Posts Tagged library
The Library of Congress YouTube Channel
The Library of Congress, holder of more than 6 million films, broadcasts and sound recordings officially launched their YouTube channel today.
The channel will feature several videos including author presentations, scholar discussions, and the earliest movies made by Thomas Edison. Among others, the Edison collection includes the first moving picture – the Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze recorded on January 7, 1894.
Some of the other Edison videos range from boxing cats and vaudeville performers to a Sioux Tribe shown in full war paint and costumes. The video summaries are also informative. One of the Edison films labled, “Newark Athlete,” is described as an, “experimental fragment made with the Edison-Dickson-Heise experiemental horizontal feed kenetograph camera and viewer, using 3/4-inch wide film.”
The Library of Congress has promised to keep adding content to the YouTube channel as they do in their collaboration with Flickr on “The Commons” project where thousands of non-copyrighted images have been uploaded to Flickr with 50 new photos added each week.
The Library of Congress also plans to make its audiovisual collection available on iTunes in the near future.
Below is an example of an Edison film found at the Library of Congress YouTube Channel.
Add comment April 7, 2009
Typing Tuorials
Being able to quickly and efficiently type on a keyboard has a become a necessary skill set for many job and educational opportunities. Here are a few free online typing tutorials, and hand placement guides which can be used to help improve your typing skills. Also, don’t forget, you can practice 7 days a week at the Computer Center.
Hand Placement and Posture Guide
Free Typing Tutorials
Add comment February 9, 2009
Getting the most out of your old computer
So my mom has this old computer. It’s pushing archaic – all of 7 years old. She and I dream of getting rid of the thing and replacing it with a sweet little suped-up laptop. In this fantasy of ours, she need not upgrade from her rotten, rural dial-up Internet; she can cart her Wi-Fi capable machine over to her friend’s house and they can go crazy with photo sharing, social networking, recipe searching, yoga-ing, and whatever else they might think up. This is a nice little plan we have going, but in reality, the washing machine (which my mother has taken apart and fixed herself twice in the last year) will be replaced before the computer.
So in the meantime, we are stuck brainstorming ways to make the old machine work for her. It’s a good computer, so we have a good starting point, but it’s memory is overstuffed so it just putts along, it’s software is outdated so photo management and editing is a nightmare. Here’s what we’re thinking of doing.
1. Invest in an external hard drive. Many older computers run poorly because they were not equipped to handle the large files that are used today. Photos, music, and downloaded files with images in them can fill an older computer’s memory in a big hurry. A simple (and somewhat affordable) fix is to move those files onto an external hard drive. This nifty device connects to your computer via USB port (that flat-looking hole about the width of your finger) and can hold thousands of digital photos. An average external hard drive can cost between $80-$150 and can give your machine the speed of its youth.
2. Invest in a USB flash drive. About the size of your thumb, this little stick is the new-age floppy disk. It plugs into the USB port on a computer (described above), and transferring files can be as easy as click-and-drag. A 4 GB flash drive, which can cost between 10 and 20 dollars, can hold hundreds of digital photos. The flash drive has some cool uses. You can save photos from a home computer onto it, bring it to a photo center (like Meijer or Walgreen’s) and plug it into the photo center computer to order prints. You can also download files from the internet while on a public computer (say, at your library), save them to the flash drive, and transfer the files from it to your home computer. If your library has excellent software (like CADL has), you can put a few photos onto your flash drive, slip that thing into your pocket, and head on over to the library to use the photo-editing software on those computers.
3. Get yourself out of the house and take advantage of outside resources!Libraries are a great place to get to know. The people working are competent, happy to help, and accustomed to questions; the Internet is generally fast; and the software is up-to-date. In my mom’s case, her library isn’t so sweet, but she does have a friend (with a bells-and-whistles computer and lightening-fast Internet) who loves to have visitors. Either way, getting out does a person good. And didn’t we learn in kindergarten that sharing makes us better people? Getting the most out of your old computer might just become a way to get re-connected to friends and community.
Add comment February 3, 2009
Guest blog
From our business librarian…
I see all sorts of entrepreneurs at the library and one of the main struggles they face is what tools to use in researching their market/business start-up idea. CADL has access to a wide variety of resources to help entrepreneurs. One of my favorites is our collection of business e-books. We have over 300 business plan samples available electronically. Why re-invent the wheel when you can view a business plan sample for a business similar to yours? Here’s how you access them - visit www.cadl.org/business and click on “Check Out Our New e-Books!” at the top of the page. You’ll also find e-books that discuss how to conduct market research and competitive intelligence. If you have any research questions, please contact me a business@cadl.org. Good Luck!
Add comment November 20, 2008
Teaching class
Monday started with teaching Microsoft Access Basics. Of all the classes taught, this is the most difficult. It is always a gamble, some students will “get” it and others will not. I like being an instructor. I enjoy when a students actually “gets” the material or the light bulb turns on. This is more difficult to tell with a class on Access. The class did emphasize key questions that an instructor is faced with: What do they want from class? What should/do they need to learn? How does one learn? What is the point of having the class anyways? Before I develop a class, I always try to answer these questions and get feedback from the students. I find the feedback to be the best for improving the classes.
The library now has access to a wonderful database called CBT Nuggets. It is a collection of video tutorials on a number of programs. Some of the offerings are: Microsoft Access, Excel, and Word, but there are a lot of tutorials on certification exams such as A+, Windows Server 2008, SharePoint Server, CISCO VPN Specialist, etc. The list is huge so please check it out at http://www.cadl.org/answers/research-tools/cbt-nuggets-info .
Add comment September 24, 2008
