How to Give Good Karma (at least on Facebook!)

Please watch the attached to use this 'ap' on Facebook:

2008-11-24_1918

Ning

OK, this I like, although I want to play around with the skin a bit.

A Ning is easy to set up, offers many features - such as an events calendar, photos, and videos - that would be great in a work environment, and has an administrative passcode so that only selected people can control the content. If you worked in a place that could spend a great deal of money on a website, then a Ning might seem redundant. But if you weren't able to spend a large section of your budget on a site, or wanted an internal system independent of a public site, then a Ning would be a great option. Since you can restrict access to an internal group, there might be great functionality for a department, unit, or working group.

Say for example your working group had a project on a timeline. You could track progress and meetings on the events calendar, set up blog posts of meeting minutes and results, upload pictures of the project if applicable, upload screencasts and video demonstrations, etc. You'd also have a living document of the process if anyone wanted to check your progress.

In a PL setting, you often have adult users attempting to conduct business from the library. A Ning would be a great tool to offer them as well, because it would give them another kind of internet 'presence' as well as a way to organize and network.

Aside from the graphics, I don't really see a downside. Again, impressed with the easy set-up and the 'drag-and-drop' functions. I need to check how easy it is to edit what you've got once you've committed - but if that checks out, I'm all for it!

danah boyd...

Maybe I should have read danah boyd's second article before diving into the 'Facebook is trending adult' statement. I can only base what I say on my impression of the site; the observation in an article in the NY Times Style section (usually about 1-2 years behind actual social trends); and the attitude of Rutgers students writing in the Daily Targum. That last audience, at least in the arts pages, dismisses Facebook and promotes MySpace. However, given the band-focus of MySpace boyd notes in the first article, and perhaps the fringe element she discusses in the second, there could be an explanation for that. And perhaps it's just cool for college kids to call Facebook 'lame'... I also wonder what boyd would make of the presence of Barack Obama on MySpace. Did this election (in which some teens were able to vote) have some impact on the allure of MySpace? For the record, I did not hear anything about Obama on Facebook.

So what do librarians take from all this? Allow teens access to both sites. Don't, as the armed services apparently did, try to draw some "good" vs. "bad" or "class" distinction from a social networking site. I don't think libraries are in the business of censorship in the first place, but librarians ought to be 'site-neutral' when discussing either SNS. It was kind of amazing, actually, to see this kind of 'good-site-vs.-bad-site' issue, anyway: sites are sites, and subject to the faults and virtues of their users and administrators. If you were to be a library that banned access to both sites, or refused to allow teens to access SNS, you'd hardly be serving your young adult population. You would actually be sending a clear message that the library wasn't for the likes of them - 'get off my lawn!', so to speak. So if you're concerned about predators, etc., on SNS, maybe it's better to have that message incorporated in a workshop about how to 'trick out' your page than to ban access outright.

Also, be prepared for 'NextGen' SNS, as well as the aging population of current SNS users. We are all different, wanting different things from different sites, and our ability to consume and digest the novel is only growing. We need to think beyond the current SNS - part of the point of the first article, actually - and adapt to what happens next. While it was cool to see some of what we've used in class brought on board in Facebook - video, microblogging, chat - that is only going to expand. So, we need to keep reading, keep learning, keep moving slightly ahead of the users - or we'll still be stuck on the 2009 version of Friendster in a decade.

The 'Sticky' Wicket

I'll preface this by saying that, as delighted as I was that we would be using and working with the much-talked-about MySpace and Facebook, I did take to mind the advice of the great Chuck D. and Public Enemy. Simply put, "Don't Believe The Hype." What would attract me to either of these places, and why would I want to spend my time there? I work full time at a beyond demanding job, part time at a great environment, and have carried a virtually uninterrupted class load since fall '07 - so time is tight. And wouldn't I rather spend that time with live humans in actual social settings? Yes, I would.

Given that, I was stunned by how fast I got into Facebook, accepting a college buddy's 'friend' request, getting and giving flair, engaging in 'superpoking', even uploading a set of travel pictures. Sadly, given what I'd heard about MySpace, that's been a harder sell and not sticky to me at all - yet. I'll definitely work on that, since most of my future clientele will be MySpacers and not Facebookers. Why do I say that? Mainly, because Facebook is living up to its reputation as a more 'adult' or GenX/Boomer place, taking on some of the 'class reunion' aspects of priveleged subscriber sites like Classmates, and some of the professional networking aspects of sites like LinkedIn.

Why are these sites 'sticky', and why would you spend hours of time there? Because it's all about you: you creating your identity and your world in your place for others to get to know who you are. You change and your life changes - and you can alter your page and your space to reflect that change. Your friends are an important part of your life, and if you can't see them, then you can visit their page and 'be in touch' with them. (Likewise, adult users might say that their professional contacts are important, and you can let them know what you're doing in that capacity and see if there are any possible cross-pollination prospects.) You can find friends you 'lost', or lost track of, if they have a page. You can also expand your social groups, if you choose, by 'friending' bands, politicians - hey, if I can 'friend' Michael Moore, Neil Young, and Henry Rollins on MySpace & Facebook, then why the hell wouldn't I?! (I think I can only Twitter Hillary Clinton...)

Again, I need to spend more time on MySpace - but I can already see that using Facebook would be like offering me unlimited access to Vosges Caramel Toffee. Uh, oh.

How to (mis)use IRIS

For anyone who hasn't stumbled across IRIS in their travels, here's a 'how-to' - provided you have a net ID, password, student ID, and pin number! Enjoy!

Rutgers Library - using Iris

My Favorite SCILS598F08 Videos!

I was pretty impressed with everything, but if I have to choose...

1. How to clean your house...

Can I please hire these kids?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FLYRObljBM

2. Bah Humbug!

Tis the season...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7jSaoXlJmA

3. Cardigans, cardigans, cardigans!

Need anyone say more?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjKWfJwUOdU

Thanks, everyone, for making a 'top list' tough!

Storm King Art Center

Storm King is, as you'll see on this 'tour', a beautiful, modern art sculpture park in NY.

Click To Play

A Recipe From One Of My Favorite Characters

Zelda Fitzgerald: 20s it-girl, jazz-age flapper, model for Nicole Diver and Daisy Buchanan in her husband's books - and occasional cook. This, from a series of recipes published in a women's magazine. Seriously.




You might also find it at a link here after it uploads properly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-cMohrQXzI

Education vs. Entertainment Video

The imp in me says, does it really have to be an either/or situation? Couldn’t a smart educator integrate entertainment into a video lesson? I think they could…

But let’s say for a moment that the two can’t relate, that education is education and entertainment is entertainment. While the survey conducted Pew Internet & American Life Project does show a high consumption of comedy viewing (31%) by adults, it also provides a very healthy statistical number (22%) to represent educational video viewers. The great news in this survey is that this percentage reflects a multigenerational interest in learning how to do something. And I suspect that number will probably increase as more and more of the population pursues their education online, and as more and more content becomes available.

The real issue may be that a popular site, like YouTube, has far more creators, both amateur and professional, posting comedy than posting instructional material. And it may be that educators are slightly late to the party when it comes to posting online content on YouTube. But I’ll never forget how much of an impact that instructional YouTube video we watched the first week of this class had on me – and how that led to someone in the class finding a YouTube hosted academic rebuttal, and so on. There’s fantastic potential here, and people have started to tap into it – and that’s for everyone’s benefit!

SCILS598F08 - One Big, Happy, Caffeinated Family!

Looking over everyone's Flickr photos, I had to laugh: we're more alike than different, at least in terms of what we've photographed as our 'educational experience':

Commuter students are just obsessed with getting to campus through the obstacle course: taking the bus, the car, the train; navigating through the road signs, the Rte. 18 construction; and once here, finding the available parking lot and having copious amounts of quarters for the meters.

Once here, the SCILS Lounge and its vending machines are a focal point: Pepsi, bad coffee, and what I hesitate to call 'tea' all assist us in our need to be eternally caffeinated. So many pix of home tea and coffee paraphernalia, with the occasional bottle of energy boost, lead me to believe we are very, very wired, and alternatively, very, very tired. We are also very, very hungry: another SCILS Lounge vending machine beautifully stocked with brightly colored treats, Panera, Au Bon Pain - we want to eat and run, or eat and work, often in front of our laptops or while sitting in class in those awful, tiny chairs. The pic of the open laptop paired with a bowl of soup says it all.

We love books. We love taking pix of the books. We love stacking the books or showing the books in the bookcase or showing how many books we've had to buy for all our classes. We also want to show off our (allegedly) messy desks and our laptops. We're all working hard & we want you all to know it!

We also like our leisure time, and spending off-hours with our pets (who like to sleep on our books and desks) and our people (who don't).

We've got our differences: mushrooms, edible or no, are not an item I acknowledge as food. On the other hand, while I've never had biscuits and gravy, they look good! Kinds of cars and laptops and pets vary.

The Chocolate Cheesecake 'Story'

Hopefully, this takes - and you'll have a great recipe for a very yummy chocolate cheesecake!


http://www.switchpod.com/users/tkscils598f08/ChocolateCheesecake17CC18.mp3

Blogs v. Podcasting

I think the advantages/disadvantages might come down to individual preferences for media consumption and retention; in my case, it's down to how I learn best.

I've learned over the years that I can truly get sucked into audio and lose track of the rest of the world, especially during certain types of audio that require extended attention, like books on tape or spoken word monologue files. It's why I listen to neither while driving. But weirdly, this rapt attention does nothing for my retention. If I'm listening to something, it goes away rapidly. The same can't be said for what occurs when reading. If I read or see it, I'm not only more likely to recall and understand it, I'm more likely to quote it back to you. I'm a visual learner. It's why, for me, listening to vodcasts requires several replays, but what's going on visually always registers.

However, podcasts have the virtue of making things more human:

• We can hear voices, personalities, nuance: all hard to convey in text
• We can add soundtracks, and sound fx, and use silence - text can't
• We could convey in a short bit of sound all the message we need - we might need a lot of words to 'say' the same
• It's more communal, say, then reading alone - or gives that impression.
• Many of us are used to the concept of 'story time', in which someone read to us.

Add to this the idea that you've created a recording that's accessible to all at their convenience, and the virtues of podcasting are apparent.

Luckily, at this point, we're not in an 'either/or' position as far as text blogs and audio podcasts. We can have both.

Working With The "Long Tail"

Can libraries as a whole effectively utilize the "long tail" of our collections? Is it worth it? What would we have to do?

I think, again, we're trying to do this. I see it in the way we are attempting to make archival materials accessible online. At Rutgers, the collection policy states that we concentrate on collecting materials and manuscripts specific to NJ, and Rutgers, but there's a lot of overlap. For example, I processed part of a collection that was donated by Rutgers professor Angus Gillespie. This collection is ongoing, because Professor Gillespie has a few specific roles: current instructor, author, major player in the annual Folklore Festival, etc. If you view Professor Gillespie's work generally, his total collection is long tail; someone has to be interested in access to this particular person, in this particular time period. His concentration on folklore could be seen as a niche interest that might not necessarily guarantee shelf space in a university scrambling for space. However, once you create finding aids and electronically encode them so that anyone can access your collection materials, you're going to see far more use of those collections because you've made them available globally. You still have to find space - but you can now justify its use.

The finding aid for Angus Gillespie's papers will ultimately be available for search on Google. That's going to be a great help, as he's already become known for a small portion of his entire collection: a book he wrote on the World Trade Center prior to 9/11. These four boxes were the portion I processed, and it was easy to determine how valuable the interviews and ephemera Gillespie collected would be to future researchers. Now, rather than trying to track down all books on the WTC, they would have more rapid access to materials. But even if you didn't know this aspect of Gillespie's career, and approached him as an expert in folklore, you could determine it because of access to the entire finding aid. That's pretty cool.

Also, from an archival perspective, the use of encoded finding aids presents a chance to unify collections online in a way they are not currently organized. It could help institutions solidify present collections by physically aquiring them. It could point potential donors in the right direction. It could help researchers and library users plan collection visits in more logical ways, saving time and money. It would be convenient to have a better idea of what you'd find in a given collection. All of this is going to take time, money, effort, expertise - but better to bite the bullet and do it than turn away collections that will matter to someone. It's true we can't save everything - but I'd argue that it's harder to determine what to save when you're still trying to figure out what you have. Getting everything up online is one way to serve long tail, niche interests we may not have considered.