The ANimated Tutorial Sharing Project now supports a new site: the Library Information literacy Online Network or LION TV. (
http://liontv.blip.tv)
UPDATE 02/06/09: Yeah! Errors with the automated .m4v conversion on the LION TV site seem to have been corrected. The latest tutorials added to the LION TV website should now also be available for download via our iTunes feed:
http://liontv.blip.tv/rss/itunes.
LION TV is an Educational Network whose Information Literacy Broadcasts are directed at Teachers, Professors, Students or members of the General Public. It will not replace the ANTS worksites used by professional librarians, but rather will work to enhance the work performed by ANTS members by providing them with (1) an Online Network with Video Sharing Capabilities and a better screen resolution than YouTube and (2) a means of pushing the broadcasts created for ANTS out to popular Brand sites where people spend a lot of time online. A review of the site indicates that:
Less visibly:
- The site makes use of excellent Push Technology to send broadcasts out to popular Brand sites on the Internet like Facebook, Blinkx, iTunes, Flickr, AOL Video, Yahoo Video, MySpace, MeFeedia, Meebo, MeeVee, Lycos Mix, del.ic.ious and Internet Archive - so even though the broadcasts are not on YouTube, they are ubiquitous.
- The site has excellent statistics which enables us to keep track of viewing numbers for each episode.
While not all distribution sites have been officially posted to, we are working at getting the content out to as many sites as possible. In the interim you can:
Librarians wishing to add to the LION TV’s broadcasts can do so by adding a tutorial or video broadcast to the ANTS repository at DSpace.
[1] We will take the content, do the file conversions, and upload it to LION TV. So all you need do is create and upload. We will handle the rest.
(NOTE: because all content is first uploaded to DSpace, OCLC's OAIster Database - which harvests metadata from Institutional Repositories - will also identify ANTS content via its search engine.)We at ANTS and LION TV are very excited about this new site as we recognize that Librarians and Educators today face an enormous challenge in attempting to be seen and heard amidst all of the noise on the Internet - and we believe that LION TV can help. LION TV places Librarian created content onto popular brand sites and this content then directs people back to a new Library Brand site: LION TV. Once there, people will discover an Online Network with professional insight into the complex World of Information. In short, LION TV’s approach to broadcasting and brand name promotion – combined with the rich array of content coming from contributors to ANTS – will work to ensure that libraries and librarians are once again visible where many people spend their time online.
LION TV contains many broadcasts and with the help of our fellow librarians in institutions everywhere, will continue to add to our list of them. If you would like to assist with this initiative, we would encourage you to (1) become a contributing member of ANTS (see:
How to Contribute ) and (2) ensure that students, teachers, faculty or members of the general public know about this site by promoting it to your users.
[1] Note: While content is welcome, please keep in mind that it should be content that is relevant beyond your home institution or home library. Please do not include shots of your library or your library’s home page. Instead keep content generic enough to be relevant to all viewers. If you are creating a tutorial for a specific e-product, we have important Guidelines for Developing ANimated Tutorials that provide people with a good overview of what to include and exclude. These guidelines are very good and many have commented that they are useful even when they are not contributing content to ANTS.