Flickr fun

Flickr is a steep learning curve for me but I am determined to master it. I've decided to do a little each week until it becomes second nature. The first hurdle was creating a user name and uploading a few pictures. Once I'd got my head around this I decided to group varius pictures into 'sets'. Then I thought I'd send my happy snaps to the INF506 group which was not what I was meant ot do but I was so excited by my small success that it blurred my reading of the course objectives.
   Once I discovered that I'd put photos where they weren't supposed to be then I had to remove them. I found the FAQs and 'help' sections of this platform very user friendly and easy to follow and invaluable in discovering how to delete pictures. However my understanding of where the tiny drop boxes and copyright boxes were took some time to master. In many ways the design of Flickr is quite busy but not overwhelmingly so. The links to other pages are still a bit confusing for me but I feel I am slowly getting the hang of this platform.  
   Once I discovered (from advice given from fellow students) how to do a screen shot, I took several snaps of the steps I went through to delete my pictures. My intention being to upload them straight away but Flickr didn't want to upload them as I'd saved them onto a word document.
   I have since discovered Zamzar, a site which changes files from one format to another. I used this to convert my screen shot into a jpeg file. Then I found Flickr was happy to upload the page, and I subsequently added it to the INF506 group.
   The other thing I've been doing on Flickr concerns trying to get my head around creative commons and the different licenses on offer. I found a photo I wanted to use for my Island Stories blog but it didn't have a creative commons license. So, trying to be a good digital citizen, I contacted the photographer, which is very easy to do. Just click on their name and a profile pops up. Highlight the profile and a drop box appears beside it. Scroll down the list of options and select 'send Flickr Mail'. Then when the text box appears, type your message asking for permission to use the photo.
   I got a response in two days, saying 'sure thing, but please link it back to my photostream.' I wasn't sure how to do this but it ended up being surprisingly simple. With the photo you have permission to use, move the cursor just above the picture to the small menu on the left hand side. Select the 'share' button and find your desired platform. In my case it was blogger. Then a new box appears where you can add some text. Once you post it, the whole thing appears quickly on your blog, just like magic!
   I have started to think about what kind of licenses I want my works to have. For the time being I have settled on Attribution-NonCommercial-No deriv's License which seems to be a pretty popular option.
There is still much to learn and I have very few friends on this site. Perhaps that is the next step: trying to connect more with others. But for the moment I am just trying to immerse myself in the land of creative commons so I can guide young learners to this fabulous pool of photographs.

Did You Know 4.0 ...

    

After watching “Did You Know 4.0” (2009), an official update of the original “Shift Happens” video I noted a few trends that are undoubtedly much more entrenched than they were when the video was made.

Firstly the issue of Copyright was highlighted. The video stated that 95% of downloaded music was pirated. Music is an obvious one, but what of videos, photographs, documents and artwork? Creators deserve recognition and copyright is the law which protects this right. Librarians need to instruct students on the best use of other people’s work. We can direct them to use creative commons and guide them in protecting their own creations when using Web 2.0 technologies.

Mobile phones are now ubiquitous and their use has many implications. One prediction is that mobile phone will connect just about everyone to the internet within the next seven years. Students use mobiles primarily to send text messages. Text messages can create a wave of public action in a political context as evidenced in the recent ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings. There are benefits in whipping up public support but public hysteria is the other side of the coin. Students need to know that they have a responsibility to be accurate and refrain from defamatory remarks as there can be legal consequences.

The former speaker Peter Slipper MP would also acknowledge that posting sexist remarks on his mobile phone cost him his job. Privacy is becoming a very slippery issue (please excuse the pun). The video highlighted how a casual remark on a social networking site could be seen by an employer and compromise a worker’s position. Similarly job applicants could be vetted by an administration by viewing their social networking profiles. It pays to say only things that you would say in front of your grandmother.

 Even though the majority of adults own mobile phones, apparently many of them are reluctant to make purchases using their phones. I’m not so sure about this one as the rise in online shopping is skyrocketing. But I understand the reluctance to put one’s financial information online. The issue here is cybercrime, I guess, and also the issue of data protection. Just how safe is our personal information? What is it being used for and to whom is it being passed on? We need to make sure students are cautious about online transactions and are aware of scams and fraudsters.

Lastly the video explains that traditional forms of advertising are rapidly declining. It cites that 90% of emails sent everyday are spam. This form of advertising has been around for a long time but students need to be aware of how businesses are targeting them now on social media platforms and search engines. We need to educate students about being producers of spam too. Sending off form letters, chain letters or impersonal pleas to all their friends to 'please respond' or act on a certain purchase or post is just as annoying as receiving spam.

So, ‘Like’ this or what?

 

Grappling with Goodreads

I've just spent a week reading Teens, Libraries , and Social Networks: What librarians Need to Know edited by Agosto and Abbas (2011). In it were two seperate chapters on engaging students in Social networking around Young Adult Literature. Over and over the book-sharing social networks Goodreads, Shelfari and LibraryThing were mentioned. I decided to check out Goodreads as it was meant to have added extras for authors.
   Well, what a blast! I've never had so much nerdy fun. It was easy to login through Facebook and to start rating the books I'd read. (Now how often as librarians do we consciously get to go through hundreds of books and rate them, as if anyone cared?) Well this site asks you to do it so that it can generate an idea of what type of books to recommend for you. I really don't think the program has this down pat though. A lot of the books they recommended to me was stuff I'd never go near because it was too trashy for my tastes. This brings me back to the topic of tagging items. How can a computer program plug into the aesthetic whims of the reader and provide similar titles? Neal Wyatt touched on this issue in one of the readings we had to do for Module 4.
   This problem was amplified when I created my own shelf called 'Island books'. The program had obviously never considered sorting books in such a way and it threw all sorts of riciculous options at me when recommending new Island Book titles.
   I joined a few groups so that I could see what sort of threads generate the best discussions. This was quite easy to do, just by clicking on the groups tab and following the prompts. However other aspects of the site weren't so intuitive. For instance it stated that I could follow different authors. OK, so how was I to do this? It took me over an hour of fiddling around to discover that I needed to highlight the author's name, whereby I would be sent to the author's profile page and that's where I could become a fan, or indeed a friend.
   I then decided to sign up for the special tool for authors. It took me a while to find the tab for this in small print at the bottom of the home page. Once there I had to apply to be accepted to the program. I did this and received notification the next morning. I had to then fill out my author profile which is always an irritatingly self-centred activity. Soon I will be able to add widgets to my blog and other helpful links. It's all a matter of continuing to play around with the platform. And guess what? I love it. I think I've found the almost perfect social networking platform for bibliophiles/authors combined.


Burns, E. (2011). Fandom as a form of social networking. Teens, Libraries and Social Networking: What Librarians Need to Know. Libraries Unlimited.

Hilburn, J. (2011). Using social networking sites to connect teens with young adult literature. Teens, Libraries , and Social Networking: What Librarians Need to Know. Libraries Unlimited.

Wyatt, N (2009). Large-scale tagging projects outside libraries put users at the center and offer a model for readers' advisory. Library Journal, 10/15/2009

An Inkling of Linkedin

Setting up a Linkedin account was the easy part. I typed in my name and a password, then I went on to fill out a professional profile. Editing the profile is simple and the buttons are easy to find and use. OK, I get all that, but there's so much more to this platform that eludes me. For instance it says at the top of the home page that you can "grow" your professional network by using your email information.
   I hate the word grow in an economic context. Don't people understand that it doesn't collocate; only living things grow. (Stuff like bacteria and bananas and people and pimples) But I digress. The email set-up didn't work for me. It seems none of my email contacts are with Linkedin, which is strange because when I look for contacts manually using the search bar, there they are, a handful of my friends. Weird!
   The platform also seems to assume that because I have a science degree in horticulture I may be interested in a lecturing job in astronomy. I don't think so. Or that because I'm a qualified teacher a professorship in Music education is advertised for me to consider. Hey, I'm tone deaf, I have no rythym, I'm a science and ESL major, for heaven's sake!
   It also has this weird quirk of assuming that because I'm an author and teacher that I don't know anyone who is a Sales and Marketing Executive and I can't connect with a certain individual because I am outside of her network. This is even though I say hello to her most days and our kids are best friends. I have to get her email address from her daughter in order to send her a request. Whereas someone I know as a friend who happens to work in Higher education was easy to connect with. I just sent them a request and ticked the friend button. I'm obviously missing some vital instruction somewhere, because I keep going from page to page looking at other people's connections and tripping up when it comes to making my own. I guess I am just a dud to connect with.
   The other issue that really bugged me was the group function. I enthusiastically joined a couple of groups and very soon regretted it. Why? Because I was bombarded with emails everyday from two of these groups, who seemed to delight in clogging my inbox with trivial discussions. Isn't that the function of Facebook, not a profesional site like Linkedin? However I made friends with the help button and succeeded in following the steps to 'leaving a group'.
   Despite the teething problems I quite enjoy coming back to this platform every few days. I don't know what purpose it will serve in the long run, but I am willing to play around with it and experiment.

INF 506 Implementing Library 2.0

Implementing Library 2.0

The school I sometimes work at is a split campus. Unlike the junior campus, the senior school has a reliable Internet connection and all students have a laptop. The library at the senior campus is therefore better positioned to attempt library 2.0.

Meredith Farkas’ keynote speech on Building Academic Library 2.0 mentioned the dangers of ‘technolust’. This is when librarians take on a new technology whether patrons need it, want it or will ever use it. The library must examine which Web 2.0 platform connects best with the students: a blog, a fiki, a webpage or a facebook page?

Students currently get told off for accessing facebook in the library. The TL sees it as a distraction or worse still, a foray into cyberbullying. The library needs to develop a risk-tolerant culture where social networking and information sharing are encouraged. Obviously a policy needs to be developed to cater for this.

Adopting a library 2.0 ethos would be done in small steps. If the library collaborates with IT staff and other interested teachers useful partnerships are created. Pathfinders can be established on wikis, which staff can add to over time. Students could use Web 2.0 platforms to comment on issues, compare experiment results, share photographs for assignments and so on. Having some staff members on board builds support and slowly changes the school culture.

Another simple step would be the marketing approach where the TL can use the Web 2.0 platform to highlight collections. This doesn’t just refer to new print resources. Often students are unaware of digital resources in the library. For example our school has ECHO online, an online database of newspaper articles. Most students don’t know what it is, let alone how to use it.

Maintaining the Web 2.0 platform must be made a priority. If we make it a rule that two hours each week are devoted to Web 2.0 maintenance then surely benefits will begin to appear. If not, then we need to adapt to the next technology that is capturing our student’s time and attention.

 

 

INF506 Delicious commentary

Dealing with Delicious

After registering and a brief struggle of setting up the Delicious save button on my browser, I was set. I saved a few websites of interest. But what next? There wasn’t a help button or an instructional video that I could find easily. The help button was at the bottom of the page and the information wasn’t very comprehensive.

After experimenting for a while I found I could import my links from Facebook. Most of these links were rubbish and I didn’t want to keep them so I learnt how to delete them with the edit icon in the top right hand side of each box.

Tagging wasn’t intuitive. The important ingredient is to use the “Enter” button before pressing “save”. Multiple tagging and then using the “bundle” option in the side bar were obvious next steps.

Connecting with others was a nightmare. Putting people’s names into the search bar revealed nothing. I had to put the complete URL in. This makes searching for like-minded colleagues problematic. The help button says:

·        When you come across a user on Delicious who's collecting great stuff, click on their profile pic or user name to go to their profile page. Then, click the green "Follow" button.

Well, excuse my ignorance, but just how do we come across other users when I can’t find them through the search bar? How do I know when I save a site on ‘discus throwing’ that there are other people collecting the same thing? No red light flashes. To me it seems that I am bookmarking in a vacuum. I see the value of Delicious in keeping favourite sites but the connectivity with others eludes me.

INF 506 Assessment item 1

I am naturally reticent. I hate talking on the phone or addressing the class for prolonged periods. I dread public speaking events and as an author this makes me a marketing liability for my publisher. But with Social Networking I can connect with the world without having to speak.

Websites where people with common interests or shared histories can publish their own content and connect with others are called Social Networks (De Rosa, Cantwell, Havens, Hawk and Jenkins, 2007). Those in vogue currently, and they are rather transient beasts, include Facebook, Twitter, Google+1, Flickr, YouTube and Linked In. There are countless others.

A few years ago, on the advice of my publicist, I started up a blog and an author’s page on Facebook. I enjoy blogging. I can surround myself in book reviews and thoughtful comments and feel as if I’m closeted. I have neglected the author site and aside from linking it to my blog I rarely use it. However I post to my personal page weekly and check statuses every day. I try to keep my author self and my personal self separate as many in the writing world do (Woodhead, 2011a). I also find I waste a lot of time when I could be writing (Baverstock, 2011).

I’ve tried Twitter and hate it. It’s like a crowd shouting different messages with no-one listening. Twitter connects strangers, not old friends (Woodhead, 2011b). As a retiring type this makes me nervous. I am concerned about privacy and making an idiot of myself. But in the writing world Twitter is an ideal way to build your profile and connect with readers as its medium is concise text (Woodhead, 2011b).

I am keen to master Twitter and use it as a marketing tool.  It would help if I bought a mobile phone, I guess, and learnt to use it. As a budding T/L and blogger I see merit in Linked In, Delicious and Flickr. All I ask for is the time to master these tools. Then hopefully I could be a connected professional librarian and a marketing success.

References

Baverstock, A.(2011). Using Facebook to Promote Yourself as a Writer. Writers’ Forum #115, June

De Rosa, C., Cantrell, J., Havens, A., Hawk, J. & Jenkins, L. (2007). Sharing privacy and trust in our networked world: A report to the OCLC membership. Dublin, Ohio: OCLC. [ebook] Available http://www.oclc.org/reports/pdfs/sharing.pdf

Woodhead, R. (2011a). Facebook: Share but Beware. Writing Magazine, May

Woodhead, R. (2011b). Build Your Profile on Twitter. Writing Magazine, Feb