K-20 librarians interactive video conferencing

[Ken Miller <>]

Hi to all on the list,

I am the director of a class V library in the Upper Peninsula of
Michigan. We serve about 30,000 people scattered across two counties at
its eastern end, in a very rural setting. Our largest city is Sault
Saint Marie (pronounced Soo St. Marie) with just 14,000 population. Our
entire service area is considered rural, due to low population per
square mile. We have more trees than people here.

We have used videoconferencing to cut down on mileage costs by by not
having to send staff for hundreds of miles to meetings of our library
cooperative in Marquette (3 hours away). The equipment has paid for
itself several times over in saved staff time, travel & lodging costs.

I am extremely interested in using the equipment to "broadcast" or
conference library programs to all or some of our 6 branch libraries.
The nearest one is 24 miles from our main library and the farthest is 82
miles away. By doing this we can again save money by booking a presenter
once and sharing the program. While we may have to pay the presenter a
premium for conferencing, saving travel and lodging costs will be
substantial. 

Unfortunately, right now we have only two T-1 lines into the library for
a bandwidth of 3 Mbps, which will not support this use. Our fastest
branch service is just half that. We are planning to upgrade to fiber in
the very near future. This will allow us to begin conferencing with 6-8
Mbps burstible to WOW! Thus, we will be able to share authors, poets and
lecturers across our service area.

I have no expectations from a listserv like this, as I have seen many
flop from disuse over the years. 

I am interested in finding out if anyone else has experience with the
kind of use of videoconferencing described above, and what its foibles
might be. I am also interested in picking the group brain about videoing
events and posting or streaming them--which we are just getting into as
we speak.

I really have no specific questions right now, but I expect I will as
things progress--unless someone know of an awesome Windows-based video
editing software set that is cheap or free.

Regards,

Ken
 
-- 
Kenneth B. Miller, Jr.
Director
Bayliss Public Library
Sault Sainte Marie, MI 49783

v 906.632.9331 f 906.635.0210
www.baylisslibrary.org


On Tue, 2011-11-22 at 20:40 -0500, James Werle wrote:
> All,
> 
> To date, we've had 40 individuals from school, public, academic,
> state, and national libraries respond to the invitation to join the
> inaugural meeting of the "Videoconferencing Librarians Interest Group"
> on December 8th at 11am PST/Noon MST/1pm CST/2pm EST.  
> 
> Many of you planning to connect to the Kan-Ren MCU have already completed 
> testing.
> 
> Those of you connecting to the MAGPI MCU will test in the next week.
> For those planning to join via phone conference, additional details
> will be forthcoming.  Additionally, I've subscribed each of you to a
> new 
> ""
>  listserv to help facilitate group
> communication leading up to the meeting and beyond.
> 
> In an effort to help us get acquainted, I'd like to ask each of you to
> reflect upon the following questions and post your responses to the
> listserv by Friday, 12/2.
> 
>    1) Please describe your past experience or interest in using
> videoconferencing within your organization.
> 
>    2) What's the most important thing you hope to get out of
> participating in this group?
> 
>    3) Are there specific questions, topics, collaborative activities
> you'd like the group to explore together?
> 
> Your insights will help us make our initial meeting as relevant and
> productive as possible.   I'll look forward to your thoughts.
> 
> I hope each of you enjoy a restful Thanksgiving holiday!  In the
> meantime, please don't hesitate to get in touch with questions.
> 
> Best Regards,
> James
> 
> James Werle
> Director, Internet2 K20 Initiative
> 
> 360-499-2069
> http://k20.internet2.edu