How I Met a Dancing Banana

I mentioned in 'So Many Books, So Little Time' that I work in a small public library.  In addition to that I am also a student enrolled in library courses through the local community college.  I'm not entirely sure what my ultimate education goals are gong to be, but I do know that by May 2014 I hope to have a certificate in Library and Information services along with my Associate of Arts.  After that we'll see what happens.

As part of my continuing education, I get to participate in self discovery programs where I can choose a topic to read about, learn a procedure, then complete a small assignment.  My post today is about one of those assignments.

The assignment was to learn a little about WeGif.com, a snazzy little site that lets you upload 2-20 pictures and turn them into an animated GIF file.  Easy enough.  The trouble came when I was trying to figure out what I was going to photograph and animate.
 
I wanted to catch one of my cats doing something cute, but anyone who has ever tried to photograph a cat knows that they never do what you want them to when the camera is out.  My next thought was that I would bake something, and photograph the sequence of events that go into making, say a cake.

That was my plan, I was going to take an afternoon and make something delicious and photograph the process.  However a stroke of luck and a moment of inspiration struck as I was out on a errand.

We drove by a dancing banana.


Dancing Banana by magicthedragon on WeGIF

The young lady and her friend were advertising for their parents garage sale, and were kind enough to let me photograph them for my project.

It's not the greatest dancing banana GIF ever, but I think it's kind of cute, and with practice a person could probably become quite proficient at using this program.

How does this pertain to libraries?  Right off I can think of one really useful application in using it to make nifty little animations for the libraries website.  Something fun and kind of flashy can add a sense of whimsy to the children's page, or advertise an upcoming book sale, or sum up the summer reading program.  Animations tend to get attention in a way that still images don't.

I intend to share this nifty little program with the lady at our library who manages the libraries Facebook page and see where she runs with it.  As for myself, I think I still want to make a cake GIF, and if I can ever get them to cooperate, a GIF of my kitties doing something insanely cute.