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One of the things that makes me steer clear of Vox websites is their adoption of the Snap web service. I hate, hate HATE mousing over those windows and having unwanted advertisements hamper my browsing/reading experience. What’s worse is that the sites Snap offers up don’t usually add any information to the blog post that actually enhances the experience I’m having with the website. So when I heard about Apture, I was skeptical. I thought it was another ad spamming service that would only serve to annoy me.
I was wrong. Dead wrong.
Apture calls itself a “rich multimedia platform” that “allows people to intuitively experience the web.” What that means in plain English is that Apture allows you to link to multimedia resources that add value and interest to your blog posts. News organizations seem to be the earliest adopters, and are using Apture to link to related stories and information that can’t be covered because of limited word counts. I think Apture could be insanely useful for libraries, particularly for library research guides. Imagine it: say you have a research guide about Japanese Canadians. The guide contains the usual links to library databases, and being that most of these are bound by proprietary licensing agreements, you probably wouldn’t want to use Apture here.
Yet, many library research guides also contain links to external, internet-based resources that are widely available to anyone with an internet connection. Some libraries add notes as a means of explaining the category further, but say your library only has a list of links that looks like this one:
Sure you could simply link to the resources, but if you used Apture, you could improve the “information scent” of these links by providing embedded snapshots of the web pages. This way users don’t have to leave the library’s web site to see whether the links would be useful. By adding a line of code before the closing body tag in your website’s code, your average list of links can now look like this:
- Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre
- Japanese Internment Camps
- Japanese Canadian National Museum
Now your links come alive with video clips, photos, and website snaps that actually add to the learning experience. That’s 20 pounds of awesome in a 5 pound sack.