Thing 9

Thing 9 - Google Docs

Every so often it is necessary to put together a presentation or a proposal in conjunction with other people, and files get shared by email and multiplied so that it can be difficult to keep track. This is where Google Docs comes in handy, as the video LK posted on the Cam23 website demonstrates.

I've used Google Docs once before, when I was one of three students assembling a presentation on children's libraries for our Masters course at UCL. I say 'used', but in fact only one of us really did any editing online. It was still useful as a way of sharing files, though, and perfect for our situation, as part-time students who weren't able to meet up during the week to discuss our project in person.

Carousel in the children's section of Frome Library

I decided to practise on a programme I assembled for the concert I sang in a couple of weekends ago. If I'd had space I would have put a picture on the cover, so that was what I thought I'd try. I uploaded the file using my Cam23 Gmail account.

I then chose to 'share' the file with myself on one of my other email addresses. (I really have too many now. I make it six at the last count, though there may easily be a few I've forgotten.) The notification came through and I (Gareth 1.0) set about editing.

How convenient that you can insert pictures direct from a Google Image Search, and that the search filters out images likely to have copyright issues. I happened upon a beautiful picture of a stained glass window that fitted very nicely.

Logging back in as Gareth 2.0, I found everything as it should be. So, my first tentative experiments have been gratifyingly successful, and I can quite envisage using Google Docs again every so often, particularly if there is a necessity to put a document together with several other people not located on site, as preparation for the summer school King's runs annually with Pembroke, for instance.

Thing 8

Thing 8 - Google Calendar

As an undergraduate I kept with great meticulousness a diary of what I was meant to be doing. Since starting work I have fallen into the habit of using my Outlook calendar for work and my mobile for personal use. It's a habit I'm comfortable with, and I didn't expect Google Calendar to provide much that would persuade me to abandon current procedures.

That said, the interface is attractive and it was quite easy to set up, though there doesn't appear to be an option to set the clock to adjust for daylight saving time. It is British Summer Time at the moment - you just have to look at the rain through your window to know that - but Google makes no acknowledgement of the fact. In the end I had to pretend I was in Algeria to get it to tell the right time.

Google Calendar works quite like Outlook's calendar facility - setting start and end times, optional reminders and so on. I started to encounter problems when it came to reminders. Reminders can be displayed in two ways - as a pop-up window, or as an email. I tried both, neither with unmitigated success. In order to benefit from pop-up reminders you have to have Google constantly open in your browser. This seems more hassle than my current system, which works because I have Outlook open all the time anyway.

Outlook - my faithful servant

As far as email reminders are concerned, I have been using for things related to this blog a Gmail account I created specially for Cam23. I have set this account to forward all emails to my work address, which I check using Outlook. But the email filter at work is mean. It lets emails about new blog comments through, but not emails from Twitter or, it turns out, Google Calendar. So I end up unreminded.

I can see Google Calendar has its advantages - the ability to share your calendar with others is handy (though do I want other people to know what I'm doing all the time? and anyway I've got Twitter for that...) - but by and large I share the reservations expressed here by my colleague Anna. Like her, I'll give this a fair chance, but I don't really expect it to become a fixture.

Thing 7

Thing 7 - Doodle

I set up a purely theoretical trip to the cinema to see the final Harry Potter film during the first week of its general release (I confess that I will be going to see it in actuality as well as in theory), and invited a few friends to join me. The creation of the poll was simplicity itself, and the responses it received provided a useful demonstration of the strengths and weaknesses of Doodle.

"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." ~ Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Doodle handily collates results on your behalf, so I could instantly tell which was the best time for us to go simply by looking at the bottom row - the only time when all five of us were available.

On the other hand, Doodle seems to be easily corruptible. Perhaps you can alter this if you create an account and change your poll's settings, but the default setting lets anyone reply to the poll and post comments, without using e.g. e-mail authorisation. This means that any person can enter someone else's name and reply on their behalf, or leave a scurrilous or abusive comment.

The times I entered as choices effectively selected themselves - they are the times of all 13 screenings of the film in 2D at the Arts Picturehouse from this coming Friday. 13 may seem a small number, but even so when I loaded the page after creating the poll it displayed the message 'This poll is bigger than usual' and hid some of the options. If one wanted to offer 20 or 30 or 40 options, for instance, to schedule a single meeting at some point in the next few weeks, it might become an unwieldy poll to navigate, and e-mail might turn out to be a preferable medium.

Still, quibbles aside, Doodle seems very user-friendly, and I can envisage it being the ideal tool to use in certain situations.

Things 5 and 6

You will have to excuse me if things seem a little rushed in this post. I haven't had much time to play around with the things we're exploring this week, but I wanted to write this before I go away for the weekend tomorrow evening. I am going to be singing in this concert - and incidentally, if you fancy an impromptu excursion to Somerset, which I admit is unlikely, there can be no better way of spending your Saturday lunchtime. Plug over.

Thing 5 - screenshots

Although I can't claim to be a master of the art, making screenshots was at least already within my capabilities. I haven't used screenshots in my previous posts in any demonstrative capacity, merely to provide a minimal amount of visual appeal. My attitude is that one picture is better than none (depending on the picture, I suppose). But I had just used the old and cumbersome way of Shift + Print Screen, then pasting into Paint and cropping as necessary, and saving as a PNG to minimize image loss and graininess.

A very brief acquaintance of LightShot is enough to convince me of its value in saving time and effort. After installing the Firefox add-on, it can't have taken me more than 30 seconds to create this screenshot from the BBC homepage with my first attempt:

I haven't tried downloading the LightShot application, but if I find myself using the add-on a lot then I'll explore further.

Thing 6 - screencasts

Now we're starting to get outside my comfort zone. I've never done anything like this before. But when it comes to demonstrating a procedure, a video will suit some people better than a series of stills, so I decided to try and make a screencast showing how to place a hold using the King's College webcat. We have an in-house catalogue which operates independently from Newton and LibrarySearch, and it might be useful to be able to direct confused freshers to a demonstrative video.

Unless I have misread the small print, Screencast-o-matic offers only limited functionality free of charge, so it is not possible to do any retrospective editing of picture or sound. Everything has to be executed in a single take, and you cannot add any commentary afterwards, so making a screencast is effectively a performance in real time. No pressure then.

After some tentative experiments, I decided that my video could do with title cards at the beginning and end to brighten it up, which I designed using Paint (very retro of me), and also some background music. I'd have preferred to use a relevant song like this, but thought I'd better choose something which wouldn't present any rights issues. Searching my computer I found a little MIDI arrangement of this song that I'd made at school. I wonder now if it's a bit intrusive, but if it bothers you then you can always turn the sound off. Anyway, without further ado:

I like that Screencast-o-matic shows the movement of the cursor and of each click with little animations to aid the viewer's focus, though I had to be careful to click on each button when I would normally simply press return to save time, remembering that such a demonstration has to spell everything out. I also paced myself quite slowly. Having a piece of music with a set length (about 40 seconds) helped me in this respect - my first attempts would have been too fast for most newbies to follow.

I uploaded my screencast to YouTube and called it 'How to place a hold', but didn't give it any tags. Perhaps if I had, there might be a more germane selection of videos in the right-hand column instead of i.e. 'How to pick a lock'.

It's been really fun exploring these things, especially screencasts, and if I get a bit more fluent I can see them both being useful tools in the library.