JISC , the UK based body that researches the innovative use of ICT in Higher Education education and research, has released an interesting 10 minute video discussing the future of academic libraries, JISC – Libraries of the Future . They are just finishing their year-long research programme about Libraries of the Future .
Libraries as bee-hives? Google as a partner? Librarians as network administrators as much as information specialists? Librarians “entrepreneurial, engaged and outward looking”? Investing thousands of pounds in change management programs?
The Wii is a video game system that uses a wireless controller capable of sensing position and motion, allowing users to interact with the game applications through physical movements. The controller has captured the interest of academic researchers and hackers, who have used the technology to create applications such as a collaborative choreography tool and an inexpensive, interactive whiteboard. Wii technology is used as an input device in virtual worlds and as a training tool that allows learners to perform physical tasks in a digital, risk-free environment.
I have run two sessions about this for library staff and will again be bringing in my console from home for an Academic Work Matters session about input devices in October. If anyone wants a hands-on demo before then, I’m happy to give one.
There were two ads, did two versions of the first ad. Ads ran for 7 -
10 days each.
Ad One
The first ad looked for Beyond Blood in the music interests of
Edmontonians. That was about140 people.
The first version of the ad had a headline of Trustkill Streamed (Trustkill being the record label of the thrash/heavy metal bands we had streaming content for via Naxos).
The second version had Beyond Blood Streamed as the headline of the ad.
We wondered how many people actually knew the record label.
Version One - Trustkill
2,285 impressions, 1 click, cost 56 cents Click-through rate of 0.04%
Version Two - Bleeding Through
983 impressions, 1 click, cost 32 cents
Click-through rate of 0.10%
Comment: In both cases the clicks came relatively early in the
“campaign”. In either case having 1 or 2 people out of 140 click is
actually not bad. Relative value is hard to determine, but for a total
cost of 88 cents we got 2 clicks and more than 3,000 impressions.
Ad Two
Promoted our Personalized Book List service. Targeted Edmontonians
who had the words reading, fiction, novels or books in their interests.
This was a target of 23,000.
20,855 impressions, 2 clicks, cost 66 cents
Click through rate of 0.01%
Comment: A much larger audience, the click came relatively early in the
campaign.
Overall comments:
The cost per impression is extremely low. 24,000 impressions for $1.54
How many of those impressions resulted in the ad being read and perhaps Edmonton Public Library being noticed in a tiny way is unknown. There was no noticeable increase in requests for personalized book lists.
The impressions seem to spike after a click and then gradually taper
off. Guessing Facebook is doing some weighting of ads that get clicks
versus ads that don’t.
We did not use an image for any of our ads. That would be something
I would like to try next time.
There is some thought that Facebook is notable for its extremely low
click-through rates. We saw a range of rates in this tiny experiment.
If you want any details, contact me this week.
Peter
__________________________________________________
Peter Schoenberg (780) 496 1855
Director - eServices - Edmonton Public Library
www.epl.ca
Techsmith, who make SnagIt and Camtasia also run the Jing project.
This is a piece of free software to make quick ‘n’ dirty screencasts or screenshots. You need to download it to your computer from here, Jing Project. It interfaces with the screencast storage site screencast.com , so that you can automatically upload the screencast and then embed it or give a permanent URL to someone.
I can see it having a lot of uses, especially on service desks where it is hard to describe something, but easy to show it. You could very easily make a quick screencast and upload it while you were talking to somone online or on the phone.
Here’s an example I made showing how to reload jstor.com via the proxy simply by right clicking on the page. Well, I was going to embed it, but forgot that wordpress.com who hosts the blog disallows this kind of embedding.
These 3 short clips from the Centre for Digital Ethnography in Kansas are about 1. changes in the way we use information, 2. the way we store and retrieve information and 3. the relevance of the classroom to todays’ students.. I have seen the first one played at probably 5 different conference presentations and embedded in many, many other places.
If people aren’t showing the first one above at conferences, then they usually show the “Shift Happens” video – which outlines the political and technological shifts that today’s students will need to deal with.
