Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Educational Journey
Before this course I had never heard of wikis, only just heard of blogs through another LIS course, never looked at Del.icio.us, nor tagged anything in cyberspace or heard of folksonomies, never heard of Second Life and the virtual world of gaming. (I had a Facebook account but only on a recommendation of my children) It has been an enlightening journey through the world of social software and libraries and and something that I would never or probably never explored had it not been for this course. It has been great to have a 'hands on' practice into the world of blogs, wikis etc and the knowledge I have learnt will be invaluable for future career prospects. I would recommend this course to anyone in the MLIS program as being vital knowledge in the world of libraries be they academic, public, special or anything else. Now that we have learnt this much it is important to keep up with the ever changing virtual world and take advantage of the social software in our future library careers. I will most certainly check back on all of our blogs and especially those of the more prominent writers that we have read over the weeks. I am not sure if I will maintain my blog. I will need to have a theme/goal/subject to pontificate about and will not keep it just for the sake of it. However I will expound the advantages of wikis to anyone that I will be involved with in writing a report, putting together a presentation or just accumulating information on a topic. I have not checked my RSS feeds in a while basically because of time constraints and as this is not especially important to me, I will probably not maintain the Google aggregator. I enjoy visiting a small number of websites and will continue to do so as time permits. There is only so much time that I wish to devote to Internet, virtual and technological interests and that is already taken up with work related tasks, e-mail, MSN and Facebook. However I will pass on the knowledge that I have gained to anyone who is interested in my work or private life. Thanks Amanda for enlightening me to this world of social networking.
Friday, August 3, 2007
Pass the web page please.. and the winner is....
Web 2.0 has been defined as 'transforming the web into a space that allows anyone to create and share information online - a space for collaboration, conversation and interaction; a space that is highly dynamic, flexible and adaptable' (Karen Coombs). The key to this comment is that the space has to be flexible and adaptable. Social software definitely does have a place in library service provision as has been explored throughout this course. Obviously some aspects of social software lend themselves more efficiently and effectively to library service provision such as blogs which are adaptable to whatever information the library is communicating to the community. They can be set up for a purpose, or for a specific duration or as an ongoing part of the library webpages. I think that blogs are probably the low fruit on the tree, be it an apple, pear or cherry tree as they can be that adaptable.
I see wikis as being set up for a specific purpose and of more use internally to a library system than by inviting the community to participate. Wikis are used to amagamate ideas and present them in one place which is accesssible for anyone with the password.
Information organisations can harness the capabilities of tagging and folksonomies. Information can be organised by subject and tagged and be accessible to anyone interested to search for it.
The tagging of websites and information can be done by library staff and then be made accessible to anyone. In this way different aspects of the information is kept in one place with associated subjects and tags.
Online social networks such as MySpace and Facebook do not seem to me to so adaptable for library communities. These are not webspaces that anyone expects library information to appear and I think that they should remain as social networking sites aimed primarily at connecting individuals or specific groups without the parameters such as a library. Some libraries have been using Facebook as promotion for events but I see that these could best be communicated by way of a blog instead. This is clearly libraries using the social software networking sites just because they can.
I like the idea of Second Life and the library community that has been established there. However I am not sure how much of this is 'playing' or 'educational' or both (which is fine) but it must take a considerable amount of time to participate in this to the extent whereby something is gained..and how much of the virtual world translates into the real world? or is that an irrelevant and not a very important question or concern? This type of software will only be accessed by a small minority of those that know how, have time to and feel there is a benefit to doing so.
My votes for social software and libraries goes to blogs primarily as being an online extensions of newsletters to the community which allow immediate feedback, can be continually updated and can communicate any kind of information and be accessed by a larger number of patrons.
I see wikis as being set up for a specific purpose and of more use internally to a library system than by inviting the community to participate. Wikis are used to amagamate ideas and present them in one place which is accesssible for anyone with the password.
Information organisations can harness the capabilities of tagging and folksonomies. Information can be organised by subject and tagged and be accessible to anyone interested to search for it.
The tagging of websites and information can be done by library staff and then be made accessible to anyone. In this way different aspects of the information is kept in one place with associated subjects and tags.
Online social networks such as MySpace and Facebook do not seem to me to so adaptable for library communities. These are not webspaces that anyone expects library information to appear and I think that they should remain as social networking sites aimed primarily at connecting individuals or specific groups without the parameters such as a library. Some libraries have been using Facebook as promotion for events but I see that these could best be communicated by way of a blog instead. This is clearly libraries using the social software networking sites just because they can.
I like the idea of Second Life and the library community that has been established there. However I am not sure how much of this is 'playing' or 'educational' or both (which is fine) but it must take a considerable amount of time to participate in this to the extent whereby something is gained..and how much of the virtual world translates into the real world? or is that an irrelevant and not a very important question or concern? This type of software will only be accessed by a small minority of those that know how, have time to and feel there is a benefit to doing so.
My votes for social software and libraries goes to blogs primarily as being an online extensions of newsletters to the community which allow immediate feedback, can be continually updated and can communicate any kind of information and be accessed by a larger number of patrons.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Libraries in MySpace and Facebook
When I first thought MySpace and Facebook, I could not see how libraries could use these networks to reach out to the community. Farkas emphasizes that most libraries do not represent themselves very well on these networks and that it is important to have a goal and provide a real use to their patrons. By just providing a profile of a library does not make it more visible and useful. There has to be a reason that someone on these sites will search for a library and or post a comment to the comment box or wall. By networking with these sites, the libraries are reaching out to a specific segment of the population who frequent these locations, namely teens and young people. It is logical that any outreach to these groups from libraries will be designed to attract their attention and this is apparent in sites such as the Morrisville College Library, the Hennepin County Library and the Denver Public Library sites. These sites are very busy, colourful, full of photos, graphics, (some animated) links, book covers, dialogue between users and YouTube videos. Personally I would find these sites just a little too busy and challenging to navigate..probably because I am not a teen or even close!
Farkas comments that many libraries are using blogs on MySpace as a one way communication tool and not utilising the comments and wall area effectively. However, the Ann Arbor District Library is encouraging feedback from their patrons who wish to comment as is Crosset Library at Bennington College who is asking for patron input on materials to buy for the library and is keeping the patrons aware of their buying timeline.
Robert Lackie is concerned about dismissing the stereotypical librarian and increasing the campus visibility by using social networking tools and letting students know what the library is really all about. However unless he has a goal, this appears to be just what Farkas was talking about above.
Helen Bowers in her article on MySpace dismissed something in passing which I found interesting. She said that we should not create public profile spaces for library patrons on the web, or use the information to let them hook up with other patrons who's circulation history points to common reading interests. Surely this has potential. There is probably a way around this in that patrons could make contact with other patrons and share reading lists of favorite authors, titles or topics. There may network groups on Facebook who have, for example, 'mystery books' or 'Greek architecture' as a commonality. If not, then there is potential for such a group to form.
It seems that as users of these sites, we are continually looking for ways to communicate, learn and and be aware of everything that interests us and can involve us more and more in staying current. I would hope that some of this interaction will result in real human type face to face interaction as otherwise we will lose the ability to communicate and form real time (not cyber space) relationships.
Farkas comments that many libraries are using blogs on MySpace as a one way communication tool and not utilising the comments and wall area effectively. However, the Ann Arbor District Library is encouraging feedback from their patrons who wish to comment as is Crosset Library at Bennington College who is asking for patron input on materials to buy for the library and is keeping the patrons aware of their buying timeline.
Robert Lackie is concerned about dismissing the stereotypical librarian and increasing the campus visibility by using social networking tools and letting students know what the library is really all about. However unless he has a goal, this appears to be just what Farkas was talking about above.
Helen Bowers in her article on MySpace dismissed something in passing which I found interesting. She said that we should not create public profile spaces for library patrons on the web, or use the information to let them hook up with other patrons who's circulation history points to common reading interests. Surely this has potential. There is probably a way around this in that patrons could make contact with other patrons and share reading lists of favorite authors, titles or topics. There may network groups on Facebook who have, for example, 'mystery books' or 'Greek architecture' as a commonality. If not, then there is potential for such a group to form.
It seems that as users of these sites, we are continually looking for ways to communicate, learn and and be aware of everything that interests us and can involve us more and more in staying current. I would hope that some of this interaction will result in real human type face to face interaction as otherwise we will lose the ability to communicate and form real time (not cyber space) relationships.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Social Networks
This weeks articles mostly covered the two most popular online social networks, that of MySpace and Facebook and discussed the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) which is currently being legislated in the US Senate. Henry Jenkins in his article argues that instead of banning social networking in schools and libraries the correct way is to educated the students and users to use it in a safe and responsible way. He quotes that 'some bonehead in Alaska has his neural tubes clogged' and is responsible for introducing this legislation and as it is an election year, Wade Roush in his article on the 'Moral Panic over social networking sites', says that anyone who does not support it will be seen as looking 'soft' on sexual predators.
However, as many of the authors of the articles stress, child abductions and potential predators very rarely happen due to an Internet encounter. The potential implications for removing access to social networks for many students will only increase the digital divide between those who have access at home and those that do not. The correct solution to this 'problem' is to educate those students to deal with any negative encounters in the right way and not to take away social networking for everyone else.
Matthew Willams says in his article 'MySpace and Facebook', some educators see these sites as taking students away from 'reading and studying' and someone went as far as to call social networking 'an abuse of technology'. Williams goes on to say that some students who were never really interested in lectures and studying in the first place and this modern technology just gives them a way to express their dissatisfaction. There will always be those educators who still wish to teach in the more traditional ways and wish to dismiss the technological advances. However, in time they will have to adapt or retire. Education seems to be more in the hands of the users or receivers than the providers and educators will have to adapt and use the social networks if they wish to provide interesting and worthwhile methods of teaching.
At the other end of the spectrum to the DOPA is the attitude of some educators who see the benefits of social networking and are finding ways to incorporate it into their classroom experiences
As Henry Jenkins said in his article 'MySpace and DOPA', teachers are already using blogs for teaching, linking classrooms on a global scale, for social studies, posting student made videos on YouTube, taping podcasts of lectures and students are editing and posting on Wikipedia and designing webpages. All of this would disappear if the legislation is passed and social networks are banned in schools.
I was interested to read in Danah Boyd's article on 'Identity Production in a Networked Culture' that the MySpace site acts as an area for teens to 'hangout' which is out of control of their parents and educators. Parents are scared to let teens hang around the mall or the park and have controlled their lives so much that the only place left seems to be the digital world of MySpace where teens can connect with each other, develop profiles and gather in a space where they can see and be seen by their peers.
I am more familar with Facebook having had an account for three or so months and enjoy the ability to share photos with friends and family. Instead of having to e-mail photos to everyone on the mailing list, there is only one place to post them now and they are available for those people to whom I allow access. In a world where people often do not live close by Facebook is another way to stay in contact and keep up to date with activities and the lives of our families and friends. In other words its really great to 'peep' into my kid's lives and see what they are saying, to whom and from whom and stay current with their activities.
There is a site called 'Librarians and Facebook' with 1,883 members who chat about all aspects of libraries including conferences, job and educational opportunities. There is also a site called 'Digital Reference and Facebook'with 426 members which is devoted to digital reference services, and serves as a forum for individuals with an interest in any and all types of digital reference. I will explore more of these sites in the next few days.
However, as many of the authors of the articles stress, child abductions and potential predators very rarely happen due to an Internet encounter. The potential implications for removing access to social networks for many students will only increase the digital divide between those who have access at home and those that do not. The correct solution to this 'problem' is to educate those students to deal with any negative encounters in the right way and not to take away social networking for everyone else.
Matthew Willams says in his article 'MySpace and Facebook', some educators see these sites as taking students away from 'reading and studying' and someone went as far as to call social networking 'an abuse of technology'. Williams goes on to say that some students who were never really interested in lectures and studying in the first place and this modern technology just gives them a way to express their dissatisfaction. There will always be those educators who still wish to teach in the more traditional ways and wish to dismiss the technological advances. However, in time they will have to adapt or retire. Education seems to be more in the hands of the users or receivers than the providers and educators will have to adapt and use the social networks if they wish to provide interesting and worthwhile methods of teaching.
At the other end of the spectrum to the DOPA is the attitude of some educators who see the benefits of social networking and are finding ways to incorporate it into their classroom experiences
As Henry Jenkins said in his article 'MySpace and DOPA', teachers are already using blogs for teaching, linking classrooms on a global scale, for social studies, posting student made videos on YouTube, taping podcasts of lectures and students are editing and posting on Wikipedia and designing webpages. All of this would disappear if the legislation is passed and social networks are banned in schools.
I was interested to read in Danah Boyd's article on 'Identity Production in a Networked Culture' that the MySpace site acts as an area for teens to 'hangout' which is out of control of their parents and educators. Parents are scared to let teens hang around the mall or the park and have controlled their lives so much that the only place left seems to be the digital world of MySpace where teens can connect with each other, develop profiles and gather in a space where they can see and be seen by their peers.
I am more familar with Facebook having had an account for three or so months and enjoy the ability to share photos with friends and family. Instead of having to e-mail photos to everyone on the mailing list, there is only one place to post them now and they are available for those people to whom I allow access. In a world where people often do not live close by Facebook is another way to stay in contact and keep up to date with activities and the lives of our families and friends. In other words its really great to 'peep' into my kid's lives and see what they are saying, to whom and from whom and stay current with their activities.
There is a site called 'Librarians and Facebook' with 1,883 members who chat about all aspects of libraries including conferences, job and educational opportunities. There is also a site called 'Digital Reference and Facebook'with 426 members which is devoted to digital reference services, and serves as a forum for individuals with an interest in any and all types of digital reference. I will explore more of these sites in the next few days.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Folksonomies continued...
This weeks articles cover the many aspects of tagging and folksonomies and their advantages and disadvantages from a variety of viewpoints. I wondered why Ellyssa Kroski called her article 'The Hive Mind' and looking at Wikipedia it is a kind of groupthink or collective consciousness and conformity or a software framework - maybe the collective consciousness of social insects such as bees. The article was inaccessible on the Internet on Tuesday evening (June 26th) around 9.30 pm. However I had read it earlier in the week and was interested to read about the 'Long Tail' phenomenon which had not come across before. It is relevant to tagging where the views of the minorities with less popular tags will be more in number than the more popular tags. The non mainstream topics outnumber the more popular ones and it is descriptive of a graph showing a long tail at the end of the statistical distribution.
Two of the articles this week, one by Emanuele Quinterelli and by Carol Ou talk about finding the 'middle ground' between user tagging at one end and the classification by a librarian at the other end and this may be the future direction of social bookmarking. Alex Wright wrote that
'a middle ground between.. bottom up tagging and top down controlled vocabularies....where end users could freely create, adopt or reject terms stored in a distributed repository that gets administered by a representative authority that 'owns' the vocabulary'
Emanuele Quinterelli says that 'All that we have to do is to merge and leverage emerging and traditional tools to improve findability. Somewhere at the intersection of those two models is a more powerful framework for identifying, sharing and finding information.'
He concludes by saying that 'Traditional hierarchies for organising information (or reality) will not be replaced by tags, but through tagging we are finding new ways of thinking about classification and new applications for organising and sharing knowledge'. He sees tagging and the new bottom up system as being a step towards a new way of organising information that will develop in the future. This is the view supported by Jon Lebowski.
In summary I liked the comment by Timo Hannay where he describes a folksonomy as a 'liberating, not restrictive; bottom up, not imposed; relational, not hierarchical. It also cleverly harnesses selfish acts and directs them towards the common good. But most of all, it just seems to fit the way our brains work'
Two of the articles this week, one by Emanuele Quinterelli and by Carol Ou talk about finding the 'middle ground' between user tagging at one end and the classification by a librarian at the other end and this may be the future direction of social bookmarking. Alex Wright wrote that
'a middle ground between.. bottom up tagging and top down controlled vocabularies....where end users could freely create, adopt or reject terms stored in a distributed repository that gets administered by a representative authority that 'owns' the vocabulary'
Emanuele Quinterelli says that 'All that we have to do is to merge and leverage emerging and traditional tools to improve findability. Somewhere at the intersection of those two models is a more powerful framework for identifying, sharing and finding information.'
He concludes by saying that 'Traditional hierarchies for organising information (or reality) will not be replaced by tags, but through tagging we are finding new ways of thinking about classification and new applications for organising and sharing knowledge'. He sees tagging and the new bottom up system as being a step towards a new way of organising information that will develop in the future. This is the view supported by Jon Lebowski.
In summary I liked the comment by Timo Hannay where he describes a folksonomy as a 'liberating, not restrictive; bottom up, not imposed; relational, not hierarchical. It also cleverly harnesses selfish acts and directs them towards the common good. But most of all, it just seems to fit the way our brains work'
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Del.icio.us in the Libraries
Looking at the case studies this week showing how libraries use the social tagging site 'Del.icio.us' reminded me of the old 'Vertical File' system I used to maintain working in a public and school library. These were documents that I would save under a specific label which might be useful for someone researching this topic of for a school project for example. The difference here is that I would be the only person doing this and presumably in the libraries in the case studies there are many people choosing articles from the Internet and 'saving' them in a file under their library name in Del.icio.us. Why are the saving them?? I was looking at the tag cloud in the LaGrange Park Library and wondering why anyone would tag a website showing a list of free knitting patterns. I have nothing against knitting, but what does this have to do with the library? There is a tag called 'cicadas' which takes the user to a very nice site on cicadas in Illinois, but where is the relevance to the library?
I have looked at Maui Community College library and wondered why there would be tagged a site on the Big Business of Dairy farming? It is even listed on the library homepage. Its an interesting informative site, but what is its relevance with Maui Community College Library?
The Penn Tags site opens with a tag cloud of popular tags and then lists pages and pages of boring information that would take hours to unravel and work out what the content is. I am really not sure what all this is about.
The Seldovia library at Del.icio.us is more of what I would expect for a library to tag and there appears to be many tags related to library information. Once again it looks like a vertical file with the library related tags in a darked and larger font making them more visible. It would be nice to be able to link the title of the library on the top of the page to the library website. I would like to use that to find out where the library was located.
The Thomas Ford Memorial Library has only 65 tags in the tag cloud which is a small number considering that they have been tagging for at least two years. Once again I am not sure why tags for 'recipes' and 'food' are listed here.
It seems by looking at these tags for libraries that anything can be tagged and there are no rules or guidelines to decide what can or cannot be included in a library's bookmarking site.
The number of tags at Lansing Public Library is enormous and once again looks like the old 'vertical file'. If the purpose for the long alphabetical list of subjects under the auspices of the library is to provide an access point for students or any researchers to find information on anything listed, then this is surely not the way to do research. I looked under the 'Dickens' tag and found only one site, 'Birds' had 4 sites, 'Ecology' had 4 and 'Soccer' had 4. Based on this it would be more efficient and effective to search 'Google' to find any required information.
Michael Jenson in his article on 'The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority' in the Chronicle Review described Del.icio.us as 'a collection of favourite sites where descriptive tags denoting contents raise the authority of the listed site'
If this is the purpose of tagging a site especially under the auspices of a library, then there needs to be some guidelines established as to the authority, content and future use of the website.
In my opinion, just because someone tags it for personal future use be it in a library or not, does not immediately raise the authority of the site.
I have looked at Maui Community College library and wondered why there would be tagged a site on the Big Business of Dairy farming? It is even listed on the library homepage. Its an interesting informative site, but what is its relevance with Maui Community College Library?
The Penn Tags site opens with a tag cloud of popular tags and then lists pages and pages of boring information that would take hours to unravel and work out what the content is. I am really not sure what all this is about.
The Seldovia library at Del.icio.us is more of what I would expect for a library to tag and there appears to be many tags related to library information. Once again it looks like a vertical file with the library related tags in a darked and larger font making them more visible. It would be nice to be able to link the title of the library on the top of the page to the library website. I would like to use that to find out where the library was located.
The Thomas Ford Memorial Library has only 65 tags in the tag cloud which is a small number considering that they have been tagging for at least two years. Once again I am not sure why tags for 'recipes' and 'food' are listed here.
It seems by looking at these tags for libraries that anything can be tagged and there are no rules or guidelines to decide what can or cannot be included in a library's bookmarking site.
The number of tags at Lansing Public Library is enormous and once again looks like the old 'vertical file'. If the purpose for the long alphabetical list of subjects under the auspices of the library is to provide an access point for students or any researchers to find information on anything listed, then this is surely not the way to do research. I looked under the 'Dickens' tag and found only one site, 'Birds' had 4 sites, 'Ecology' had 4 and 'Soccer' had 4. Based on this it would be more efficient and effective to search 'Google' to find any required information.
Michael Jenson in his article on 'The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority' in the Chronicle Review described Del.icio.us as 'a collection of favourite sites where descriptive tags denoting contents raise the authority of the listed site'
If this is the purpose of tagging a site especially under the auspices of a library, then there needs to be some guidelines established as to the authority, content and future use of the website.
In my opinion, just because someone tags it for personal future use be it in a library or not, does not immediately raise the authority of the site.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Libraries turning into bookstores and Tagging at 'Lavalife'!!
The idea behind social bookmarking or tagging is that the person who will retrieve the information at a later date is the one who decides which tags to use. 'Folksonomy' is the general public or folk choosing their own keywords to tag the items they want to remember or return to at a later date. The same idea is behind wikis previously discussed whereby folks who have no previous experience with web design or html can contribute to a website and feel that their opinion and input are as important as those web designers who have extensive technological knowledge. The idea of wikis, social bookmarking and blog creation is opening up many doors for the 'common man' to contribute in many ways with his ideas, knowledge and creativity.
Tony Hammond talks about 'phonetags' whereby listeners hear a song and use a cell phone to tag it to a website and retrieve it later and see the bookmarked songs. The same system could be used for retrieving information about books, titles or authors that someone was looking at in a bookstore or library which they wanted to remember. The site 'Del.icio.us' as a social bookmarking manager could also be used to remember a list of titles or authors as is shown by two of themore popular tags such as 'toread' and a 'wishlist'.
Adam Mathes in his article entitles 'Folksonomies' makes an interesting point when he talks about people's behaviour being influenced by other users of the same social bookmarking site and developing relationships with groups of users who share tag use. If the retrieval systems incorporate user centered managment tools, these schemes developed by users have the potential to be popular and well used. As a translation if 'Joe Public' tagged the books in a library it would be used and understood and be more accessible by more people. In my opinion it would probably result in a real mess! Is it just a matter of time before tagging extends to the 'real world away from the technological one and libraries consider a complete different organisation of resources.? The Gilbert Library in Arizona is the first library in the USA to reorganise its books based on a book store model. However I am not sure how inter library loans between branches would work if one library developed its own system. But I am sure there will be ways around this.
Joshua Porter talks about not being blinded by the aggregation light and emphasises the fact that people do not tag for the sake of tagging. The articles must have value to the tagger before he or she will tag and and he stresses that software developers must ensure that they produce something that people will value and want to tag. The opportunity to tag will be beneficial to those people who are already engaged in certain activities on the Internet and tagging will be the 'cream on the cake'.
In the many dating sites on the Internet the opportunities are enormous to tag 'people' that look interesting and build a 'possibilities' list for future reference. Such tags as 'musical', 'hockey dad' or 'sports jock' might be seen on a 'del.icio.us/lavalife' site !! The opportunities are endless!!
Tony Hammond talks about 'phonetags' whereby listeners hear a song and use a cell phone to tag it to a website and retrieve it later and see the bookmarked songs. The same system could be used for retrieving information about books, titles or authors that someone was looking at in a bookstore or library which they wanted to remember. The site 'Del.icio.us' as a social bookmarking manager could also be used to remember a list of titles or authors as is shown by two of themore popular tags such as 'toread' and a 'wishlist'.
Adam Mathes in his article entitles 'Folksonomies' makes an interesting point when he talks about people's behaviour being influenced by other users of the same social bookmarking site and developing relationships with groups of users who share tag use. If the retrieval systems incorporate user centered managment tools, these schemes developed by users have the potential to be popular and well used. As a translation if 'Joe Public' tagged the books in a library it would be used and understood and be more accessible by more people. In my opinion it would probably result in a real mess! Is it just a matter of time before tagging extends to the 'real world away from the technological one and libraries consider a complete different organisation of resources.? The Gilbert Library in Arizona is the first library in the USA to reorganise its books based on a book store model. However I am not sure how inter library loans between branches would work if one library developed its own system. But I am sure there will be ways around this.
Joshua Porter talks about not being blinded by the aggregation light and emphasises the fact that people do not tag for the sake of tagging. The articles must have value to the tagger before he or she will tag and and he stresses that software developers must ensure that they produce something that people will value and want to tag. The opportunity to tag will be beneficial to those people who are already engaged in certain activities on the Internet and tagging will be the 'cream on the cake'.
In the many dating sites on the Internet the opportunities are enormous to tag 'people' that look interesting and build a 'possibilities' list for future reference. Such tags as 'musical', 'hockey dad' or 'sports jock' might be seen on a 'del.icio.us/lavalife' site !! The opportunities are endless!!
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Wiki Cases: the dormant, the stagnant and the blog??
Writing reviews on books lends itself well to the idea of a wiki whereby the community can contribute frequently, authoritatively and enthusiastically on chosen literature. This works well with the Princeton Public Library Book Lovers wiki. The adult members of the summer reading program could either create a review on the wiki directly after obtaining a log in agreeing to certain rules and disclaimers or they could e-mail the review to the library who would input it to the wiki. The result is list of 17 genres with over 225 titles, with a star rating which represent the summer's reading reviews for the community who participated. This wiki represents a limited period of time and seems to have been set up primarily for the summer reading club. There has been little activity on this wiki for almost a year. It seems to be a dormant wiki but it appears that it will be revitalised in the summer of 2007 whereby it will serve the same purpose as the summer of 2006. There is no indication at this time whether the list will be added to with the 2007 additions or a seperate list will be created. I especially like the links to the authors from the reviews.
The Wyoming Authors Wiki seems to have been a great idea to include every author who lives in Wyoming or has done or who writes about Wyoming. But at some point the wiki will stagnate as all list becomes complete and there are vere few additions. The wiki includes links to book events and new books but for 2007 there have only been 2 new books added so farwhereas in 2006 there were 44 new books. The wiki looks a lot like a blog with a side bar with links to education, business, government, employment in the State as well as links to the library and catalogue. There is a link to an upcoming book fair in Cheyenne in the Fall. However the future of this wiki must be in jeopardy unless an effort and invitation to the community is made to contribute some information other than a list of Wyoming authors. This is a very narrow wiki with an uncertain future.
Both of the above wikis are for a controlled group of users who are required to log in, and receive permission to create and edit information.
The Bull Run Library wiki, at a first glance, looks a lot like a blog rather than a wiki especially with the links in the sidebar to resources and archives. However the word wiki is in the URL and 'Front page' and log in at the top and pb wiki at the bottom but the word wiki does not appear in the text on the page. I could not find any invitation to the community to contribute anything to this wiki and it just appears to be a page of links to other resources and library related sites and information. This wiki does not appear worth exploring futher and does not invite any user input, creativity or editing. Clearly the creators do not want any public or community input. It would be best to turn this into a blog!
The Wyoming Authors Wiki seems to have been a great idea to include every author who lives in Wyoming or has done or who writes about Wyoming. But at some point the wiki will stagnate as all list becomes complete and there are vere few additions. The wiki includes links to book events and new books but for 2007 there have only been 2 new books added so farwhereas in 2006 there were 44 new books. The wiki looks a lot like a blog with a side bar with links to education, business, government, employment in the State as well as links to the library and catalogue. There is a link to an upcoming book fair in Cheyenne in the Fall. However the future of this wiki must be in jeopardy unless an effort and invitation to the community is made to contribute some information other than a list of Wyoming authors. This is a very narrow wiki with an uncertain future.
Both of the above wikis are for a controlled group of users who are required to log in, and receive permission to create and edit information.
The Bull Run Library wiki, at a first glance, looks a lot like a blog rather than a wiki especially with the links in the sidebar to resources and archives. However the word wiki is in the URL and 'Front page' and log in at the top and pb wiki at the bottom but the word wiki does not appear in the text on the page. I could not find any invitation to the community to contribute anything to this wiki and it just appears to be a page of links to other resources and library related sites and information. This wiki does not appear worth exploring futher and does not invite any user input, creativity or editing. Clearly the creators do not want any public or community input. It would be best to turn this into a blog!
Monday, June 11, 2007
Wikis have it all - Knowledge, Communication, Sharing, Technology - the epitome of social software
I like one of the comments from Meredith Farkas when she says that 'the key is to use a wiki to fill a need, not to find a need for a wiki because you want to use a wiki'. There seems to be numerous occasions and reasons to use this collaboratitve tool in the library world. Angela Kile's discussion of knowledge management and libraries seem to reinforce the idea that staff and employees have much more to contribute than they have been able to previously and that everyone can gain by tapping into this knowledge that they before now did not have an acceptable outlet or platform to be exhibited. Wikis can be used internally in libraries and improve the efficiency, accuracy and consistency of information, work is carried out more effectively and with a rapid transfer of knowledge between all levels within the organisation and libraries can remain competitive and current with the constant changes in the field.
For wikis in the workplace to be successful, they need an environment where there is a high level of trust in the users and a certain amount of control when it is first set up in terms of the goal and objectives, the frequency of communication, the best technology to use, how many users will be able to edit the wiki, whether there will be a log in required and how much training staff will need to understand the use of the wiki.
Angela Kile talks about using wikis in library reference work to share knowledge about best practices in library processes and information sources. Using a wiki for frequently asked questions and as resource guides for subject librarians as well as for instruction. The Oregon Library has such an instruction wiki which appears to be new as there has been little input so far. The Biz Wiki was developed by the Ohio University Library as a specific subject resource guide.
Wikis have been described as 'conversational technology' by supporting the natural process of conversation and recording the result and updating as frequently as anyone edits a page. By their very nature wikis capture the here and now of the topic or situation in question. They are never static, ever moving and represent the latest and most current thoughts and ideas from a defined audience. To summarise this blog I like another comment from Meredith Farkas when she says that the wiki administrator needs to be a gardener
" They need to keep their rows of flowers (pages) nice and neat and organized. They need to keep constant watch on their garden to keep the weeds (spam) at bay. The more they make their garden a good environment for growth (of ideas), the more growth they will see. If you do a good job as a wiki gardener, you will eventually see the fruits of your labours'
For wikis in the workplace to be successful, they need an environment where there is a high level of trust in the users and a certain amount of control when it is first set up in terms of the goal and objectives, the frequency of communication, the best technology to use, how many users will be able to edit the wiki, whether there will be a log in required and how much training staff will need to understand the use of the wiki.
Angela Kile talks about using wikis in library reference work to share knowledge about best practices in library processes and information sources. Using a wiki for frequently asked questions and as resource guides for subject librarians as well as for instruction. The Oregon Library has such an instruction wiki which appears to be new as there has been little input so far. The Biz Wiki was developed by the Ohio University Library as a specific subject resource guide.
Wikis have been described as 'conversational technology' by supporting the natural process of conversation and recording the result and updating as frequently as anyone edits a page. By their very nature wikis capture the here and now of the topic or situation in question. They are never static, ever moving and represent the latest and most current thoughts and ideas from a defined audience. To summarise this blog I like another comment from Meredith Farkas when she says that the wiki administrator needs to be a gardener
" They need to keep their rows of flowers (pages) nice and neat and organized. They need to keep constant watch on their garden to keep the weeds (spam) at bay. The more they make their garden a good environment for growth (of ideas), the more growth they will see. If you do a good job as a wiki gardener, you will eventually see the fruits of your labours'
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
June 4 - June 10. Blogging Vacation week 1.
Happy Blogging everyone, I'll be back on June 11th 2007.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Libraries and RSS Feeds
Hennepin County Library talks about subscribing to our 'free' RSS feeds which indicates that maybe sometime in the future there will be a charge for this. Or maybe user's expect to pay for this service already and the library is using the wording to encourage users to subscribe.
I set up a feed from this library's catalogue search page on 'cats' and received the whole page from my screen with both checked in and checked out books. I am not sure why I would want to see the checked in books, but I can understand the seeing when the checked out books were returned. The explanation says that the RSS feeds alerts the user to the books as soon as they become available in the library.. so why would I see those that are presently available.. maybe I am missing something. The subject guides are an impressive list and link to some interesting websites regardless of the RSS feeds.
The Kansas City Public Library also offers RSS feeds to 47 subject guides which are useful in keeping up to date with relevant information. I subscribed to one on new books about Women and there were only 3 items in the feed. It seems that if libraries are posting new books to these feeds then somewhere in the processing of the books, someone is categorizing it under one of the subject headings and new book listings. This is especially apparent for the Tacoma Public Library where I subscribed to the feed on biographies and received 124 items immediately. However, I returned to the feed to check them again and they had disappeared. So I am not sure where they went. This practice of posting new titles as an RSS feed must prove to be a lot of extra work for staff. The list for the new arrivals by category for Tacoma Public Library is very long and one needs to be very selective before subscribing to the RSS feeds. The library also makes this information available online for those who do not wish to use the feeds.
The North Harris Montgomery Community College has set up a series of RSS feeds for students to access journals and keep current on new articles of interest. I could not test this as it is only available to students of the college.
The University of Oklahoma offers RSS feeds for new books based on the library of congress classification subject headings. Users can chose more specific subjects within each broad category. This way of providing information about new books especialy in a university setting makes for a very efficient use of time for both students and staff who usually research only their topics and would waste too much time looking at the 'normal' new book lists where a lot of information would be of no interest to them.
As shown here all types of libraries are using social software more and more to bring information out to the community by setting up blogs with broad community information and also by using RSS feeds to include lists of subject guides and new books. In both cases the search for information must be initiated by the user. In the former on a continual basis by going to the library blog and in the latter only once to set up the feed which is then in control of the provider, the library.
Libraries will continue to be proactive in offering RSS feeds and it will be interesting to see how many users subscribe to receiving information in this format. As the technology increases, the number of users may decrease as they reach the satiation limit of more and more technology and an unwillingness to conquer yet another innovation.
I set up a feed from this library's catalogue search page on 'cats' and received the whole page from my screen with both checked in and checked out books. I am not sure why I would want to see the checked in books, but I can understand the seeing when the checked out books were returned. The explanation says that the RSS feeds alerts the user to the books as soon as they become available in the library.. so why would I see those that are presently available.. maybe I am missing something. The subject guides are an impressive list and link to some interesting websites regardless of the RSS feeds.
The Kansas City Public Library also offers RSS feeds to 47 subject guides which are useful in keeping up to date with relevant information. I subscribed to one on new books about Women and there were only 3 items in the feed. It seems that if libraries are posting new books to these feeds then somewhere in the processing of the books, someone is categorizing it under one of the subject headings and new book listings. This is especially apparent for the Tacoma Public Library where I subscribed to the feed on biographies and received 124 items immediately. However, I returned to the feed to check them again and they had disappeared. So I am not sure where they went. This practice of posting new titles as an RSS feed must prove to be a lot of extra work for staff. The list for the new arrivals by category for Tacoma Public Library is very long and one needs to be very selective before subscribing to the RSS feeds. The library also makes this information available online for those who do not wish to use the feeds.
The North Harris Montgomery Community College has set up a series of RSS feeds for students to access journals and keep current on new articles of interest. I could not test this as it is only available to students of the college.
The University of Oklahoma offers RSS feeds for new books based on the library of congress classification subject headings. Users can chose more specific subjects within each broad category. This way of providing information about new books especialy in a university setting makes for a very efficient use of time for both students and staff who usually research only their topics and would waste too much time looking at the 'normal' new book lists where a lot of information would be of no interest to them.
As shown here all types of libraries are using social software more and more to bring information out to the community by setting up blogs with broad community information and also by using RSS feeds to include lists of subject guides and new books. In both cases the search for information must be initiated by the user. In the former on a continual basis by going to the library blog and in the latter only once to set up the feed which is then in control of the provider, the library.
Libraries will continue to be proactive in offering RSS feeds and it will be interesting to see how many users subscribe to receiving information in this format. As the technology increases, the number of users may decrease as they reach the satiation limit of more and more technology and an unwillingness to conquer yet another innovation.
More on RSS
Working at the National Research Council this summer in Ottawa, the 'Information Specialists' (reference librarians) frequently set up 'alerts' for new scientific information in the databases they search mostly. When anything new is added to the database from a journal, the librarian will receive an alert sent to their e-mail indicating that there is something of potential interest to their clients. Rosenberger mentions this in his RSS tutorial and notes that Ebsco and ProQuest provides this service. Steve Cohen emphasises that to 'perform our jobs to the best of our abilities, currency is the key' and this is one way to stay on top of content retrieval and provide the best service to the clients.
It is obvious that the sites that have not yet supported RSS feeds will be left behind in the business world and need to get on the 'bandwagon' to keep up with the 'pack'. Cohen also says that the news aggregators need to be smarter and mentions the 'information overload' being a problem. This comment was supported by my previous blog where I guess I was being a little cynical about RSS feeds. Some news tracking services use keywords to limit the amount of information and Cohen stresses that the feeds will need to be more focuses if RSS is to remain competitive as a 'content delivery method'.
J.D. Lasica talks about the RSS technology being part of the 'push wave' that is based 'on technology, money and a receptive public' and coming from the online publishers. They know that people don' t always return to their sites every day and to ensure that their information is reaching the consumers they provide the RSS feeds for eager subscribers.
I found Robin Good's list of the postive and negative aspects of RSS over the traditional e-mail to be very useful and clarified some aspects that I was not too sure about. I see now the advantages of e-mail newsletters now being sent by RSS directly the user instead of being bounced back by regular e-mail as they are considered 'spam'. However, personal e-mail still has a place in our inboxes of our e-mail or is that slowly being replaced by 'Facebook?'
It is obvious that the sites that have not yet supported RSS feeds will be left behind in the business world and need to get on the 'bandwagon' to keep up with the 'pack'. Cohen also says that the news aggregators need to be smarter and mentions the 'information overload' being a problem. This comment was supported by my previous blog where I guess I was being a little cynical about RSS feeds. Some news tracking services use keywords to limit the amount of information and Cohen stresses that the feeds will need to be more focuses if RSS is to remain competitive as a 'content delivery method'.
J.D. Lasica talks about the RSS technology being part of the 'push wave' that is based 'on technology, money and a receptive public' and coming from the online publishers. They know that people don' t always return to their sites every day and to ensure that their information is reaching the consumers they provide the RSS feeds for eager subscribers.
I found Robin Good's list of the postive and negative aspects of RSS over the traditional e-mail to be very useful and clarified some aspects that I was not too sure about. I see now the advantages of e-mail newsletters now being sent by RSS directly the user instead of being bounced back by regular e-mail as they are considered 'spam'. However, personal e-mail still has a place in our inboxes of our e-mail or is that slowly being replaced by 'Facebook?'
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
I know what I want, and I want it now!
Reading and thinking about the whole RSS experience brings to mind a parallel activity that I usually do support my reading habit..that is reading of books. My practice is to read reviews and from there search the library catalogue for what I am interested in and either add the title to a 'My List' feature or directly reserve the title and ask the library to send it to my nearest branch.
I do very little browsing of the shelves in a library now and go directly to the titles that interest me and place a hold.
I see simimilarities in the world of RSS where fewer users actually browse for information on websites and instead go directly to the information or links of interest and organise a delivery method which is convenient to them.
Robin Good asks 'is e-mail publishing dead?' and I would ask instead is the website approaching it's demise, or the well designed and interesting website? Why would web designers place any emphasis on creating an attactive websites when many users are only interested in headlines and getting to their information as fast as they can and no longer taking any time to browse a site or explore and go off on a tangent to somewhere unplanned ?
To support the busy lives of users of people, they are only concerned with receiving exactly what they want as efficiently as possible. They do not want to be bothered with erroneous information and time wasting irrelevancies. They need it now and and only the exact information that they want. While I can see the importance of this in the business world, where time is money, I am not so sure that this is where many other users want to be.
From my own limited experience with RSS feeds to the Google aggregator I can sense a pressure to visit this site and read all the feeds that are arriving daily. I do not do this as I don't have the time, but the information is there building and building daily as I have set it up to do.
For many users who subscribe to many RSS feeds, I can see a pressure to read everything that is sent, after all, that is what they are interested in and have organised to happen and need to stay current and on top of the latest news. I don't know the practice of the subscribers of many feeds, but maybe they are selective in their reading, but then why subscribe to something that they are not going to read.
I do not want to be seen as criticising the practice of those receiving many RSS feeds, but I just wanted to step back and look at it from a distance and see it as part of the speeding up of 'life' especially in this age where there is no way that most of us can keep up with the daily advances of technology. The Internet is so vast that any way to pick and chose information of interest is an enormous time saver but lets hope that there will still be a way to take the 'scenic route'!
I do very little browsing of the shelves in a library now and go directly to the titles that interest me and place a hold.
I see simimilarities in the world of RSS where fewer users actually browse for information on websites and instead go directly to the information or links of interest and organise a delivery method which is convenient to them.
Robin Good asks 'is e-mail publishing dead?' and I would ask instead is the website approaching it's demise, or the well designed and interesting website? Why would web designers place any emphasis on creating an attactive websites when many users are only interested in headlines and getting to their information as fast as they can and no longer taking any time to browse a site or explore and go off on a tangent to somewhere unplanned ?
To support the busy lives of users of people, they are only concerned with receiving exactly what they want as efficiently as possible. They do not want to be bothered with erroneous information and time wasting irrelevancies. They need it now and and only the exact information that they want. While I can see the importance of this in the business world, where time is money, I am not so sure that this is where many other users want to be.
From my own limited experience with RSS feeds to the Google aggregator I can sense a pressure to visit this site and read all the feeds that are arriving daily. I do not do this as I don't have the time, but the information is there building and building daily as I have set it up to do.
For many users who subscribe to many RSS feeds, I can see a pressure to read everything that is sent, after all, that is what they are interested in and have organised to happen and need to stay current and on top of the latest news. I don't know the practice of the subscribers of many feeds, but maybe they are selective in their reading, but then why subscribe to something that they are not going to read.
I do not want to be seen as criticising the practice of those receiving many RSS feeds, but I just wanted to step back and look at it from a distance and see it as part of the speeding up of 'life' especially in this age where there is no way that most of us can keep up with the daily advances of technology. The Internet is so vast that any way to pick and chose information of interest is an enormous time saver but lets hope that there will still be a way to take the 'scenic route'!
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Finally the 'real' librarian exposed to the world!
From reading the articles for this week it is obvious that in order to maintain an interesting and inviting blog there are certain guidelines that need to be adhered to. All four authors of the articles, Scout, Neilson, Schneider and Blood stress the importance of establishing rules that need to be followed to post interesting articles and produce a well informed blog with relevant links and one that readers will want to keep re-visiting.
The word 'credibility' was mentioned frequently in the articles and this suggests that many posts and blogs lack credibility and therefore owners of blogs need to affirm the authority of information posted, provide relevant links, stay focused and create a blogging policy and set guidelines which will avoid any bad publicity and protect their credibility.
Above all the blog needs to maintain interest, be informative and provide enjoyment to the reader. Grammer, spelling and punctuation are important and the tone and style of the blog need to develop and remain consistent throughout the blog.
Schneider notes that this is especially important when the blogger is representing a library and is the 'standard bearer' of librarianship for the world.
Darlene Fichter gives some good advice for anyone wishing to start a library blog and advises that the blogger should understand the audience and decide if they would like short newsy items or longer in depth items. Maybe a combination of the two would work the best. The content and scope of the blog needs to be decided especially the key messages. Is the blog trying to promote awareness of the services and resources, encourage use of the virtual library, provide book news and information or is it trying to reach certain community groups?
In the case of the Darien Public Library blogs it seems that all of the above is accomplished.
The blogs are well maintained, interesting, well organised, posted to frequently and come across as a single voice despite being authored by several different staff members. A well developed policy with rules and regulations established and adhered to is the key to a successful library blog. Each person posting to the blogs represents the library in a professional and authoritative manner.
One of the aspects I liked about this blog was that it provided a 'behind the scenes' look at what librarians actually do and posted photos of staff taking part in a fiction collection development
workshop and the use of publisher's catalogues as a tool. Another photo showed a staff member celebrating after she had published an article in Library Journal. There is a general lack of knowledge within the general public as to the roles and responsibilites of librarians and all too often we are seen to be circulation clerks and nothing else. Blogs offer a chance finally to change the view of the stereotypical librarian and bring us all into the twenty first century of the technological age and show the world exactly what are roles are and elevate our expertise to its rightful place.
The Darien library reaches out to the community in many ways from requesting user input for a new identity, posting financial statements on line, reports of staff meetings, photos of trustees and even providing podcasts of interview with various members of the construction crew who are building the new library as well as the architect and town officials.
This blog has the three ingredients that Darlene Fichter emphasized, that of inspiration, motivation and dedication. It is a very interesting blog and extremely informative and makes one want to continue reading and revisiting the site.
The visual layout of the blog is very important and it needs to be appealing. The blog from the Garfield County Public Library is disorganised, unattractive and not very user friendly. It is not apparent who the blog is aimed at and whoever does look at it will not be encouraged to look further especially when they see blurry YouTube pictures on the site. Many of the categories have not been updated since March 2007 and the one that had posted an item which was about Denver Public Library having a countdown to the release of the next Harry Potter book. This is not very informative to the users of the Garfield County Public Library and does not encourage readers to further explore the site. The photo of a railway line going off into the bush seems to be a little strange too.
The next three case studies highlight the new ways that blogs can be used for different purposes. They all appear to be successful in their own way and reach out to a limited audience and clientele.
The Mabry online site is a blog for teachers, staff, students and parents of a particular school. The teachers can post lessons, homework, student accomplishments and activities and events held at the school. Students can set up RSS feeds from particular teachers and keep up to date with posts. It appears that no one can make comments and also anyone reaching the site can read anything posted. There is no login required.
The St. Joseph County Public Library Gameblog is directed towards a very small clientele of the community who play online games. This blog would not be of any interest to anyone not into online gaming. This site does not encourage library visits, does not appear to support the library and does not need to be connected to the library so I am wondering why it is associated with the library.
For anyone contemplating applying to the Virginia Commonwealth University it might be worthwhile to check out this Library suggestion blog. This blog encourages comments and criticisms on various aspects of the library. Most of the comments are negative and criticise the collection, the general untidiness of the library with garbage laying around, the shelves being disorganised and books not being shelved, the unclean bathrooms, the computer and wireless problems and the 'quiet' floors being too noisy. One positive point is that the staff have attempted to reply to each of the comments but must feel overwhelmed at the negativity.
Maybe public libraries could also use this method of blogs to conduct surveys and encourage both positive and negative comments from users. Readers of library blogs can only reply to or make comments on something already posted. However if there was an opportunity for readers to post a comment on a 'free for all' post in which they could log in and voice an opinion on anything library related, this could prove a useful way to uncover any suggestions and problems.
The word 'credibility' was mentioned frequently in the articles and this suggests that many posts and blogs lack credibility and therefore owners of blogs need to affirm the authority of information posted, provide relevant links, stay focused and create a blogging policy and set guidelines which will avoid any bad publicity and protect their credibility.
Above all the blog needs to maintain interest, be informative and provide enjoyment to the reader. Grammer, spelling and punctuation are important and the tone and style of the blog need to develop and remain consistent throughout the blog.
Schneider notes that this is especially important when the blogger is representing a library and is the 'standard bearer' of librarianship for the world.
Darlene Fichter gives some good advice for anyone wishing to start a library blog and advises that the blogger should understand the audience and decide if they would like short newsy items or longer in depth items. Maybe a combination of the two would work the best. The content and scope of the blog needs to be decided especially the key messages. Is the blog trying to promote awareness of the services and resources, encourage use of the virtual library, provide book news and information or is it trying to reach certain community groups?
In the case of the Darien Public Library blogs it seems that all of the above is accomplished.
The blogs are well maintained, interesting, well organised, posted to frequently and come across as a single voice despite being authored by several different staff members. A well developed policy with rules and regulations established and adhered to is the key to a successful library blog. Each person posting to the blogs represents the library in a professional and authoritative manner.
One of the aspects I liked about this blog was that it provided a 'behind the scenes' look at what librarians actually do and posted photos of staff taking part in a fiction collection development
workshop and the use of publisher's catalogues as a tool. Another photo showed a staff member celebrating after she had published an article in Library Journal. There is a general lack of knowledge within the general public as to the roles and responsibilites of librarians and all too often we are seen to be circulation clerks and nothing else. Blogs offer a chance finally to change the view of the stereotypical librarian and bring us all into the twenty first century of the technological age and show the world exactly what are roles are and elevate our expertise to its rightful place.
The Darien library reaches out to the community in many ways from requesting user input for a new identity, posting financial statements on line, reports of staff meetings, photos of trustees and even providing podcasts of interview with various members of the construction crew who are building the new library as well as the architect and town officials.
This blog has the three ingredients that Darlene Fichter emphasized, that of inspiration, motivation and dedication. It is a very interesting blog and extremely informative and makes one want to continue reading and revisiting the site.
The visual layout of the blog is very important and it needs to be appealing. The blog from the Garfield County Public Library is disorganised, unattractive and not very user friendly. It is not apparent who the blog is aimed at and whoever does look at it will not be encouraged to look further especially when they see blurry YouTube pictures on the site. Many of the categories have not been updated since March 2007 and the one that had posted an item which was about Denver Public Library having a countdown to the release of the next Harry Potter book. This is not very informative to the users of the Garfield County Public Library and does not encourage readers to further explore the site. The photo of a railway line going off into the bush seems to be a little strange too.
The next three case studies highlight the new ways that blogs can be used for different purposes. They all appear to be successful in their own way and reach out to a limited audience and clientele.
The Mabry online site is a blog for teachers, staff, students and parents of a particular school. The teachers can post lessons, homework, student accomplishments and activities and events held at the school. Students can set up RSS feeds from particular teachers and keep up to date with posts. It appears that no one can make comments and also anyone reaching the site can read anything posted. There is no login required.
The St. Joseph County Public Library Gameblog is directed towards a very small clientele of the community who play online games. This blog would not be of any interest to anyone not into online gaming. This site does not encourage library visits, does not appear to support the library and does not need to be connected to the library so I am wondering why it is associated with the library.
For anyone contemplating applying to the Virginia Commonwealth University it might be worthwhile to check out this Library suggestion blog. This blog encourages comments and criticisms on various aspects of the library. Most of the comments are negative and criticise the collection, the general untidiness of the library with garbage laying around, the shelves being disorganised and books not being shelved, the unclean bathrooms, the computer and wireless problems and the 'quiet' floors being too noisy. One positive point is that the staff have attempted to reply to each of the comments but must feel overwhelmed at the negativity.
Maybe public libraries could also use this method of blogs to conduct surveys and encourage both positive and negative comments from users. Readers of library blogs can only reply to or make comments on something already posted. However if there was an opportunity for readers to post a comment on a 'free for all' post in which they could log in and voice an opinion on anything library related, this could prove a useful way to uncover any suggestions and problems.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Hear ye! Hear ye! get the latest.......
I was interested in the public library blogs in the case studies and see them as great way to reach out to the community with the latest activities and news about the library and other related subjects. In the case of the Ann Arbor library the director is responsible for the posting to the blog. People will enjoy reading small snippets of information such as is normal for a blog and often don't want to get too involved in the smaller details. By providing just the basics to the reader, this will encourage more readers and a following of existing readers.
The blog for libraries can be likened to a continuous newsletter for anyone who is interested in the latest aquisitions, book news, programming and associated fundraising activities.
In the case of the Madison-Jefferson county library there are many links to anything that is related to the item within certain parameters. It is knowing where to draw these parameters that must be remembered and maintained otherwise users can go off on a tangent and get easily side tracked. In some cases this is good, but if the purpose of the blog is to inform about library activities, then there must be limitations.
The 'Buzz' blog from the Madison-Jefferson county library is very attractive with many colourful graphics and would attract users of all ages to read the posts. There is also a youth and kids 'Buzz' with relevant information for those groups.
Librarians are gradually taking over from the IT department and reclaiming some ares of influence and expertise and making themselves more indispensible than they have possibly been perceived in the recent past. Librarians also need to demonstrate their value to the organisation and need to develop skills to manipulate the social software tools available to them.
Blogs in libraries can also be used for communication inside the library with staff members in any location in the system. Where a library is spread geographically a blog can be a central place for staff to check on any new activity, training or ideas that need to be exchanged.
The Ann Arbor District Library provides numerous links from it's blog to not just the library catalogue, but also people, such as authors and illustrators, publishing companies, local government websites, bands and musicians who will be performing as a library sponsored activity.
In this way the library is giving the users the 'whole picture' with relevant links and allowing the user to go as far as he or she wishes for total information. The blog also provides numerous RSS feeds under a variety of subjects for the users to obtain up to the minute information on new posts.
As for any library procedureI would imagine that there is a policy on the kind of information that is posted to each individual library blog. The staff in charge of the blog need to maintain a certain level of professionalism in the eyes of the users and readers as this form of communication can now be seen as the gateway to the library and as such it must maintain its reputation as a pillar in the community.
The blog for libraries can be likened to a continuous newsletter for anyone who is interested in the latest aquisitions, book news, programming and associated fundraising activities.
In the case of the Madison-Jefferson county library there are many links to anything that is related to the item within certain parameters. It is knowing where to draw these parameters that must be remembered and maintained otherwise users can go off on a tangent and get easily side tracked. In some cases this is good, but if the purpose of the blog is to inform about library activities, then there must be limitations.
The 'Buzz' blog from the Madison-Jefferson county library is very attractive with many colourful graphics and would attract users of all ages to read the posts. There is also a youth and kids 'Buzz' with relevant information for those groups.
Librarians are gradually taking over from the IT department and reclaiming some ares of influence and expertise and making themselves more indispensible than they have possibly been perceived in the recent past. Librarians also need to demonstrate their value to the organisation and need to develop skills to manipulate the social software tools available to them.
Blogs in libraries can also be used for communication inside the library with staff members in any location in the system. Where a library is spread geographically a blog can be a central place for staff to check on any new activity, training or ideas that need to be exchanged.
The Ann Arbor District Library provides numerous links from it's blog to not just the library catalogue, but also people, such as authors and illustrators, publishing companies, local government websites, bands and musicians who will be performing as a library sponsored activity.
In this way the library is giving the users the 'whole picture' with relevant links and allowing the user to go as far as he or she wishes for total information. The blog also provides numerous RSS feeds under a variety of subjects for the users to obtain up to the minute information on new posts.
As for any library procedureI would imagine that there is a policy on the kind of information that is posted to each individual library blog. The staff in charge of the blog need to maintain a certain level of professionalism in the eyes of the users and readers as this form of communication can now be seen as the gateway to the library and as such it must maintain its reputation as a pillar in the community.
Blogs - the connections that bind us
In the short period of six or seven years blogs have evolved from being personal online diaries of interest to a handful of people to a medium for newsbreaking stories of interest to millions.
Online journals were more of interest and use to the writer than the reader in general and as diaries in any medium, provided an outlet for personal commentaries, records of thoughts and quick reflections of the owner's life. They were not of interest to anyone outside of an immediate circle of friends. However it was easy to pour out one's thoughts when you were never sure if anyone would read them. Diaries in any form are therapeutic and form an outlet for pent up feelings and emotions and by recording information this can be emotionally healing.
Rebecca Blood noted that by reading and writing blogs, people gained two important aspects; firstly they realised previously unknown interests and secondly their level of confidance and self esteem increased as they saw readers agreeing with their comments and taking them seriously.
Obviously at this point in time, blogs were for the user and not so much the reader.
According to Catherine Seipp, after September 11, blogs evolved into sites which commented on news stories often with links to criticising the media. Today anyone can have a blog and sites have been set up so that the user does not need to know HTML or any web design knowledge.
Blogs can still be personal, are often opinionated, topic oriented and are often disrespectful.
They still appear to be an outlet for people with strong opinions and who need to tell someone their views on different subjects. Blogs are link based and usually include a blogroll which is a series of links to other sites and blogs. It is not difficult to link and link and forget where you originally began as you go off on many tangents to many different subjects. RSS feeds are an important aspect of blogs and as you post articles on a blog this will be sent to anyone with a who has set up a RSS feed from your blog.
Matt Welch in 2001 coined the phrase 'warblog' and today troops in Afghanistan and Iraq are blogging their experiences. The US government has warned that this activity could prove to be
dangerous to the safety of the troops and could be accessible by the enemy.
Blogs have been the downfall of many people who have written about their personal lives and employment and have lost their jobs as a consequence. It must never be forgotten that what is written on a blog can and might be read by anyone with access to the world wide web.
In 2007, Tim O'Reilly suggested that a code of conduct be written for bloggers. This is for self protection as much as anything and will try and rein in some of the bloggers who feel that anything goes!.
By 2007 it is estimated that over 100 million writers will maintain a blog. However, it is estimated that this year will be a peak for bloggers and many will become bored and abandon their blogs. The phrase 'dotsam and netsam' has been coined for the estimated 200 million blogs which have been abandoned and are 'floating around the web' unwanted and untended.
Blogs have become an important medium for keeping up to date with any organisation or activity that is web based. Many libraries have began posting information on a blog with links to their homepage. I will look at examples of this in my next post.
Online journals were more of interest and use to the writer than the reader in general and as diaries in any medium, provided an outlet for personal commentaries, records of thoughts and quick reflections of the owner's life. They were not of interest to anyone outside of an immediate circle of friends. However it was easy to pour out one's thoughts when you were never sure if anyone would read them. Diaries in any form are therapeutic and form an outlet for pent up feelings and emotions and by recording information this can be emotionally healing.
Rebecca Blood noted that by reading and writing blogs, people gained two important aspects; firstly they realised previously unknown interests and secondly their level of confidance and self esteem increased as they saw readers agreeing with their comments and taking them seriously.
Obviously at this point in time, blogs were for the user and not so much the reader.
According to Catherine Seipp, after September 11, blogs evolved into sites which commented on news stories often with links to criticising the media. Today anyone can have a blog and sites have been set up so that the user does not need to know HTML or any web design knowledge.
Blogs can still be personal, are often opinionated, topic oriented and are often disrespectful.
They still appear to be an outlet for people with strong opinions and who need to tell someone their views on different subjects. Blogs are link based and usually include a blogroll which is a series of links to other sites and blogs. It is not difficult to link and link and forget where you originally began as you go off on many tangents to many different subjects. RSS feeds are an important aspect of blogs and as you post articles on a blog this will be sent to anyone with a who has set up a RSS feed from your blog.
Matt Welch in 2001 coined the phrase 'warblog' and today troops in Afghanistan and Iraq are blogging their experiences. The US government has warned that this activity could prove to be
dangerous to the safety of the troops and could be accessible by the enemy.
Blogs have been the downfall of many people who have written about their personal lives and employment and have lost their jobs as a consequence. It must never be forgotten that what is written on a blog can and might be read by anyone with access to the world wide web.
In 2007, Tim O'Reilly suggested that a code of conduct be written for bloggers. This is for self protection as much as anything and will try and rein in some of the bloggers who feel that anything goes!.
By 2007 it is estimated that over 100 million writers will maintain a blog. However, it is estimated that this year will be a peak for bloggers and many will become bored and abandon their blogs. The phrase 'dotsam and netsam' has been coined for the estimated 200 million blogs which have been abandoned and are 'floating around the web' unwanted and untended.
Blogs have become an important medium for keeping up to date with any organisation or activity that is web based. Many libraries have began posting information on a blog with links to their homepage. I will look at examples of this in my next post.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Social Software - People who need people....
Reading through the articles on social software in this weeks readings, I have noticed an interesting theme in the desire and need for individuals to gather in groups based on a common interest or activity. This seems to be a human need, be it on the plains, on the village green or local pub or in cyberspace. In the 1990s and up until recently software was designed for the individual and time and effort was spent on ensuring that the technological aspects functioned to satisfy individual needs. Clay Shirkey seems to have been instrumental in defining social software as now 'treating groups as first class objects in the system.
People need to connect to people and joining groups in cyberspace and Adina Levin suggested that people being social creatures are 'compelled to write blogs and journals to show off and to share and to contribute to wikipedia and open source software projects for the joy of building things with other people.'
However there seem to still be rules to be conformed to when belonging to and interacting in a group; rules of admittance, rules of order and rules for remaining in the group. When designing social software technicians will need to be aware of some basic psychological characteristics of human nature. Clay Shirkey notes that tension can result when individuals go against group goals so when joining any group it might be important to state the 'mission' and reason for being of the group so as to ensure common goals. He makes another interesting point when he says that groups change their behaviour in response to changes in software and this shows that software designers have an enourmous amount of power to control and steer group behaviour.
A user can only do what the system allows him to do in such a way as the system is designed. Kenneth Boulding says 'we make tools and then they shape us'.
However users have the ultimate control in the success of a system on line as they can take it or leave it and the number of users is an indication of the success and user friendliness of the system.
Within large groups, 'conversational clusters' can evolve as being smaller groups of people who are drawn together based on something they have in common and once again this is human nature to want and need to belong to a group even as part of a larger entity.
Steve Boyd says that social software allows us to create new social groupings which result in new social conventions arising which cannot be predicted. We are really on the brink of a new social organisation and it is exciting to be part of this cyber socialisation.
People need to connect to people and joining groups in cyberspace and Adina Levin suggested that people being social creatures are 'compelled to write blogs and journals to show off and to share and to contribute to wikipedia and open source software projects for the joy of building things with other people.'
However there seem to still be rules to be conformed to when belonging to and interacting in a group; rules of admittance, rules of order and rules for remaining in the group. When designing social software technicians will need to be aware of some basic psychological characteristics of human nature. Clay Shirkey notes that tension can result when individuals go against group goals so when joining any group it might be important to state the 'mission' and reason for being of the group so as to ensure common goals. He makes another interesting point when he says that groups change their behaviour in response to changes in software and this shows that software designers have an enourmous amount of power to control and steer group behaviour.
A user can only do what the system allows him to do in such a way as the system is designed. Kenneth Boulding says 'we make tools and then they shape us'.
However users have the ultimate control in the success of a system on line as they can take it or leave it and the number of users is an indication of the success and user friendliness of the system.
Within large groups, 'conversational clusters' can evolve as being smaller groups of people who are drawn together based on something they have in common and once again this is human nature to want and need to belong to a group even as part of a larger entity.
Steve Boyd says that social software allows us to create new social groupings which result in new social conventions arising which cannot be predicted. We are really on the brink of a new social organisation and it is exciting to be part of this cyber socialisation.
Monday, May 7, 2007
Introduction to LIS 757
Hi everybody in LIS 757
My name is Jane McGann and I am currently working at the National Research Council in Ottawa as a co-op position for the summer. I have completed 2 terms of the MLIS at Western and enjoying some work experience at CISTI (Canadian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information).
My experience with social software is limited. I do have a Facebook which I set up about a month ago and I am amalgamating various groups and enjoying keeping up with my kids who post all sorts of interesting stuff and photos etc.
I have also set up this blog. I am completely new to the world of blogs and RSS feeds and RSS aggregator and know nothing about the latter.
So all of this will be a learning experience for me and I look forward to understanding how this social software can be of use to libraries and the library community.
My name is Jane McGann and I am currently working at the National Research Council in Ottawa as a co-op position for the summer. I have completed 2 terms of the MLIS at Western and enjoying some work experience at CISTI (Canadian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information).
My experience with social software is limited. I do have a Facebook which I set up about a month ago and I am amalgamating various groups and enjoying keeping up with my kids who post all sorts of interesting stuff and photos etc.
I have also set up this blog. I am completely new to the world of blogs and RSS feeds and RSS aggregator and know nothing about the latter.
So all of this will be a learning experience for me and I look forward to understanding how this social software can be of use to libraries and the library community.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Wecome to the first post
Wellcome to my blog first initiated in April 2007 in response to an online Social Software course (LIS 757) that I am about to embark upon as part of the Masters of Library and Information Science at the University of Western Ontario. This will be my 11th course of a 15 course program and will be a distance course taken while I am working for the National Research Council library (CISTI) as a co-op position for the period May to August 2007.
As such the topics in this blog will be library related and discuss the various aspects of social software covered in the course.
However, there may be other musings and reflections as time goes by.
As such the topics in this blog will be library related and discuss the various aspects of social software covered in the course.
However, there may be other musings and reflections as time goes by.
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