Comments on: Idea Vault: Live Streaming

By: the strange librarian » Blog Archive » this librarian life: round 3 (the rest of the week)

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:50:52 +0000

[...] at 7.30 i watched my niece perform in Annie. i was unable to get to NJ for the event so they set up a live stream for me so the bf and i could watch from the comfort of my home office. rock on! Why don’t we do this for library programs? [...]

By: Julie

Julie — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:18:13 +0000

i totally dig this. i mean, if a local theatre company can live stream their performance so i can see my neice perform 3 states away how come libraries can’t stream their programs so people outside their buildings can enjoy / partake!?

After all, libraries aren’t just about what happens in their buildings.

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:05:48 +0000

I think livestreaming has the benefit of video without the fuss & muss of editing or uploading, but I guess the network stream is the tradeoff.

I’ve sent it off to the New Services Committee in my system. They get to wrestle with all the pros & cons of doing it. =D

By: Jess

Jess — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:01:52 +0000

Generally the answer to why people aren’t doing actual live streaming is exactly that, the time/cost/willpower. Think of the steps you take to record video and then save it and then upload it somewhere so it can be viewed. With streaming all of that has to be done on the fly over a network. The video has to be encoded as it’s recorded and then spit out to your audience. It’s not hard to do, especially these days and there are even websites that offer it as a service but for an organization to set it up and do it well it takes planning and resources just like anything else. That said people really do seem to enjoy it as a resource when it’s available and I’m pretty pro video capture for events and classes.

I found a great article about getting started with this on a small scale: http://www.masternewmedia.org/video_internet_television/live-video-streaming/broadcast-yourself-live-with-video-streaming-20070424.htm

Let me know if you ever have large scale questions, I share an office with all the guys who do the web capture/video streaming/video conferencing for Drexel.

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 05:09:50 +0000

Sounds awesome!

I know the technology exists, I know there are plenty of presentations where it could be used, I’m just wondering why libraries aren’t doing. (Ok, I mean my library.) But I haven’t really heard of any other libraries in my area doing it, so I’m wondering if it is a matter of time/cost/willpower.

By: Heather D.

Heather D. — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 05:00:33 +0000

I don’t know about libraries, but my library school (San Jose State) has done this, as did our ALA student chapter. The school has done a number of live streamed lectures/events. Our chapter hasn’t done video streaming, but we did have, for example, an online banned books week event where people were invited to read from banned books (in addition to our in-person event). We also streamed a jobs/phd panel event that we did, so that students not on campus (most of them) could attend. Basically the audio from the panel went into a computer that was on an Elluminate meeting, so everyone online could hear the panel – and then people could ask questions in Elluminate that were then relayed to the panel. Our student chapter didn’t ever try it with video, but with all the great web conferencing software that is available, I think it would certainly be possible.