Reflections on the course

First of all I’m going to include the links to our group’s wiki that includes the final version of the powerpoint:

http://youtubeproject.pbwiki.com/

A link to the youtube video is right there in the powerpoint. 

 

I want to start off by saying that I had a moment of panic the other day, thinking that my blog entries have been too anecdotal and not analytical enough.  I hope that’s not the case.  I’m still a bit worried about that.  I’m so used to my informal, personal blogging style that it was difficult for me to switch it up to something academic. 

That being said, I want to state here how much I enjoyed this class and how much i learned from the class.  Like one of our classmates said yesterday during our class discussion, prior to this class, I thought of library 2.0 as more about the technology rather than the philosophy behind it.  For example, I liked what we talked about in regards to gaming at the library and how it’s not just about the actual gaming, but the interactions between the people–that people help each other and interact in other ways while they are participating in these gaming programs and the idea of the third place.  I think I need to bring that up to some of my co-workers (not librarians, I might add) who are always making snide remarks about our library’s gaming program, although I think some will still not be convinced. 

Another thing I learned in this class, is how inept I am with gaming technology.  As an older gen. Xer, I was an early adopter with the Internet, so I feel like my comfort level and my experience with the web is more on par with those of gen. Y, but gaming is a whole other story for me.  When I was a kid we had an Atari and I do have a Gameboy now, but I’ve never had a real gaming system and most of my friends don’t have them either.  I really felt like an old-timer when I was trying out the Wii for the first time and hit the Wii crowd with the bowling ball.  I think when I have a bit of extra money (perhaps after I finally do my taxes!) I will have to invest in a Wii.  As someone who wants to be a public librarian, I need to have a good understanding of how these things work in order to understand and reach a large segment of the community. 

Finally, as we had to make a video for our group project, even though Jakub shot our video (and did a fantastic job, I might add), I wanted to play around with video making myself, so I got one of those flip video cameras that one of my classmates brought in (that was another great thing about this class–that we shared information AND technology with each other) and have been making my own videos.  I haven’t uploaded anything to youtube yet, but I’m sure I will eventually.  I have played around with windows moviemaker and edited some video, but this is one I did just by plugging the video into the flip video software and it created a dance mix for me.  I figured that since I used the photo of my cat on top of my door for my user pic. that this video was fitting:

http://s257.photobucket.com/albums/hh202/rhinogal/?action=view¤t=dancemixphoebe.flv

I also wanted to say how much I enjoyed my classmates’ presentations!  Everyone came up with some very informative and creative stuff.  And I want to thank Michael for the great class!

 

Reflections on the YouTube group project…

I will admit that I have never been a fan of group projects.  It’s always difficult to find times when everyone can meet, people don’t always agree and it can get messy and ugly.  However, this time things went pretty smoothly.  Using 2.0 software certainly has its benefits.  Obviously, since we had to create a video, we did have to meet to film the video, but everything else was done virtually.  It was so much easier sharing articles on del.icio.us with a “groupproject’  tag rather than e-mailing or uploading them to (gasp!) blackboard.  We also created a wiki that I admit we really didn’t use much, but I did work on the final touches of our powerpoint presentation and posted it there, as well as sending it through e-mail.  I do plan on opening the powerpoint tomorrow for the presentation from the wiki, which will be much easier than having to deal with a flash drive.  And one more comment about blackboard before I sign off for the night, with just one class remaining, I hope that I never have to use it again! 

Question for classmates

I just have a question about something that is starting to worry me.  Can you guys see my del.icio.us tags  in the 7680 network?  I have been doing the for:7680, so I’m not quite sure what’s wrong.  I know I have seen some there, but I tagged several items last night and don’t see any with my name by them. I am seeing some from some people marked one hour ago, but yet mine from last night haven’t appreared.  My  del.icio.us account name is grayseacat.  Thanks!

Blog Goblins?

Hmm, I was wondering where all of my widgets had gone to and just discovered that they are all at the bottom of my page.  Perhaps the little creatures that live inside the Internet are messing with me…

My Paper

In my paper I’m going to talk about libraries’ presence on social networking sites, focusing mainly on Facebook and My Space.  I will be looking at why libraries are interested in these social spheres and the benefits of being involved with them.   I will be including some specific examples of how libraries have been presenting themselves in these spaces and how they are trying to make themselves available and useful.  It is estimated that 85% of high school and college students have either a MySpace or a Facebook (or both) profile and the number of adults becoming involved has been growing every day.  It seems only natural that libraries would want to tap into this.  I will not only be looking at the benefits that exploring this avenue can bring, but will also discuss the potential problems.  Do users want libraries invading their spaces?  What impact could DOPA have on these ventures?  Finally, I will be looking at how libraries can evaluate the impact they are having and what they need to look at to ensure that they are using this 2.0 technology to its full potential. 

Blogging Addiction

I’m going to out myself as someone who is addicted to blogging.  It may not seem like it here, but that’s maybe because when you have one blog that you are obsessively checking and updating, it’s hard to focus on other blogs.  I have talked briefly about blogging before, but having gotten into it in depth.  I started my first blog in early 2003.  At that time, I really didn’t get into it, but I typed some nonsense into it sporadically and kept it going that way.  My current blog is one that I started in January 2006 and I am already up to almost 1000 entries!  It has been a great place for me post my drawings and paintings, babble on about this and that and fit in an occasional rant.  I have my regular readers and regular blogs that I read every day.  It can really be a full time job.    Most of the blogs that I read are art blogs and I will (since this is my school blog) say that I have added librarian’s blogs as well, along with blogs on a few other subjects.  One of the blogs I read is the International Rhino Foundation Blog.  This is where I found out about the adopt a rhino program they have that resulted in me adopting, Andalas, the rhino pictured above.  How cool is that?  No, I cannot take him home, but I guess I helped feed him.  I guess the point that I am getting at is that there are blogs on just about every subject out there and it is great to be able to connect with other people who have similar interests and learn from and share information with them. 

As for blogging and libraries, there is so much that is being done and can be done with blogs.  When I was searching for information for a project I was doing for a class last semester, I can across the Brookfield Zoo Library’s blog.  This is a small, special library in Chicago that doesn’t have a website.  I thought they had a great thing going, complete with information related to programs the zoo offers, book reviews, information about conservation, etc…  It also on the sidebar has a series of links, including a link to e-mail the librarian a reference question.  Unfortunately, they didn’t keep it up.  The last post is from January of 2007. Very sad…  I think blogs are a great resource for libraries, but only if they update them regularly and, especially, don’t abandon them completely. 

My second Second Life post

Ok, so I had some extra time this afternoon and playing around on the computer is always a good homework avoidance tactic, so I decided to give Second Life another try.  After all, it isn’t total homework avoidance since it is related to class.  Nobody has bothered me today.  One woman came running through the room I was in, but she seemed to be on a mission.  My mission was to check out the the Virtual Starry Night exhibit, which is an exhibit of Van Gogh’s paintings.  All I can say is, very cool.  I think once a person gets a taste of something like this, it is easier to see the power and possibilities of something like this.  Reading about it is all well and good, but there’s nothing like experience.   Anyway, I don’t know if it will be part of the future of libraries or not, but with a little creativity, I can see some possible good use coming out it. Definitely something to consider…

Funny news story

My friend sent me this story and I found it amusing and somewhat applicable to this class, so I thought I would share it.  I don’t have a link as she just copied and pasted it, so I will do the same:

CRIME OF PASSION: “It was weird the way this all came down,” said a
   spokeswoman for the Louisiana State Police. A woman called to say she
   had received a phone call after midnight from a man who exclaimed, “I
   have killed them all!” Using the Caller ID on the woman’s phone,
   officers tracked the call to Thomas Ballard, 29, of Delhi. Upon their
   arrival at his house, they found that Ballard had won a video game by
   “killing” all the “bad guys” — and had called a friend to brag. He got
   a wrong number. No dead bodies were found in his house, but officers
   found he had an outstanding warrant on a drug charge, and arrested him.
   (Monroe News-Star) …No sense in wasting a trip out to the sticks.

My Brief Second Life…

My foray into the world of Second Life was brief and so shall be this post.  I downloaded the software this past summer after continuing to hear so much about it.  I just wanted to experiment and to be left alone to go about my business.  What I discovered was that people did not want to leave me alone.  I found that in Second Life, people do not allow you to be a loner.  Unlike real life, where for the most part, if you are just walking down the street or browsing in a store, most strangers will not stop you to chat or bump into you.  I guess in second life, it’s hard to put on your “leave me alone–I’m not in the mood to socialize” body language or facial expression and people just assume that because you are in a virtual world, you want to hang out with them.  My friend who does a lot of gaming complains about the same thing–that sometimes she just wants to go into the game and do some activities on her own, but that others don’t seem to understand that.  Not that I don’t think that socializing on-line can be fun and have its value (I’ve certainly done my share), but as an introvert, I like my alone time too, even on-line. I should add that I was so annoyed with my experience that I didn’t even make it out of orientation island.  Maybe one of these days I’ll have a go at it again and hope that people will let me be.  Learning to fly is hard work!

Edited to add that I just signed on to get the above screen capture of my avatar and it is eerily quiet on orientation island.  Maybe this would be a good time to resume my lessons. My avatar sure looks like she’s ready to fly.

Privacy 2.0

As I have been looking at information on social networking in libraries, I have been thinking about privacy and how librarians’ (and other library workers’) attitudes about privacy have had to evolve in the past couple of decades.  When I started working in libraries, one of the big things that was stressed in my training, was that patron information has to stay private.  I was told to never ever tell someone (unless it is a parent inquiring about their under 18 son or daughter) what somebody else has checked out.  Also, when someone returns a book, that book disppears from their record, never to be seen again.   All of this is still important, but attitudes towards privacy, in general, have changed as people are more and more willing to share imformation via web 2.0 technologies. 

I’ve talked about Bookspace before and here I am about to talk about it again.  With Bookspace, people share their own lists of books that they have read or are reading now and it is there for anyone to see.  In that sense, it runs counter to the whole hiding and getting rid of the evidence practice that libraries have engaged in.  And yes, with Bookspace, the sharing of the books one has checked out is voluntary, but I still think that it was probably difficult for a lot of librarians to come to term with libraries encouraging this kind of behavior. 

Also, as libraries are evolving into more social gathering spaces and as there are more, shall I say disciplinary issues, librarians have had to re-evaluate the whole concept of privacy within the library.  For instance, at the library where I work, there are security cameras everywhere.  After a recent violent incident in our library that culminated in a drive by shooting across the street, one staff member brought up the fact that we as library workers  are conditioned to not pay a lot of attention to what people are doing in the library for fear that we are invading their privacy. She wasn’t criticizing the way people were doing their jobs, but only bringing up the fact that we need to re-think how we do things.  It’s not that we have to go up to everyone’s computers and take a peek at what is on their screen or ask anybody who is sitting in some far off corner what they are up to, we just need to be more aware of our surroundings.