Embedded Content

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Sep 24

I recently came across the synthesize-specialize-mobilize blog, authored by Mark Dahl, Associate Director of Digital Initiatives and Collection Management, Watzek Library, Lewis & Clark College. Dahl had written an article entitled The Evolution of Library Discovery Systems which was being used as a basis for discussion at a neighboring university library's retreat. What struck me as interesting was the way in which Dahl chose to introduce his article to the retreat participants via an embedded YouTube video and immediately below that the full text of his article embedded in a ScribD document view.

The use of embeddable content is so commonplace at this point and yet so noteworthy. The upside of this functionality is that content may be viewed at a variety of sites (those commenting on or supporting the value of the content) while still residing on the host server. Controlled sharing which meets both the need of the user and the need of the provider. Shouldn't authoritative content providers be working to provide this sharing option to their audiences?

While Dahl's article was formally published in his state library association's quarterly (posted in PDF here), it seems equally logical that he would use embedding for expanding the reach of his voice, both literally and figuratively. (It's just serendipitous that he's talking about web-scale discovery systems, both in his article and on his blog.)