordings of East African and South African music and cultural activities;

* The story of six decades of jazz in the UK, its varied styles, venues and characters, as told by musicians, promoters and label owners;

* A comprehensive archive of performances of Beethoven string quartets – unique in the way it reflects changing performance styles over the past 100 years;

* Insights into the lives and concerns of painters, photographers and sculptors through interviews with artists such as Elisabeth Frink, David Bailey, Fay Godwin, Eduardo Paolozzi and Anthony Caro;

* Radio material illustrating the richness and diversity of African writing and political culture during the 1960s and 70s.

The £1m project has been made possible through JISC funding and is part of an overall £10m programme supporting the digitisation and online presentation of high-quality content including sound, moving pictures, newspapers, census data, journals and parliamentary papers for long-term use by the further and higher education communities in the UK. The ASR service is accessible to any web user, but access to the audio content will be limited to password-authenticated members of the UK FE and HE communities. The full service will also be available to users in the British Library’s reading rooms in London and Yorkshire.

The website’s interface was developed through extensive user testing to devise the best format for retrieving and playing back the recordings.Enhanced playback features will also allow users to create and edit their own playlists, and combine interdisciplinary material for their own projects, research and teaching resources. The digitisation work for ASR was carried out by Memnon Audio Archiving Services, which transferred recordings from a variety of analogue carriers to digital format, applying digital restoration techniques where appropriate.

“This was a particularly challenging and complex project,” said Michel Merten, Director of Memnon. “We worked with some very delicate collections, ranging from African field recordings on fragile magnetic tapes to Beethoven String quartets on early 78rpm discs. To handle a project of this scale, we developed innovative new techniques with the British Library, enabling us to preserve these important cultural records for future generations.” Memnon also provided technology to deliver the metadata necessary to allow full search and retrieval.

Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library welcomed the launch of the Archival Sound Recordings resource: ”Sound recordings represent a massively untapped resource in the field of education. The learning possibilities across almost all subject areas are immense. The Web offers a means of widespread access to rare, historic and hugely valuable sound resources and this site demonstrates the British Library’s commitment to research and further education.”

Professor Sir Ron Cooke, Chairman of JISC, said: “The scale and scope of this archive is ambitious, groundbreaking and truly exciting. Not only will it be an important resource to a wide range of disciplines and subject areas but also, we believe, a landmark for the use of sound recordings in education and research. JISC is delighted to have worked closely with the British Library in developing and making available such an innovative resource.”

For more details see: www.bl.uk/sounds

For further information on the JISC Digitisation programme, please go to: www.jisc.ac.uk/digitisation_home.html

For further information, please contact Philip Pothen on 07887 564 006/020 7848 2935 or p.pothen@jisc.ac.uk or Ben Sanderson at the British Library Press Office: 01937 546126 email; ben.sanderson@bl.uk