Screencast: What's the big deal about tagging?

I just finished presenting to the annual meeting of the Association of Christian Librarians, in Quincy, MA. I enjoyed the talk more than usual, and thought I'd post a screencast of part of it, twenty minutes on tagging. It's not perfect, but it hits the points I wanted to hit, and who needs perfect anyway?

The talk was somewhat anomalous insofar as I have been known to make librarians squirm with some of my examples—"leather erotica" is not generally spoken of during most library talks. So I was particularly nervous how this would go over at the CLA. All-in-all it went over just fine.

Here are the high-quality versions:
High quality (part 1/2)
High quality (part 2/2)

I've posted low-quality versions on YouTube:
Low-quality (part 1/2)
Low-quality (part 2/2)

Early Reviewers: The Movie

The Early Reviewers movie!

Abby and I just got back from BookExpo America in Los Angeles. We spent our time visiting almost every publisher in the two halls, inviting them to join our LibraryThing Early Reviewers program (for publishers/for members).

It took three days, but we did it. Response wa positive. Many publishers already knew about LibraryThing, and "free" is a powerful word for cash-strapped publicists.

To explain Early Reviewers to publishers we've put together a short (2:20 second) video. It's our first effort in this direction. In the weeks coming we hope to produce screencasts illustrating other LibraryThing projects, important features and some of the ideas behind the effort.

It's very cut-down and simplfied, and its not as technically proficient as I would like, but I'd be interested to hear what people thing of it. Leave your comment here or on Talk.

I just posted it to YouTube too, so you can share it more easily.




PS: It wasn't all work. We also managed to take some photos with the presidential candidates.