Social Networking and libraries

Social networking sites, of whatever flavour, are insanely popular. Libraries (and everyone else, it seems) want to capitalize on that popularity or somehow harness the community's enthusiasm and direct a little of it their own way. The problem is that people have a hard time coming up with ways to do this effectively. Many of the traditional functions of a library do not translate well into the new medium. For instance, providing a forum for members of the community to post reference questions does not make a lot of sense. These needs are already met elsewhere in ways that make more sense. And coming from the other direction presents a complimentary problem. The functions and philosophies of social networking sites were not made with the library's traditional missions in mind. So while the library could "Throw a sheep" at patrons, share lists of its hobbies and favorite music, or play some of the asinine integrated games with the public, most of what these sites focus on is of dubious value to our core missions.

I do believe that there are a few applications in which this natural incompatibility can be resolved. For instance, FVRL's "one minute critic" program where staff and others are encouraged to post short reviews of books they've enjoyed on YouTube. This provides a potentially changing and interesting source of content that can be tied into a library MySpace account. Social networking sites do provide a good platform for tying together disparate sources of content such as this in one place. With enough such projects going on in the wired world, a social networking site might find a place.

That being said, it should be noted that many of the people that use these types of sites will likely be people already highly involved with one or more library groups. For instance, our teen group, YAAB, takes advantage of social networking sites to put some of their activities on the web. This is great and probably adds to their experience and relationship with the library, but unless people outside of the YAAB group itself are also being drawn in and using the site, the intended goal of harnessing the popularity of these services to bring our service to a greater portion of the community is not really being reached.

Finally, it should be noted that we don't have the resources to maintain a presence on every social networking site out there. If we choose MySpace, does that mean we alienate the Facebookers and Second Lifers? Probably not, but we're still choosing an allegiance and should be aware of that.

In summary, I begrudgingly admit that there may be a place for the library in the world of social networks, but I maintain that we're groping in the dark. That place has not really been carved out yet, and I don't think it's going to be coming in the most obvious guises. Some of us will see what the future holds, but first some of us have to make it.

Fun with Meebo!

I already used Meebo as a means to login to my MSN account when I'm away from home, but I didn't know about being able to implant such a cool little widget! I was totally pleased about that! Actually, MSN isn't really my first choice anyways. I fell into my current IM configuration out of necessity. I haven't really been much for chatting since the old days of AOL through a 2400 baud modem. By the time I felt the need to re-initiate myself, the people I wanted to talk to were spread all over the spectrum of IM services. Right now, my sister uses Yahoo!, one of my brothers uses AIM, the other's on Gtalk, my ex-girlfriends are all on MSN (curious…), my old friends from college use Silc, one website I frequent requires IRC, we're on a jabber network at work…So I don't think I really talk to that many different people, but they're ALL with different services! That's why at home I just run Pidgin (Formerly Gaim). I can make accounts here and there to talk to each of my different friends, and then tie it all back together at home. Meebo is nice, because it can do the same thing, only it follows you wherever you go!

In a library context, I can see some potential for IM as a reference tool. Really, the only way to know how well it would work and to root out potential problems is to try it out and see what works. I would like to add a caveat, however. I don't think that using a Meebo widget or any other proprietary third party free service would be the ideal choice for anything beyond a trial run. It's one thing if we're paying somebody for support and guaranteed uptime, but many of these services are on an as-is basis. If something breaks, we would not have control over how long it's broken for. Therefore, my first impulse would be along the lines of an open protocol such as jabber running on a server that we own. In fact, we already have this in place, it's just being used for staff only right now. If we were to try and use it for public reference, we'd want to keep it isolated from the staff network in some way. We don't need our metaphorical gravy escaping from our proverbial mashed potatoes and drowning our hypothetical peas. That's my opinion!

Finding more stuff for RSS

For sites and resources that I'm already aware of, I find that the easier way to add them into my RSS reader is through my reader's interface. It takes only a moment or two to search for it and disambiguate the results.

If I'm looking for new resources, a find a compiled list to be much more usable than a full-fledged search engine. For instance, when looking for library blogs http://liswiki.org/wiki/Weblogs is much easier to use then, say, http://www.technorati.com. The former is more cleaner, more focused, and less busy than the latter. Of course, you work isn't half done for you ALL the time, so in the absence of these resources a search engine comes in handy.

I can see a few ways in which RSS feeds could be effectively used by the library. It could be used as a replacement for the library newletter. The same content would be pushed out, but in more a trickle than a flood. It could be used to inform or remind patrons of upcoming events as they approach. It could inform users of policy changes, holiday or inclement weather closures, election results, or other issues that would benefit from being published immediately rather than waiting for a weekly or monthly newsletter. Actually, if implementing this were my project, I would probably shy away from replacing the newsletter as a whole and just pushing out important or time-sensitive stuff. I've noticed that I tend to ignore my more prolific feeds in favour of the sparser ones. I just don't have time to go back and read all 462 Slashdot items. I will, however, get around to my 3 xkcd.com items and my 5 The Book of Biff items.

RSS at first blush

Finally! Something potentially useful to me! Honestly, curiosity about setting up RSS feeds was one of the main motivators for going through this program. Even so, reading through the intros and things that were supposed to motivate me into wanting this were a bit of a slog. Still! Here I am! I went through the directions and set up a bloglines account, only to immediately abandon it before really giving it a chance. Not that there was anything wrong with it, but I just realized that I've already got an RSS reader built-into my google account. So, lacking a good reason not to, I threw my couple of new feeds over there instead. Then began the long task of accumulating feeds.

Well, actually, it started out slow. I spent some time trying to think of websites I look at often enough to care about. I haven't more than glanced at Slashdot in a good long while, but as per usual found myself spending a good amount of time reading through the stuff there. So, first place on the list! After that, I perused a few of my fellow Discovery 2.0 bloggers works and tossed those on. A few word a day feeds that sounded interesting. Then, I remembered webcomics! And from there things just snowballed!

Now I've got a list of 17 different feeds and 152 new items to read. Of course, since I'm brand new to my reader, but not the content, much of it actually isn't new at all. But still, it's like suddenly having a whole new email box with a new set of friends that send you stuff all the time! Actually, I'm not really sure how I feel about that...

This has the potential to be the single biggest timesink of my day from now on...

...

Anyways! Here's my list of new feeds for those that are curious! I fully intend to par this down after I get a sense for what each provides.

"2600: The Hacker Quarterly"
"An American in Brighton"
"Darknet - The Darkside"
"Dictionary.com Word of the Day"
"Dinosaur Comics" title="Dinosaur Comics"
"Double-Tongued Dictionary"
"FVRL Discover 2.0 Program"
"Network World on Security"
"No One's Sane Behind Their Masks"
"SANS Internet Storm Center, InfoCON: green"
"Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (updated daily)"
"Slashdot" title="Slashdot"
"The Book of Biff"
"Through the Fog"
"Woot! - One Day, One Deal"
"Wordsmith.org: Today's Word"
"xkcd.com"

Mashups

The Flickr mashup that immediately caught my eye was the Trading Card Maker. It jumped right out at me because I used to play a lot of Magic: The Gathering. In fact, I've still got all of my cards! I've always wished I could make my own cards, and here comes an easy way to do just that! Or so it would seem...

The Trading Card Maker has a similar layout when it come to the main picture, various text fields, and the tiny symbols in the upper right for casting cost, but it is missing one critical piece for me. The lower right hand corner is where a creature's power/toughness is supposed to be. However, there's not a good way to get to the lower right hand corner. Adding a bunch of spaces to the end of the big text field doesn't even work right, so you can't even work around it. If I had just that extra piece of functionality, I'd be able to make a working game out of it that mimics Magic very closely, and could even be used in my old decks!

I wonder which would be easier. Finding the source code for this mashup, or just photoshopping the last bit onto each card...

Poker chips

http://www.flickr.com/photos/limowreck666/123811344/

This is kinda cool. We have a poker night every 6 weeks or so, and use these exact same chips! In fact, one of my favorite things to do with my hands during the game is to build little structures like castles and towers and such. I've never made anything quite so elaborate, but I think I'm definitely going to have to try next poker night!

7 1/2 habits of lifelong learners

Habit 1 – Begin with the end in mind
Habit 2 – Accept responsibility for your own learning
Habit 3 – View problems as challenges
Habit 4 – Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner
Habit 5 – Create your own learning toolbox
Habit 6 – Use technology to your advantage
Habit 7 – Teach and mentor others
Habit 7 ½ – PLAY!

For many things, most of these habits come very naturally to me. I don't consciously think about any of them. In fact, I don't think picking one of them as the one that comes easiest for me would be particularly meaningful. However, there is one item on the list that is conspicuous in how little I get along with it, and that is Habit 5 - Create your own learning toolbox. The level of conscious preparation that seems to be implied by this does not work for me in most situations. When I've got a new project to work on, I like to dive right in. Spending a lot of time checking and double-checking to make sure I've got all the tools I need before starting just feels like procrastination. Maybe I'm just not thinking broadly enough, though. If I were trying to learn how to cook, I'd make sure I had all the ingredients before I broke open the eggs. On the other hand, I still wouldn't go out and make sure I had a complete kitchen set first. As long as I had enough tools for the first project/recipe/whatever, I wouldn't worry about the next one until I got there. I put much more stock in improvisational skills than preparedness. I value agility and versatility over...some less agile and versatile option.