Public Libraries & Digital Lives

the BALLOONASCOPE project marks the beginning of a series of discussions and experiments relating public libraries and digital culture.

Many of the resources used in the course of this pilot project are freely available on this website (including detailed instructions for developing and using your own balloonascope.)

Below is a simple, fun, worksheet which can be used to identify areas of digital culture that participants might want to explore in the future by building a picture of how different aspects of digital culture relate to an individual's everyday life.


Please add your feedback after using the worksheet.


6 freely available digital tools we've used and shared with the public during this project:


Wordle
wordle
The illustration below shows all of the elements of 'digital culture' that were suggested by the Lancashire Public over the five consultation sessions, with the most popular being represented in larger font.

It's really clear what a huge role 'facebook' is playing in peoples lives at the moment! And, 'msn,' 'google' and 'skype' figuring prominently. Both this tag cloud, and the one on the start! page were produced using the free online application wordle.


SketchUp



Google SketchUp is a great introduction to making models in 3D. It is very easy to learn, with a bit of help, most people could make their first model in 20 minutes. There are lots of tutorials online, we used SketchUp to make quick 3D sketches of the Balloonascopes as they were being built.


Blender



Blender is the best free 3D design program out there, arguably the best full stop. We used it to create the final Balloonascope animations and although the initial learning curve is steep, once you get going you can create professional looking games and animations.
Blender is Open Source which means it is made by people who, often working voluntarily, share the code they create, so that other projects can learn from their success and failures.


Drupal
Drupal is fantastic free Open Source web site building software. This site you are looking at was built in Drupal and we found it incredibly useful to be able to create good looking site with a lot of options to customize the look feel and functionality. In terms of ease of use, it is a step up from wordpress or MySpace, but once you are set up the options it gives you are immense.


Starlogo TNG
We talked to people about Starlogo TNG, which is free software which enables users with no experience of programming to program immersive 3D Games and simulations.
Its key feature is a pioneering Visual Programming Language of Blocks which allows users to build their own sets of instructions and interactions, to potentially 1000's of creatures.
To find out more about Starlogo TNG or download it for free click the image below.

Open Office
Open Office is very simply a free Open Source version of office, more reliable than the original, and minus the annoying paperclip animation.



Balloonascope by John O'Shea & Neil Winterburn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at balloonascope.folly.co.uk.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://balloonascope.folly.co.uk.