Method 8

This method is about Social Networking. Didn’t Facebook begin as a way for college students to connect with each other online? Yet since then, everyone has hopped aboard such sites as MySpace and Facebook.

Previous to this method, I already had MySpace and Facebook accounts at home. When I first searched, I didn’t see my library on either site but noticed our web home page was being revised. Trying the Beta site, I found it DID have a Facebook page with photos, videos, and events. How odd I couldn't find it searching within Facebook.

Looking around, I saw many other campus employees with accounts. It made the article about separating accounts for your professional and personal life quite relevant. An interesting point was made about some needing a different place to relax with friends and not worry about censoring everything they said or posted. Each individual's decision of how work and home overlap or do not overlap will depend on their life style.

Technology is speeding so fast some Method 8 links were already broken or incomplete. One discussion about what if the person who sets up the MySpace /Facebook/Twitter page leaves their library had indeed occurred. In addition, the article “Do Social Networks Bring the End of Privacy?” only brought up the introduction and to continue reading you either had to subscribe to Scientific American or pay for the issue. That was too bad, as it seemed like an interesting piece.

“Your Guide to Online Privacy” showed how technology is leaping years ahead of any privacy legislation. Until social networking sites have safeguards in place, it behooves us to clear our cookie cache on our computers and be wary of giving out too much information. Of course, this also means we’ll need a whole notebook listing all our log-ons and passwords!

How I feel about online socializing is an open and evolving question. When I first joined MySpace at home, I enjoyed creating a page with my own photos and designs, uploading video for family and friends, creating my first blog posts, and being able to connect with lost friends and family. Personal identify is so fluid on MySpace that many have created pages as historical people (a quick check showed there are currently 183 John F. Kennedys!).

Earlier this year, some family members urged me to try Facebook, which I did. Now, I hardly ever log into MySpace and, apparently, neither do other friends. There is a pull to check Facebook’s Newsfeed each evening, bringing you everything at once--from inane comments to philosophical thoughts, from trivial games to gorgeous photos. It runs the gamut and depends entirely upon the friends you accept. Based on that criterion, I’ve found out how to “turn-off” some people’s comments or silly quiz results.

Online socializing is both appealing—instantly sharing thoughts, photos, videos, and links all at once—and appalling—there are a few degrading and disgusting quizzes, videos, and games.

One thought has occurred to me, as I admit to sometimes spending too much time on my home computer: in the time it takes to read and update my social status, couldn’t I have read a couple of chapters in a real book? At what point do I "switch off" and relax? These days, it does feel like there is an obligation to be connected all the time. Why? Because, technically, we can? That might not be very healthy.

In trying to connect with our patrons, is our library putting more time constraints on our overscheduled and over-tech'ed students? In the long run, will the new web page linking to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, RSS, Delicious, and Flickr become a time burden, distracting their study time? Or will their always-been-connected way of life continue and be natural for this generation and all who follow?

Method 7

This method explains another file-sharing concept, social bookmarking. Trying to understand these implications, I envisioned a smart kid researching and bookmarking topics while other students reap the benefits without lifting a pencil. Or so it seemed to me, at first. Growing up in the age of solo studying, I have to wrap my mind around the concept of group studying. We were scolded for sharing class notes or allowing others use our work; it was akin to cheating.

In the first article “Tags Help Make Libraries Del.icio.us” I wondered what library catalogers would think about patrons put their own tags on items. If they don’t use the Library of Congress or Dewey Decimal system does it become a free-wheeling place where random tags create chaos? Discussing this with my supervisor, I told her I couldn’t envision how our library would use this. She suggested a campus application with professor uploads bookmarks for his course. The bookmarks act like a bibliography. Then, this began to make sense. How would this work in my library? A staff group working on a project could have Delicious accounts and share resources.

As I understand it, social bookmarking is bookmarking made public. You create an account and begin bookmark your interests. You can find others from your own tags and then explore theirs. In turn, they can tap into your bookmarks. It expands outward at more common tags. I liked the alphabetic-order of tags on the right (something I wish Windows Explorer would do automatically with folders). You can see your tags in various ways: related, top 10, and bundles. I didn’t create a Delicious account now but might later.

I enjoying looking at the TSLAC’s Continuing Education and Consulting Staff’s bookmark page, and read some of the blog “Librarian in Black” with comments.

Method 6

This tutorial about YouTube was fascinating!

My library has already used YouTube in a limited way. When our old library computer system was replaced last year, some younger librarians made a great, humorous video promoting the upcoming change. I still like looking at it. They also did one about ALA’s Banned Book Week that is very clever. Researching YouTube, I found they had made a couple more I wasn’t aware of.

At first, I thought I’d simply embed a YouTube video into this blog post but curiosity got the better of me and when the linked YouTube information page said most computers had a simple Windows Movie Maker, I just had to try it! Jumping in without reading anything about the software, I found it very intuitive. After uploading your video, there is a storyboard below where you can add opening titles, fancy effects, and closing credits. I even tried using a song with my first effort but thought it’d be best not to use it because of copywrite laws. It was incredibly fun to play with! It looks like you can also make a movie out of your still photos, inserting titles and descriptions and music, which I will definitely explore more.

YouTube, because of its popularity, has a great potential for creative individuals as well as libraries. I envision my library will continue to use it to reach our patrons (students) because it speaks their language. Before this exercise, I thought you needed a video camera and a fully-loaded computer with tons of video/digital editing software to produce movies, but I am thrilled you can use short movies from a digital camera and even still photos. What joy to have fun and learn at the same time!

Method 5, Extra Credit

Whenever I write and add photos to my art blog at home, Blogger tracks the amount uploaded and has a posted limit. I have noticed some artists using Flickr to upload photos instead of Blogger’s Picasa and wondered how to do that. Also, what happens when you reach Blogger’s photo limit? Do you stop uploading photos all together? Or create a new blog when you run out of space? Or must you limit the number of pictures or upload directly to Flickr? Or switch to a blog provider that allows unlimited space?

Exploring Picasa for extra credit on Method 5, I created an account for my art blog and was dumbfounded--seeing duplicates, even triplicates, of photos previously uploaded. Remembering many frustrating weekends when Blogger would lose both my post and photos, I would begin the process all over again. Is that why Picasa had extra copies? Because Blogger lost them but Picasa didn’t? Why couldn’t one of them have alerted me about those duplicates? Or tell me I could retrieve them through Picasa? No wonder I seemed to be running up my photo size limit in Blogger. Not only that, but when I changed my mind and deleted some photos from my blog, there they were--still in Picasa.

Guess this means that once you upload something, it is really out there—cloud computing!—and will continue to be out there until you personally delete it. Since Picasa saved them each time, I conclude only Blogger lost them. This is a big lesson.

The coolest thing about Method 5 exercise was posting to my library blog from Flickr! I had never tried that before. All you need to do is just set up the link in Flickr, compose and edit your post in Word, go to any of your individual photos in Flickr, click on “blog” above the photo, copy and paste from Word in the Flickr space it delivers up, and—zip!—the blog post appears! The only downside was not being able to add blog tags or do further editing.

Personally, I am not impressed with my first view of Picasa. But, I learned some very interesting things, including how to save time on the weekends.

Method 5

Exterior
Originally uploaded by TriLithic Lass

Even though I have used a Flickr account at home since last year, I had not known about creating tags for the photos, finding other photos by Popular Tags, or that libraries around the world were using the photo-storing and sharing site.

I have had mixed feeling regarding Flickr. When first using it I uploaded vacation photos and visited a few friends who were on, but then I neglected it for months. Exploring this method for “A Dozen Ways to Two-Step,” I went to my home Flickr site and was surprised I could access photos I thought I had coded private. In addition, there was a positive comment about one of my Irish photos from 5 weeks ago, requesting me to submit it to a Flickr group and I had never been notified/e-mailed about it! Another disturbing element concerns a friend who deleted their entire account because they had an uneasy feeling about one person taking an unnatural interest in a granddaughter. It was a pretty radical step, but my friend felt “better safe than sorry.”

Personally, since my friend’s experience, I have uploaded photos mainly to FaceBook. There, you–hopefully--know your friends and can easily unfriend or delete them, if needed.

Professionally, I enjoyed looking at library tags in Flickr. Some interesting ones were a Canadian photography club at public library, a tour of Irish libraries, and the Library Underground. After doing various searches, I only found a few photos of my own library, by one of our librarians, and no, there were no people.

Every year, my library conducts groups of first year students on a fun hunt-and-seek introduction to the library. I have a memory of photos taken and shared, perhaps on a campus server, but I don’t believe any photos where uploaded to a site such as Flickr. Since I’m not a librarian, I don’t know if the noted controversy about using patron’s images helped define that decision.

Curious about non-academic city public libraries, I looked at web branch pages and saw rotating photo cubes of people at each location. Clicking on these brought me to Flickr sites of individual libraries.

Each branch location varied greatly. Some only had a few photos (17), some had over 1,600 (the main branch). Some avoided using people poses and mainly showed exterior building shots with architectural elements and flowers, as well as seasonal book displays inside. On the opposite spectrum, another branch was not at all shy repeatedly pointing the camera at children and families at each activity! So, there doesn't seem to be any consistent policy about not using images of public library patrons.