Prezi, Youtube and Flickr

Prezi

I've investigated Prezi and it looks pretty good. I can't describe it in detail because I wasn't able to download and use it for myself. From what I've seen it has a good user interface and seems pretty easy to use. It has unique design elements that Microsoft PowerPoint does not and if I was a regular user of PowerPoint I may consider changing to prezi as the finished presentations look quite impressive.

From a Library perspective I think prezi could be a useful marketing tool if you had somewhere to display your prezis, I think something like that would catch the attention of people a little better than signs that users tend not to read.

From a clinical perspective Prezis might be useful for training. PowerPoint is already used extensively for lectures and Prezi is defiantly a viable alternative to PowerPoint.

As for plagiarism, there will always be someone who will steal your work no matter what you have done, you just have to trust in the honesty of the average user, most people are pretty good and will at least credit their source if they use your work.

Youtube

Youtube is probably the most well known video sharing site in the world, despite this I have never used it to upload any of my own videos. From a user perspective it is very easy to use just type what you are looking for into the search box and hit search, nine times out of ten you will find what you are looking for.

Again this is a good publicity and training tool. But again unless you have the facilities to display your videos "in house" you are just supplying your users with another link they won't follow. The training is a good idea though and its a safe bet that you can find instructional videos for pretty much anything (accuracy is another story however).

Once again plagiarism is a big issue. YouTube does try to keep this under control but as always you are dependant on peoples' honesty, however the odds of someone using your Library's promotional video for their own ends are pretty low.

Flickr

I've never used Flickr before and I probably won't again. Usually if I need an image Google image search is the first place I look. Flick operates differently from this and its probably this unfamiliarity that I don't like. Using the site for the first time wasn't very intuitive and I just didn't get on with it.

Using it as a resource doesn't seem very likely. Sure if you need a quick stock image it might be OK but I'd prefer to use Google and there are probably other sites out there that are dedicated to just medical images that you can probably use.

For my views on plagiarism I keep repeating myself so just see above.