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I’m trying twitter again (it’s about the fifth try) and it’s going much better this time. It is true, if you don’t have people to follow, then there really isn’t much point to twitter. Thanks to all of the great CiL people I’ve met, I now have both followers and people to follow.
I noticed this post in Digg this morning, that pointed to twitter answerme which lets you track your questions. Simply send your question to @answerme. I’m surprised I didn’t hear more about this at Computers in Libraries. I did attend one session on twitter (a very good one), which mentioned that some libraries are using twitter to post about the types of questions they are getting but I didn’t hear a lot about libraries using twitter for actually answering questions. More thoughts about twitter when I post my CiL wrap up (which will be soon - there is much catching up to do still).
Interesting post from Geoffrey Rockwell, who shares a summary from the McMaster Youth Media Study of what a typical McMaster undergraduate might be like when it comes to new media. I must confess, it wasn’t too terribly surprising. Of course, I do see undergraduates wandering around the library and campus every day with cell phones and mp3 players and facebook on nearly every other computer. I was a little more surprised to see that the typical undergraduate did recognize that technology was starting to interfere with actual personal connections.
Yes, learning 2.0 is winding down. This is our last week of assignments and then a couple of weeks to catch up. It’s been a great program and I think a lot of people enjoyed it or at least learned 1 new thing. We now know how to keep up to date with some of the latest web 2.0 applications - which is a good thing, seeing as there are constantly new things to learn and try! Congratulations to the ETG group at Mac - it was a lot of work on your part and greatly appreciated.
This week we’re looking at extensions and add-ons. I’ve had a couple of add-ons for firefox for a while, such as the del.icio.us tag which makes tagging extremely easy, I suggest trying it if you have a del.icio.us account (which I know you do if you’re in the learning 2.0 program). I thought I’d give another a try - this time it’s Clipmarks, which allows you to clip parts of a page and share them if you’d like. Sounds like it could be useful - I’ll let you know how it goes. Add-ons are generally a great short cut to your normal routines.
In case you’re wondering, I did change my image header. It is now showing some of the hills along the coast of Cape Breton which I took during a lovely sunset on a summer’s day.
Learning 2.0 has started up again after a break for everyone to catch up and I’m back to post my experiences. I love this weeks topic - applications. There are a ton out there and I never have time to find or play with them all. We’ve been given a list of applications to go and play with. Great assignment! I love playing with new toys! I’ve played with a number before, such as Google Docs, Last.fm (which I love - a great way to find artists similar to ones you know and love) and flickr toys. Rollyo looks intersting and I think I’ll come back and check it out again. Here’s are some avatars I made
Web 2.0 applications are generally easy to use, free and neat. In all web 2.0 applications are great!
Ok, I’m not hiding something but it feels like I might have been hiding. It’s been a while, but I have been very busy. Not a lot to share today. I’m gearing up to do a virtual reference pilot in Second Life. It should be interesting. As much potential as there may be in SL, until our students our there, we are only helping the SL community (which isn’t a bad thing, but if you’re under staffed, one needs to consider priorities). I recently gave a lecture on learning (my first time guest lecturing - lots of fun) to a first year multimedia class, some of the students seemed interested. It would be interesting to know if any come visit our space on account of that class.
Have you checked out Scribd? It looks interesting. All the web 2.0 social software for your documents. I’m not sure I want people tagging and commenting on my work just yet. I’ve been using Google Docs for collaboration recently and I think I’ll stick with that for now.
And in case you haven’t heard already, the title of this post is courtesy of Stephen Colbert.
The next section of learning 2.0 is tagging and folksonomies. I’ve been a fan of Flickr and del.icio.us for a long time now and I think that there is a lot of power in tagging and folksonomies. To the shagrin of many librarians, I can’t wait to be able to add tagging to our catalogue. I think it will help students find what they need in a new, easier way and am always excited to see it being added to more and more library catalogues.
I’ve placed a number of my better pictures on Flickr already (you can link over to them from my blog, if you haven’t noticed). I’ve used del.icio.us for research a number of times - I’ve found a number of items that I might have missed otherwise thanks to others tags.
It was hard to limit my flickr photo to just one, but I thought this one was great! I’m a sucker for trees and fog (must be because I’m from N.S.).
I’m trying to catch up on my learning 2.0 exercises. Wikis are the first up to bat. I’ve played around with wikis before and I’m still trying to figure out my exact position on them. I’ve set one up for the CLA presentation I’m doing in May since the panel is scattered around the country. I set up a PBwiki but it hasn’t had a lot of use. This may be due to the fact that when I set it up, you had to know basic html to edit the page - I’m glad to see this has changed and it should convince more people to try to use a wiki. I’ve also recently worked on a project using Google Docs, which allows collaboration, and I’ve had a more positive response to using that than the wikis. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
I must admit though, the ability to use social software such as a wiki to collaborate on projects has made life much easier!
A big congrats to Amanda Etches-Johnson, McMaster’s newest Library Journal’s Mover and Shaker! She is a celebrity in the library 2.0 world and recently became our User Experience Librarian. Amanda is a colleague of mine (right across from my desk in fact) and it has always amazed and inspired me how much she contributes to librarianship. This accolade is well deserved Amanda - congrats! Keep up the great work!
Yes, I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again, Second Life is the beginning. But the beginning of what? A new 3D social network? A new 3D internet? A new virtual world? A new way of teaching, learning, or collaborating? The beginning of web 3.0? All of these? Well, there have been some interesting posts on Web3D and why they think it’s the next step. Check out Vicki Davis’ post on Cool Cat Teacher (scroll down to the entry The Frontier of Education: Web3D) and a response at Sean’s Emerging… Definitely food for thought.
I think the important point is that our students are comfortable in this type of environment and that 3D environments will help allow students to collaborate, explore and learn in ways that are more appropriate to them.
I just thought I better write something about rss, since that’s what’s up this week in our Learning2.0 program. What can I say about rss that hasn’t been already said? I’m hooked, that’s all I know. Once I discovered them (thanks Amanada!), I’ve been a mad subscriber to rss feeds. I likely have too many feeds now. I love that they keep me up-to-date about what’s happening in our field, technology, and the world. My bloglines account is always open; I probably should seek help. I’ve become very reliant on my feeds but I hope in a good way, as it helps me keep up with my professsion and my patrons. If you’ve just started using rss, watch out! It’s addictive!
Well, here it is, the link to the presentation I gave a little while back on Learning and Second Life and Social Networks. It’s the slides and handouts so far, with video and podcast coming, if I recall correctly. Enjoy!
As I think I mentioned, I recently gave a presentation on Learning in Facebook and Second Life (I’ll post the links as soon as they’re up). I thought I’d ramble a little on Facebook, but not on the academic/library side of things.
One of the things I really like about Second Life is the ability to collaborate and network with people you’d never dream of working with, either because of distance or time constraints or any other number of reasons. Recently though, I’ve found Facebook acting in a similar manner. I knew this was possible, but I hadn’t intended to use Facebook that way, just to hook up with people I presently know and look into applications for libraries. Well, I have had friends who I haven’t seen since grade 7 contact me, I’ve made new connections with librarians through groups I’ve joined. It’s been quite amazing really and I’m starting to see a whole new realm of potential for Facebook. It’s amazing the people I’m finding, or who are finding me, in Facebook. It isn’t an addiction … yet.
With our learning 2.0 initiative, I’m sure we will all be creating accounts soon. Many of us already have one, and in a strange yet distant way, I feel closer to them - I can see what they’re up to, if they’ve had a good or bad day, start conversations - either online or when I see them. This is one of those odd things about social software though - in some instances, the only contact is through an online medium, when in fact, they are in a nearby, if not the same building. This closeness with distance is a bit of a strange phenomenon and one I might look into more at some point.
I realize that a plethora of library blogs have mentioned this video on Web 2.0, but if you haven’t watched, make sure you do. We recently showed this video while demo-ing possible web 2.0 applications to pursue - it highlighted both YouTube and explained web 2.0 in a great way. I think it helped explain why we should be looking closely at web 2.0 applications. All in all, a great video.
I just thought I’d warn you that you will see a lot of library 2.0 posts in the next while. This is not a bad thing. Starting Monday, the Emerging Technologies Group will be launching Learning2.0 at McMaster and will last for 12 weeks - each week a new library 2.0/web 2.0 technology will be introduced. Although I have played with many, if not all of these technologies, I’m quite excited by the program. In fact, many of the staff our excited - which is great! We even had Michael Stephens come and give a talk and start the excitement!
On a related note - I’ve finally gotten a hold of Jenny Levine’s Gaming and Libraries report! Can’t wait to read it. I’ve been doing a lot of research lately on virtual worlds and gaming and teaching and libraries and have a couple of talks coming up on the topic. I’ll post on that another day.
The Kept-Up Academic Librarian shares a story about a book that’s actually a wiki! Two business schools will be working with Pearson PLC to create this “wooki” (I have no idea if that’s a term but I figure it works for a book that’s a wiki). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the content will be about web 2.0 applications in the business world. Will this be the future of publishing? There are some advantages to creating a book as a wiki - constant updates, which are important in the business world, could be done quickly and cheaply. Presumably, such a wooki would not be open for public editing. Oh, did I mention that there is a fee for this too?
We just had a great talk by Alane Wilson of OCLC here at work, looking at a myriad of things, including the OCLC Environmental Scan, trends and branding. One of the questions after her talk was in regards to social networks and friends. This also relates to the point she made that people inherently ask friends for information first. In order to become a place which people more frequently use for their information needs, we need to be considered friends and to accomplish this we must be in their social networks (ie. Facebook, MySpace, etc). This also raised questions about what a “friend” is becoming in the social web, with the answer being that there are varying degrees of “friends”. Further to this was the fact that many are now finding and creating friends rather than simply finding existing friends in these realms.
This got me thinking about how friends are made in the virtual world of Second Life, which probably isn’t too far off from social networks. In Second Life, I befriend a number of people, particularly librarians involved in the project and I do this mainly so I can find someone to help me out in SL and who I may be able to approach to bounce ideas off of; since we are both librarians in a virtual world, we likely have similar outlooks. I also befriend newbies and others I have longer conversations with and I do this so that they may have someone to approach again if they have any information needs. My list of friends continue to grow, but in actuality, I don’t know any of these individuals. Little personal information is shared yet friendship is extended. They are simply a name on a list that I may never actually speak to or encounter again.
Libraries may find their Facebook and MySpace pages in the same place, on numerous lists but never contacted. What will be difficult to do is to stay on the evergrowing list of friends or contacts and not be forgotten or overlooked. Yes, it is important to be in the spaces that our existing and future patrons will be and I fully support libraries reaching out to user groups. What we need to do is figure out how to make ourselves important and useful in these spaces and not just a name on a list that is never thought of again. Do I have an answer for this? Not yet…..
Well, I’m starting my adventure in the Second Life Library 2.0! I’ve created my avatar but she’s still pretty basic. I’m still a pretty wobbly walker and I just learned to sit. I’m hoping to do some virtual reference and maybe even some Canadian gov pubs collection development in the SL Library. I’ll keep you posted. If you’re in the Second Life Library, look for me, I’m Danu Dahlstom
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I’m sure many have posted on this, but as a Canadian, this was the first time I took a look at the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) in the States (House Resolution 5319). If passed, it will force schools and libraries to block anything that allow users to post profiles, personal information and allow communication among users or lose federal internet subsidies. This could be a terrible blow to the Web 2.0 movement and seems to be mostly backlash at MySpace. I understand the need to prevent predator’s from approaching children, but educating children on proper use of the web may be the most important step. Despite this being an American resolution, I will be keeping my eye on it, just in case Canada feels the need to follow our neighbours to the south. For more info, check out the post from Techcrunch, which offers links to other sites talking about DOPA.
A CNN newsreport makes mention of a survey of 1200 college students that was taken to find out what they consider to be the "in" by undergrads. Tops on the list: iPod. Second Place: Tie between Facebook and Beer. Pretty telling as to what the students are into at the moment. The survey also provides support for those who want to see the library have a presence on Facebook (the students are obviously there) or introduce podcasting to the library. Oh, and the last time the 18 year survey saw beer dethroned from the top spot: 1997, by the Internet.
Take a look at this post from A Zulu in Silicon Valley. It looks at a search engine called Quece that actually searches by chat. They call it Conversational search. You search like you think. Simply type in your search, get results, and then you are asked another question, thereby refining your search. This sounds awfully like a reference interview. I haven't tried it out yet but it is certainly added to my to do list. I'll be keeping on eye on this one.
For those of us still learning about web 2.0 and the myriad of applications that are associated with it, check out the blog A Zulu In Silicon Valley. I'm finding it a great way to find about many of the new applications that probably would have gone amiss. There just simply isn't enough time in a day to get it all done, the surfing and exploring, work, and of course, a life. It's also a nice way to start dreaming what possible library applications there might be with some of these things.
