Week 8: Video & Downloadables

                Thing #18: YouTube

YOUTUBE

                http://www.youtube.com

                As long as you’re sharing everything else about your life through the magic of Web 2.0 these days, why not share videos too? YouTube is a free service that allows you to sign up for an account and upload videos of whatever you want. Surprise, surprise: they are owned by Google (along with everything else, including you)! There are copyright rules, but as you’ll see if you search your favorite movie, not many people follow them. But Google employees and other YouTube members do sometimes report or delete copyrighted content from the site. If you have a YouTube account (or any other Google service account), you can not only upload your own videos, but also comment on others’ videos.

                Let’s look at some examples of what you’ll see on YouTube:

                http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RkZ3LysX7A – Okay, I admit it, this was a program set up by moi, and written and directed by some creative teens!

                http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfBY6ntZI1U – Instructional video

                http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aviEAI_NgYc&feature=g-logo&context=G26f4d2fFOAAAAAAABAA – Unfortunately, people are not always kind with their comments.

                Thing #19: Freegal

FREEGAL

                Freegal is an awesome, free service of some Onondaga County Public Libraries (including, of course, us). How you access the service depends on where your card is registered, and then you have to go through that particular library’s website. The good news, though, is you can switch your registration in order to have access to Freegal!

                But what is Freegal? Basically, it’s a way to get music that is both free and legal. Patrons are allowed 2 or 3 free downloads per week, and the new week begins at midnight on Monday morning. This is a way for the library to cut down on illegal downloading or copying from CDs – we pay Library Ideas (the company that offers Freegal) a bunch of money, and they give our patrons free access to the entire Sony music catalog, which has over 500,000 songs. They recently acquired other music catalogs, too, so the Freegal library will continue to grow. And it’s easy to use, because once a patron downloads a song, it opens up through iTunes and imports itself into their music library. Now, they’re free to listen, burn to CD, or copy to their MP3 player.

                Some artists currently on Freegal include: Tony Bennett, Beyoncé, the cast of Glee, Kathleen Battle, and Kelly Clarkson. There is also a wish list feature, so if you’ve used up all your weekly downloads (and your kids won’t let you borrow their cards), you can keep a wish list for things you want to download when the new week begins. And, if something should go wrong in the download process, Freegal keeps a “Recently Downloaded” list for you for the week, and you have 2 more chances to download that song.

                Thing #20: OverDrive

OVERDRIVE

                http://onlib.lib.overdrive.com/

                Feeling tired yet? Just a few more things to learn about! You probably know all there is to know about OverDrive by now, but this is just a refresher of the process of downloading library books. First of all, you might want to check Liverpool Library’s checklist of things you’ll need before you begin: http://www.lpl.org/enjoy-a-book/e-books/1817

                Now, all you do is find a book you want, click “Add to cart”, and download it to your computer. If a title doesn’t have the “Add to Cart” option, this means it’s already checked out. You can either add it to your wish list (maintained by you, and titles don’t delete when you check them out) or your digital reserve list (you will receive an e-mail when it’s ready for download, and it will delete itself from your list).

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GO TO WEEK #9