Whether you do presentations in Powerpoint, OpenOffice or something else, making your slides publicly available can sometimes be a headache.  Enter Slideshare, which could arguably be considered the YouTube of presentation slides.

Slideshare allows you to create a (free) account, then upload slide presentations easily.  You can choose to make the presentations private or public, and allow file download of the presentation as a whole, or not.  If your presentation is part of an event, slideshows can be collated by event (such as they will be for the upcoming Computers in Libraries conference).

The service also allows you to publicly declare if your content has a Creative Commons license, and also to embed the slideshow in your web site or blog.  One downside though; make sure your presentation is ready for prime-time before you upload it.  Changes to presentations cannot be made directly via Slideshare.  Made a mistake?  You’ll have to correct it offline and re-load the whole presentation.

What does this mean to me, Laura?

1. If your library does training for staff and/or patrons, this is a great way to centralize your slide presentations at an easy-to-remember URL.  (Check out OPLIN’s account at http://www.slideshare.net/OPLIN.)
2. A library can make certain shows private, so this could be a great addition to a staff intranet.
3. Like most Web 2.0 applications, there are social aspects built in.   Communities can exist around topics and groups, and you can subscribe to the presentations of particular users.  Comments are a given.
4. Slideshare also provides handy stats; you can see how many times a particular slideshow has been viewed and how many people have marked it as a favorite or embedded it in their sites/blogs.
5. Just today, Slideshare announced they’re going mobile.