Week 4: Twitter

Courtesy of Google Images: www.johnsmallart.bogspot.com 

 

This week is all about Twitter .

Twitter is another way to keep up with or keep connected with others. It too is a type of social media being used by professionals and nonprofessionals. Libraries are also getting on the bandwagon. For this course my Twitter account is HERE.

The first thing I learned about Twitter was that it was orginally created as a app for a mobile device. The amount of tweets or activity is sky rocketing according to Faina, (2012). From 2010 to 2011,  " people [wrote] 50 million Twitter posts per day, up from 2.5 million..." the previous year. Wow! so what is everyone tweeting about? You name it, there are as many variety of tweets on subject matters as there are tweeters.   I have noticed the popularity of Twitter when I am watching news programs on TV. A plug is always put in to give an opinion or join the conversation at its respective Twitter address.

Educators and libriares are also embracing Twitter. Steven Anderson (2012) assures us that Twitter is "being embraced by more and more educators around the world."  Ryan Cordell (2010) also sings a similar tune, "Twitter can help academics make and maintain connections with people in their fields, find out interesting projects and research, or crowd source question and technical problems, but can be difficult to know where to start." 


A blog excerpt posted in the The Krafty Librairan article gaves a good overview of how to get going with Twitter for libraries. She recommended using TweetDeck or Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a bit like a Google reader as it keeps all your social networks in one spot. There are different plans to enroll in the more expensive being $10/mth, http://hootsuite.com/plans , because she claims it cuts down the amount of time needed for communicating about library things. I am interested in learning more about how libraries use these two types of SNS.

Kelly (2009) shared some great tips for using Twitter in libraries "...enables the library to reach people  on all those levels and do so much cheaper and more regularly than ever before." He is referencing that people typically use the library to get information about books and or entertainment. Information like this can be shared by the library having a Twitter account on thier homepage. I can see how using Twitter for posting announcements for services, new materials and events at ones library could be an efficient way to communicate with its patrons.

All in all I'd say I'm twitterpatterd to begin interacting with students in this course and also start following other interests.
Happy Tweeting!

 

 

Wiki Week

This past week we read a lot about Wikipedia. Call it what you will, adding information onto a public site that is accessible to any and all who have internet connection is something I never thought would be part of getting a degree in library science, but this course and others now offered at USF prove that wrong. 

So, the argument goes something like this, if we [scholars] do not add and and edit wiki pages, then how reliable is the content on any such pages, specifically, for this course, wiki pages related to library stuff?

What do you think? Do you think that by editing and or adding content to library wiki pages, it makes one a better librarian? Perhaps it makes one more knowledgeable about how finding ones way around the wiki itself.

What do the published professionals say about this: Tay Pei Lyn Grace touts "ease of use" as one of the advantages in using Wikis. To this I say, okay, but ease of use doesn't necessarily make it a vehicle librarians are going to want to use as their main source of information. "Central repository for information," is listed as her second advantage. To this I say, Yeah and Amen. If there is one thing I think librarians can appreciate it is being able to go one spot and have a collection of information.  I see this one spot shopping if you will as a benefit that would reduce information duplication. But, on the down side so many other new wikis can be created and this causes more information replication. It's a bit of a endless cycle of overlapping information. Is this a good thing?

The fact that Wikis can be edited by people simultaneously, I do see as a real advantage. But because Wikis can be changed and re-edited on a continuous basis makes me wonder about the how permanent or concrete is the information that is obtained. But as the name implies, Wiki means quick in Hawaiian,  and creating Wikis is free!  I suspect that the "free" feature of Wikis has caused it popularity even among academic libraries. But let's face it, we are all about getting information fast.  Because of their fastness to obtain information I would reason that is another reason Wikis are very popular.

Like most things in this world that are quick and free one get's what they pay for. Or in the case of free information from a Wiki, one may get exactly that,  something that may not have lasting value.  It's a gamble.  It may take longer to check the sources of the information found on a Wiki than it would to go to the University's library and look for peer reviewed literature on the topic.

For my own experience this past week of editing a wiki, I felt rather naked and ill-prepared yes even after all the 10 plus readings, videos and supplemental information posted in the module. I can only relate my reluctance to jump in and start adding/editing due to my own insecurities. Thoughts like "OMG, what if what I add is so lame and so not needed for the world of librarianship..." In the end I decided to add a link about library blogs since our class was asked to post a library blog which is where I find the blog I decided to explore, http://librarianbyday.net/.

Librarian By Day Blog

Week 3: Select a Blog

After reviewing many library blogs, I selected one named Librarian by Day written by Bobbie Newman. Here is the link to her blog: http://librarianbyday.net/

 To begin with, it was the title of this blog that piqued my interest. I liked the layout of this blog, it appealed to me visually as it had a clean back ground with it articles broken into sections. Since we just learned how to create word bubbles last week, the word bubble posted on this blog on January 23rd about an end to Library Day in the Life Project caught my eye. I began exploring the content on this blog and found that it covered a wide variety of topics that interested me, such as social tools, web 2.0, social networking sites, library learning 2.0 to name a few.

Here are the rest of the links available on this blog: A Day in the Life of a Librarian, ALA, ALA 2010, ALA Annual 2009, Awards and Accolades., Best Practices, Blogging, Books – Read This!, Change, Chit Chat, cil2009., Computers in Libraries 2010, Conference Tips, Conferences, Customer Service, Digital Divide., Digital Literacy, Digital Services, eBooks, Echo Chamber, Facebook, Feedback, Flickr, Free Tools, Fun, Funding, Future of Books, Gaming, Google, ICoLIS08, Information Access, Information Management, Innovation, Internet Librarian, Interviews, Guest Posts & Articles, Learning, Learning 2.0, Lessons Learned, Librarians, Librarianship, Libraries, Library Camp Kansas, Library Learning 2.0, Library Learning 2.1, Library Staff, Life, Links, Managers, Marketing, MLA 2008, Mobius 2008, MRRLm, Myspace, News, OITP (Office of Information Technology Policy), Older Adults, Patron Satisfaction, Patron Services, Podcasting, Policies, Poll, Polls, Presentations, Privacy, Questions, Read This, Reputation, Self Improvement, Social Media, Social Networking Sites, Social Tools, Technology, Thinking Outloud, Time Management, Tips, Training, Transliteracy, Twitter, UKSG 2008, Unconferences, Video, Visual, Web 2.0, Worst Practices, YouTube.


 Here is a little bit of information about the author of Librarian By Day: Bobbi Newman, aka, Librarian by Day, is a blogger, a Tweeter and an international public speaker. Bobbi is an ALA Councilor-at-Large, a member of the OITP Advisory Committee, and a serves on the advisory board for the Pew Internet & American Life research on Libraries in the Digital Age. Bobbi is the author of the award winning blog, Librarian by Day and in 2011 was named a Mover and Shaker by Library Journal. Her writing is regularly highlighted by American Libraries Direct. Her work has been featured by the New York Times, The Guardian, BlogHer, O’Reilly Radar, The L.A. Times, Mental Floss and GigaOm , and was once used by Facebook in a smear campaign against Google. When she’s not obsessing about digital literacy she probably obsessing about shoes. Her noteworthy projects and accomplishments include founding and coordinating the semi-annual Library Day in the Life Project. Bobbi co-founded and launched the award winning, This Is What a Librarian Looks like in February of 2012. Bobbi co-founded and wrote for the award winning Libraries and Transliteracy Project. http://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbinewman.

Looking Back

Week 2 - Looking Back: A Bit of History                                                                                                                                                This week’s readings covered a variety of topics on social media and its history. One article by Jack M. Maness, "Library 2.0 Theory: Web 2.0 and Its Implications for Libraries," described Web 2.0 as being, "...essentially, not a web...but a web of multi-sensory communication." I really like this statement as I see the Social Network Sites as evolving, breathing, and dynamic as compared to Web 1.0 as have been static. Web 2.0 allows users to interact, collaborate, and interact with web-based multi-media technologies that simply were not available in Web 1.0.

I tried to read the articles in order of date to better get a sense of the progression of where we were versus where we are today in Web technologies and social networking. 2007,one year later, Boyd's article, "Social networking sites," stresses that his research led him to discover that most users of social networks, often have existing offline relationships. I found it somewhat interesting the behaviors of users and how users often compartmentalize their online profile for different needs. For example, it would not be unusual for a user of Facebook, to also have a LinkedIn profile for his/her business/professional compartment of his life. According to Boyd, the main differences on Social Networking Sites (SNS) are "structural variations around visibility."

Basically, this means that some SNS's have different types privacy security. Certain SNS's such as Friendster and Tribe.Net are visible to anyone, via computer crawlers (computer information gatherers). SNS's are basically used to connect socially or professionally. Some SNS's users find commonality in interests such as on sites Care2(for social activists,Care2.com, Couch Surfing for travelers, www.couchsurfing.org, MyChurch (religious/Christianity)MyChurch.org, Flicker for Photo Sharing, www.flickr.com, and Last.FM for music listening, www.last.fm/ to name a few.

It was also interesting to learn that some SNS sites that bombed in the U.S. became a hit in other countries, namely, Brazil with Google’s Orkut. Something else I found of particular interest was to learn that Facebook originally started out to support colleges, namely and originally, Harvard beginning in 2004. Moving up a bit in history, (2009), Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle's article,

 "Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On," offers a bit more understanding of how the "Web" evolves. According to them, the Web has a "collective intelligence." In essence, data that is created by repetition of users increases accuracy. I would liken this idea to how Google can anticipate what one types in the search page and provides lists of perceived searches. Reilly and Battelle state, "The net is getting smarter than you might think." And on that note, I will close this post.

Week 2 STAYING IN THE LOOP

Week 2: STAYING IN THE LOOP

Currently, the social networking tools I use are Facebook, YouTube, Bing and Yelp and Pinterest. Mostly, I use Facebook and YouTube. I use Facebook to interact with friends; some are local but most are out of state. It’s an easy and free way to keep in touch especially when we only see each other once or twice a year.

I will from time to time post some new information.  Just recently I posted on Facebook that I became engaged this precipitated a flurry of congratulatory responses. I also posted my word picture on Facebook and that is how I was able to copy the image and upload it into Blogger. It took me several attempts to figure out how have the word picture appear and not just the URL link. I suppose what I learned is that there is more than one way to get the final product! I have my Facebook settings set so that I only allow certain people to see what is on my page. I post sporadically, maybe once or twice a month, sometimes by sharing a comment about myself or sometimes posting on someone else’s page. From time to time I upload photos. From time to time I will see a friend online we will have a little online chat. Recently, my son has been encouraging me to join LinkedIn, a social professional web site to network, but as of yet, I haven’t felt that I had enough professional substance to enter into that site. Any suggestions on that?

Getting Out There Again

Getting Out There Again

This blog will be my second time creating a blog. Formerly I created a blog for one of my courses named Instructional Media which I used strictly for the course. I used Blogger.com to set up that blog as well. So, my experience with using and reading blogs is somewhat limited and relatively new for me. As much as I know about blogging, which is limited; I liked it. I think blogging is a great tool to stay in touch with the outside world, share ideas and information and interact with others. It is a place where one can express their opinions openly, a bit of an online commons. However, I confess, I am not currently following any particular blog due mostly to a limited amount of time in my schedule but I am looking forward to this course to improve my social media skills!