Block Posters Turn Images Into Large Wall Sized Posters



[pic]

Photo editing and fun with graphics

Picknik lets you edit photos online through your browser.



Picknik is an easy to use program for beginners. Free features include editing tools like red eye, crop and resize, rotate, exposure, and colors. Create tools include Effects (soften, sepia, matte, night vision, neon, and lots of other cool choices), Text (six free fonts), Stickers, and Frames. With Picknik the user does not have the option of removing background, so position your subjects well when taking photos. The best part about Picknik is Save & Share. Finally there is a free option for saving photos in formats other than JPEG. Picknik can save photos as TIFF, GIF, BMP, JPEG, and PNG formats. The TIFF format resizes easily and does not lose resolution, making it perfect for a quick poster.

Photobucket lets you save, store, and edit your photos online.



Photobucket has some great tools available for free that mimic the easy-to-use features of Photoshop Elements. Basic Editing tools include fix red eye, crop, resize, rotate, flip, adjust, and contrast. Decorate tools include adding text (and glitter text), erase, fill, grab color (the eyedropper tool), borders, and poster. Beautify tools include fix blemishes and smooth wrinkles. The Editing tools also include the ability to work with layers. There are over 23 Effects tools to choose from. The Geek tools include smart resize, smart recolor, curves, smart scissors, and smart cutout. Pictures are saved in Jpeg format, which does not translate very well to printing large sizes – too pixilated, but works very well at trading card size.

Use these tools to:

Edit photos

Share photos

Big Huge Labs has lots of free stuff to play with.



With more than 41 utilities, Big Huge Labs is a perfect sandbox. You can try out different features like Badge Maker, Map Maker, Jigsaw, Pop Art Poster, Mosaic Maker, Trading Cards, Captioner, and Flickr DNA. After you finish your creation, it’s easy to add it to Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket, or add it to a web page.

Use this tool to:

Make a mosaic of summer library program photos

Make name tags/badges for your teen club

Make trading cards of library supporters and give them out as bookmarks

Block Posters turns images into large wall-sized posters.



Upload a picture or image, decide how many sheets wide you would like your picture to be once printed, download the PDF, then print it. The result is a huge poster to stick on your wall.

Use this tool to:

Promote Library Week

Promote Banned Books Week

Promote Teen Tech Week

Blast the word READ across a library wall

Promote Get a Library Card Week (have new card holders sign in one color of ink and old card holders sign in another color of ink)

Wordle creates word clouds from the text you provide.



You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. You can then print, save to the Wordle gallery or get the html code for your word cloud.

Use this tool to:

Create posters to promote programs

Recognize volunteers or library supports

Jazz up your website

Imagechef lets you add words to any number of images.

[pic]

Copy your newly created image, send it via email, or post it on a web site.

Use this tool to:

Make graphics for thank-you cards with a specific library or book theme

CustomSignGenerator helps you create personalized images and ecards online.



With nearly 100 options to choose from, this sight is loaded with lots of fun tools to try. I selected “World’s Best Person” poster and found a volunteer option.

Use this tool to:

Upload a digital photo and in seconds you can create a World’s Best Volunteer poster, perfect for an inexpensive volunteer recognition token.

FlickrFont lets you turn boring text into great graphics using photographs of letters.



You can you generate your own FlickrFont text as a once-off, or you can cut and paste some code into your pages to convert any text to images, fresh each time the page loads!

Let’s go to the movies – video and audio editing tools

Audacity is a free, easy to use audio editor and recorder.



Audacity works for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. With Audacity you can record live audio, cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together, and change the speed of a recording.

Use this tool to:

Prepare an audio tour of your library

Record a book talk or book review

Record a story time

Animoto automatically turns your images, video clips and music into stunning videos.



A static website or presentation is easily forgotten. Use Animoto to create videos to engage your audience. Animoto offers the Professional service ($249 a year) free to non-profits.

Use this tool to:

Create a dynamic presentation using slides and photos to present to the Chamber meeting, an end of year report, at your library open house, or at a school assembly to promote summer library program

The Library Office

Dimdim bills itself as the world’s easiest web conferencing tool.



Use Dimdim to deliver synchronized live presentations, whiteboards and web pages, and share voice and video over the internet. No download required. A single click starts your meetings. A single click shares PPTs, PDFs, webpages, whiteboards, even your entire desktop. A click is all it takes to pass control of the meeting to any attendee. Pass the mic or webcam around with a single click. Up to 20 persons per meeting with Dimdim Free.

Tinychat creates your own chatroom.



You need a webcam and a microphone to use Tinychat. Choose a name for your chatroom and a url is created. With one click share the url on Twitter, MySpace, or Facebook.

Use these tools to:

Create a web-based chatroom with simple user interface.

Collaborate face-to-face when partnering with a local entity on a community project, but you can’t physically leave your desk

Establish a public access computer to help families and friends stay in touch over distances

Doodle makes scheduling virtually effortless.



An online scheduling tool, Doodle takes the pain out of finding the right date and time for an unlimited group of people to meet. The basis service is a free online coordination tool which requires neither registration nor software installation.

Use this tool to:

Schedule meetings and library programs

Fireshot is a Firefox add-on that takes screenshots of web pages.



FireShot provides a set of editing and annotation tools so the user can modify web captures, insert text and graphical annotation. Capture screenshots of entire web pages or just the visible part). Fireshot does not support MacOSX.

Use this tool to:

Take screenshots for computer classes

Take screenshots to jazz up database training handouts for patrons and staff

Powerline helps manage publicly available computers.



Powerline has one-step computer reservation, simple, efficient management of users, systems, and settings, automatic management of the user queue, and one-click statistics for day, week, month, year, and total. Powerline was by a library employee to support small library needs.

Use this tool to:

Manage your public access computer sign up and statistics

Stay connected

Meebo provides instant messaging everywhere.



Meebo lets users gather their friends on a single buddy list where they can communicate in real-time across different IM platforms, communities, and traditional social networks. The Meebo Firefox Extension gives you a sidebar with a smart buddylist and visual notifications when your friends IM you. Drag internet links and images directly to your buddies, all while surfing the Web!

Use this tool to:

Provide electronic reference to library patrons

Twitter lets you communicate what is going on right now.



Twitter is perfect for communicating between emails or blog postings with no expectations of a reply or response. Send messages of less than 140 characters. This lightweight communication medium delivers a big impact. A Guide to Twitter in Libraries is located here:

Use this tool to:

Let patrons know the internet is down

Remind patrons Storytime is this morning

Highlight specifics on your website

Post exhibit or display announcements

Post holiday hours or weather closings

Link to research tools

Announce workshop hours

Provide electronic reference

Wikis and Social Websites

Wetpaint makes it easy for groups of people to share information and build social communities.



Wetpaint helps users build websites using the power of collaborative thinking. Create a website that blends all the best features of wikis, blogs, forums and social networks into a community based around your topic. Anyone with proper permissions can edit and contribute: text, photos, videos, polls, and keep the site up to date. Because the site is a collaborative effort, it grows quickly. All changes to the site are recorded = accountability.

PBworks



PBWorks has a Basic Free service with unlimited users and 2GB of storage. Use this wiki if all you need is a basic collaborative workspace without advertising. Share documents, customize the look, use multimedia plugins, and even customize the CSS.

Luminotes is a simple personal wiki notebook.



Gather all your ideas into one place, link related concepts and organize your notes. With a WYSIWYG editor, you sign up and start typing. Share with invited users and control the level of access each person gets.

Wikispaces helps you build a wiki that’s easy to use and adopt for your audience.



Wikispace lets you publish pages that are enduring, are easy to update regularly, and can be built by numerous contributors. You can discuss and publish content without tangling the two together. A WYSIWYG editor helps with page layout and editing. Easily add video, audio, calendar, group chat and other widgets to your wiki to enhance usability. Wikispace provides up to 200 GB of storage.

Use these tools to:

Establish a staff wiki containing policies, procedures, great ideas to implement in the future, staff schedules, and reminders.

Establish a reference wiki. Post answers to frequently asked questions . When doing e-reference with Meebo or Twitter, post that you will find the answer to a patron’s question and post the response on the reference wiki (nothing personal, of course). No need to reinvent the wheel time and time again!

Website Building

Joomla! Is a free, open-source content management system (CMS).



A CMS is software that keeps track of every piece of content on your website. The site’s content can be text, photos, music, video, documents, and much more. A major advantage of using a CMS is that it requires almost no technical skill or knowledge to manage. A CMS creates dynamic web pages by separating the content from the page. User registration eliminates the middleman and allows more than just the site administrator to add, edit, and remove content. A WYSIWYG text editor makes adding content simple.

To install Joomla all you need is a web server with PHP and MySQL. Installation and downloading the latest version of Joomla is the biggest hurdle in creating your website. There are hundreds of free and commercial extensions to enhance your website including forms, e-commerce, calendars, site map builders, photo galleries, and templates which change the overall color scheme and layout of the site.

Kansas Library On the Web offers a free KLOW website for any public library in Kansas.



KLOW sites are built on Wordpress, which was created as blogging software. Blogs are a form of CMS, which organize and facilitate collaborative content development. Wordpress has numerous plug-ins: social, twitter, seo (search engine optimization), video and image, e-commerce, translators, additional WYSIWYG editors, polls, calendars, photo galleries and slideshows, and more, most of which are free. And like Joomla, Wordpress has many free themes to change the look of your website. Because KLOW sites are for Kansas libraries, code snippets are available for KS Audiobooks, music and more, Homework KS, Wifi hotspot, and a KS State Library dropdown database menu. Other states are also using Wordpress. Utah Public Libraries have tutorials containing audio and video available at:

-----------------------

Find IT for Free

Presented by Gail Santy, Central Kansas Library System

Inspired by a workshop presented at ARSL 2009 Conference by Kieran Hixon, Fremont Library District, Colorado and Judy Van Acker, Colorado Library Consortium, Colorado

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download