Talk:Online Powerpoint Slide Library

See the original thread of this E-Discussion on D-Groups

Judith Henderson, 2008/11/10

Hi all,

I am in the middle of compiling a report using slides from a number of different powerpoint presentations - I got to thinking about how to organise powerpoint slides into a "library" and on delving into the help section of MS Office, discovered that it can only really be done using a server and Share Point - neither of which I have access to -

so anyone got any suggestions for me? Please? A couple of issues to bear in mind - some of us use MS office, some use Macs! We are also spread geographically, so an internet solution might be a good idea.

Grateful once again for the community's assistance...

Henderson Library and Information Services.

Nick Noakes, 2008/11/10

Slide Share might work for you.

Director, Center for Enhanced Learning and Teaching, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology.

Judith Henderson, 2008/11/10

Not sure if it is, it seems to be for sharing whole presentations (which would also be useful) - I'd like a way to classify and index, store and share individual slides so that you can put them into whatever presentation/ report you're doing...(ever the librarian I suppose!)...bit like a photo library I guess.

Boris Jaeger, 2008/11/10

Hi Judith,

what about to start a wiki and for every single slide a page. Pages can be categorized (categories too) according to your needs. So you can define a browsable structure (which is also searchable). Popular example: [www.mediawiki.org wikipedia]. I've heared you even can edit the wiki from some office software like star office. The other way round (to download stuff) might be possible, too. Maybe this will also work for MSoffice. But for a wiki to be installed you need to have a server, too:-( But don't mind, there are a bunch of wiki hosts around there. One example is [www.wikia.com wikia]. If you need an private/protected wiki, there are other possibilities. I'm not sure if you can get a closed wiki from wikia. Hope the slides are not that sensitive for you to put them on the net.

Damir Simunic, 2008/11/10

Would Neulio (link is not working) fit your needs? Apparently they just launched the other day - haven't used it myself yet.

Program Manager, WA Research SA, Nyon, Switzerland.

Nancy White, 2008/11/10

Judith, since you are trying to work at the SLIDE level, could you have a .jpg for each file, or do you want an actual modifiable ppt slide? If the latter, maybe try doing a new doc on Google Presentation for each slide?

Paul Mundy, 2008/11/10

Judith:

Why don't you use PowerPoint itself? Put all of your slides into a PowerPoint presentation (or group them into several presentations according to the subject). Then you can:

• Create custom shows (in PowerPoint 2003, select Slide Show > Custom Show).
• Hide or unhide slides as you need them.
• Open several PowerPoint presentations in separate windows (Window >Arrange All), then move slides from one to another.
• Use the Notes pane to store information (eg index terms) about each slide. You can then use PowerPoint's Find function (Ctrl+F) to find the

slides you need.

To give your slides a consistent look, choose a standard format (Format > Slide Design). If you don't like any of the standard designs offered by Bill Gates, you can make your own or download new ones from the Internet.

I use a combination of these techniques for my PowerPoint training materials. I have a series of presentations on various subjects, each with a code number. When preparing a course, I can mix and match the slides or presentations I need. See for these materials.

Gabriele Sani, 2008/11/10

Judith,

If you want to share the resources and have them always accessible online than you need a server (if you have any old desktop it will do) or else you need to use some online storage. Assuming that you want online storage than probably you will want one that is password protected. One option could be to split every presentation in single slides, than use gspace (a firefox addon) to upload them in a gmail account to be shared with your colleagues, and you will have an online searchable repository. (it's quite easy to use: you can upload whole directories at the same time, and when you login you will see each slide as an email).

An alternative would be to use some online storage, (but they are not free) Regarding Paul's idea: it certainly works, but it cannot be applied if you have many slides since a ppt presentation becomes difficult to handle if it grows above a certain size (it depends on teh OS and harware you are running, but in them long rung it may become not very practical). A very interesting tool is 280 slides: you can upload/download/modify/share powerpoint presentations using their website. If it is as good as it looks, it's a must have and perfectly meets your needs Only one caveat: I have just found it thus I am not entirely sure how it ensures the privacy of your data (it could be perfect, or bad, I have no idea!!).

Please let me know what is the best solution according to your needs, it's always useful to learn something new!

James J. Tarrant, 2008/11/10

The last comment, just curious but let's say you had a library pulled together that consisted of more than 1000 slides. If you made one big presentation and then hid the non-relevant ones for any particular presentation wouldn't you still have a truly gigantic file as opposed to having a database somewhere and then pulling slides you wanted onto a particular ppt or Macintosh Keynote presentation?

Judith Henderson, 2008/11/10

Thanks to everyone for sharing...I will look into all the suggestions - I have discovered some products out there,but you have to pay for them..

Suzanne Rainey, 2008/11/11

Judith,

It seems like a tool like this for online collaboration could serve your needs: (It's a tool my company sells, so full disclosure there, but it's cheap and the document library feature of this is really excellent.)

You could upload full presentations or individual slides, create nesting folders, include descriptions for each slide/document, and it's searchable/sortable. It also tracks all edits/versions, and when you upload things you can opt to send a notice to others or groups, which is really beneficial, letting them know it's there, been revised, etc.

Feature list of ProjectSpaces, And there's info on getting a free demo.

You could have any number of users with passwords too.

Forum One Communications

Ewen Le Borgne, 2008/11/12

Dear Judith,

Would you like to kindly consider summarizing the answers you received into the KM4DEV wiki, using this template:

Template(line not working) (just copy and paste the code onto the new page). This will greatly help future users find good ideas and useful technologies when they are facing the same issue as you...

You can probably save it as a sub-bullet point under: 'Powerpoint' on the 'Knowledge sharing technologies' part of the community wiki page (link not working) the entry on slidecasting (link not working) (though this was a preexisting - empty - page and I'm not sure if anyone's intending to work further on it or not)

Feel free to get back to me for support and questions,

Davide Piga, 2010/09/23

I use Scribd, similar to Slide Share, a popular platform for sharing not only slides but other formats of documents as well. It supports thematic categories and user assigned tags.