Mish, mash mashups!

Mashups would be of great use for all design projects involving:

Children and young adult arts and crafts activities - custom tailored images organised at the click of a computer button.

Jigsaws and fun badges and passes

Promotional posters, flyers, etc - inhouse design with a little extra pizazz at minimal cost.

Special promotional items - e.g. calenders

For 1. Home Library Service patrons,

For 2. Commerating historical library events - e.g. old library to new with photos taken of the demolition of the old to the creation of the new.

To podcast or not to podcast?

Our library could offer podcasts on in-house library produced events such as:

* Selected children's storytime sessions - Easter and Christmas stories

* HSC talks - "Minimising stress in the leadup to the HSC" or "Developing time management skills"

Positives: These have already been prepared by library staff

* Oral histories - Recordings on local people of interest, e.g. past mayors.

Positives: A number of histories already exist recorded onto cassette. These could simply be re-recorded into an mp3 format.

Special events and functions involving external non-library staff could also be offered.

Examples of this could include: author talks and special ceremonies such as the opening of branches.

General "negotiable" factors to consider would include:

1. Time - When would these sessions be recorded? How long would it actually take to record?

2. Location - Where would sessions be recorded? Our current library setup does not offer any quiet areas to record audio in. External noise from members of the public and music from the shopping centre would constantly interfere.

3. Staff - Who would be involved? Would we need to hire any external assistance at any stage?

4. IT restrictions - These would need to be relaxed to allow actual access to these podcasts in the library. At present, we are unable to listen to anything audio as there are no headphones on the internet computers and the speakers have been disabled. Only people outside of the library would be able to listen...

5. Prior permission from all participants - Not so hard to organise if only a few people involved but imagine a special function involving a number of speakers with only 1 person declining permission, then possibly the entire recording could not be used (depending on when they were involved).

Question? When all of these factors are considered, is it really something that a library could offer? If pictures of events are already available on flicker and news about the events are already publicised in the library's newsletters and website or in the local paper, do we really need to?