Readings (4)

Or, a short and confused history of RSS

I was amused at the scandals of RSS development outlined in a couple of these articles. It made for good reading, but it also seemed a bit petty. I already wrote a bit about the coming death of email in my post yesterday so I’m not going to go over that again (“Frodo Lives! Email Lives!).

I liked the article “Seven Things…” because it included a section on the significance of RSS feeds. I thought it was interesting that the author referred to RSS feeds as filters which would allow users to control how much (and what kinds of) information they received. One (one being me) assumes that this does not mean RSS feeds will be used exclusively, only that they will serve to be the advanced search option. I also thought the discussion of super-combinations (Facebook/ RSS/ Flickr) as the future was pretty accurate.

Both Netvibes and Rogo failed my initial test (“am I able to load the page without crashing my computer or growing old whilst I wait”). I liked the layout of Netvibes and I think I would respond much better to this format (going to a website with links and buttons) more than what feels like just another email address (the RSS aggregator I’m using is the one available through my Gmail account—which I have never been so thankful for.) I liked Netvibes better than Rogo—it was more fun and seemed to have a lot more—, but it also seemed a little more scattered: without a tight focus. I’m going to add it to my New Online Things To Try List (after Secondlife and Facebook) so I might comment more extensively later.

The University of Okalahoma Libraries’ RSS feeds seemed simple to use, but I’m not sure who it would be useful for other than Ph. D students or faculty. (I’m thinking specifically of the new books—does a first year Sociology major care?) On the other hand, the new journals feed from NHMCCD seemed to have picked a narrow and invested target audience. Still, while browsing the Tacoma Public Library’s feeds, I imagined a young mother with three children subscribing to the Upcoming Children Events feed. Their FAQs were quite good too, I thought.

So, is it unethical to use Facebook to surreptitiously, uh, spy upon an old boyfriend?

I Love the Leader (A Post About Facebook)

I joined Facebook this week, after months of resistance.

It felt like everyone I knew was on (and you know, seated at the cool table in the high school cafeteria), but once I signed up I wasn’t sure who to search for, and I was (pleasantly!) surprised at the people who weren’t there. I’m fairly good at keeping in touch with people: I come from a small town; I went to school for (over, in some cases) ten years with the same people I went to preschool with, and if I needed to find you, the easiest way might very well be to send my mom down to the grocery store to hit your mom up for information. That said, I also have some nomadic tendencies: I move a lot, and I sometimes use that as an excuse to move away from the things I just don’t want to deal with. Facebook, with all of its sparkling promises to reconnect me with people I willingly left behind didn’t seem very useful for me. (And let’s not get me starting on how reluctant I am to get my network on).

I signed up with my roommate next to me on the couch (our laptops on our laps, the Miss Universe Pageant—ironically!—on the television and those delicious miniature strawberry coffee cakes slowly finding their destinies). I had six friends within the first fifteen minutes. One of my friends—hereafter referred to as “The Penguin”—called me long distance to squeal with glee. I then got to post on various walls and search for groups, and it was fun times and all, but I don’t think it would have been quite the riot it turned out to be if my roommate had not been spurring me on (“friend me bitch!”). I’ll have to see.

One of the articles for this week mentioned that some RSS theorists think that it will bring about the end of email. I know that a some of my friends use email less now that they have Facebook (and probably used it less after the advent of MSN too). The RSS article was about the slow phasing out of email newsletters, and in terms of those kinds of marketing techniques (“Elf minions! Now 60% off in April!” or “Books at the Library About a Controversial Topic Recently in the News”), I would much rather get it through an RSS feed. I think the chances of mistaking it for spam (since you have to subscribe to the RSS feed) are less too.

I suppose that at the root of all of this is the persistent, niggling little belief that all of this social software I’m signing up for isn’t bringing me closer to people, it’s just creating more perfunctional ways of pretending to keep in touch, or more exotic ways to disappear (a la Second Life). Is The Penguin, for example, going to be less likely to email me now that she knows I can get daily updates via her status? Is my roommate going to leave me notes on my wall when I’ve forgotten to do the dishes? How soon is it before I find out about a friend’s engagement through an RSS feed, instead of a mass email?

Stay turned for a post about the readings and case studies.

Readings (3)

This week’s readings were focused on the ethics of blogs. I really liked Jakob Nielsen’s discussion of anonymity and trust, and the efforts that bloggers go to (or should go to) to increased the reader’s trust. His reference to the blogosphere’s “positive feedback loop” reminded me a lot of the authority criteria used when evaluating sources, and citation indexes. And this point is reiterated by Karen Schneider when she states that librarians are “the standard-bearers for accurate, unbiased information”.

I thought Darlene Fichter’s article on how to promote your library through blogs was very straightforward and I liked some of her suggestions under “building new ties” such as a blog for teachers and blogs in other languages.

The most interesting thing about the case studies was how different they were from each other. I thought that the Garfield County Public Library System’s blog was fun and had some amusing links. On the other hand, the Virginia Commonwealth University suggestion box (and responses) was amusing in a slightly different way, but it was encouraging to see that students did actually have suggestions about different reference sources and databases! (And, I learned you can major in Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.)

So Far

I signed up for Second Life this morning. (Hi Group!). My name is Aletea Szondi. I couldn’t help but think of this cautionary advice, though.

I have been using my RSS aggregator, but so far, I’m lukewarm on it. I think that I might be too set in my ways—I have my “check-thrice-daily” favourites, my “work-downtime-appropriate” favourites, my “check once every Sunday” favourites and my “browse occasionally if bored or procrastinating” favourites (to name only a few). My test case for the RSS aggregator was Slate: an online new magazine that updates quite frequently, and made a big deal about its RSS feed. Unfortunately, this meant that in two days, forty- eight items were in my Google Reader account—forty-eight items which I would have filtered through on my thrice-a-day-four-if-it’s-a-slow-day-at-work-pass. The goal for this week is to try subscribing to the things in my “check once or twice a month” category.

Anything tagged by “Jiptonia” on del.cioi.us is actually me. “Leah” wasn’t available.

I haven’t been tagging very much on del.cioi.us, for myself or for the class, but I can see a lot of potential for library use. It seems like it could very easily adopted for lot of library purposes, from the academic subject librarian tagging news articles and blogs about obscure topics, to the special librarian (or Information Services Superhero) placing it on an intranet and using to share tasks like media monitoring or competitive intelligence.

I am enjoying readings your posts very much—I promise to comment more this week (which should be less crazy than last week.)

Readings (2)

Or, a Short History of Blogging

I expected these histories of blogs to draw some connections between blogs and published diaries or other types of alternative media, but instead they mostly focused on the technical history. Rebecca Blood states that, “when we talk about weblogs, we're talking about a way of organizing information, independent of its topic.” She traces the evolution of the blog from collections of links by people who were “web enthusiasts” to the introduction of applications like Blogger, which allow pretty much anyone to blog.

I found Rebecca Blood’s observation that as she began to blog she “began to feel that my perspective was unique and important” amusing. I’ve been reluctant to blog because I don’t think I have enough to say (“today I read a book, yesterday I ate some cheese”). It’s nice to know that that will change!

However, I found some of what she said about the implications of blogs (statements like, “as with free speech itself, what we say isn't as important as the system that enables us to say it”, for example) a little melodramatic. Her statement that blogs are “a medium free of the physical limitations of pages, intrusions of editors, and delays of tedious publishing systems” highlighted some of the major differences between blogs and “traditional publishing”—such as gatekeepers. But I think it’s important to remember that someone who doesn’t have access to the internet won’t have access to blogs either.

Reading that over, it sounds somewhat negative, and I certainly don’t think it is. I think the progression from html-aficionados to a tool of the everyman (and everylibrary) is positive.

Finally, Technorati is very useful— and addictive.

Readings (1)

I read most of the article by Henry Jenkins (“Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century”), because I read the book Textual Poaching: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (also by Henry Jenkins) last summer. The book was about the ways in which communities of fans create (or, transform, I guess) meanings from different texts, and, about the shift from passive consumption of texts to interaction with them—through discussion with other fans to reconstructions of the texts themselves.

The book was published in 1992, so some of the ways in which fans were participating are dated (in other words: not so internet-based). Jenkins’ use of the term “participatory culture” builds on this, I think, even if he’s not specifically addressing reacting to a text so much as creating (or recreating) it.

This is very similar, I think, to the straightforward definition that John Blyberg provides for Library 2.0: “library 2.0 simply means making your library’s space (virtual and physical) more interactive, collaborative, and driven by community needs.” It did make me a little sad to read his reference to “a post-Google world”. But if the shift that Jenkins and Blyberg are describing is a shift from passive consumption to active participation, then this seems a fairly accurate parallel.

I also read the wikipedia entry for social software. I was pleasantly surprised by how many of the categories I recognized, or had participated in (instant messaging, text chat, internet forums, blogs, wikis, even the “Massively Multiplayer Online Games”.) It was a little difficult to imagine the connections between some of these technologies—like MMOGs— to libraries. On the other hand the application of peer-to-peer social networks seems easy and useful, especially between libraries.

Baby's First Post

Greetings. My name is Leah and I’m in my final term of library school (er, a candidate for the Masters of Library and Information Science from the University of Western Ontario). This blog is created for a specific course (LIS 757: Social Software & Libraries), so it will be kept up to date through August at the very least.

As for my expectations: nothing on the syllabus was unrecognizable. The biggest change for me will be the participatory aspect: I’ve read blogs for years, but haven’t had one of my own. I know what an RSS aggregator is, but I’ve never used one. I don’t find the Library 2.0 hoopla terrifying so much as a little bewildering, and I’m looking forward to learning more.

I do have some old-fashioned sensibilities when it comes to libraries: I love books, I love old book smell, I love browsing through shelves, and curling up with a book and a cup of tea. I come from a family of bibliophiles (which includes two other librarians). But, I’m also a fan of the many wonders of the internet, and all of the cheap and easy things we in library school are taught to disapprove of on principle (Google, GoogleScholar, wikipedia).

I’m not as whimsical or as literate as the title suggests.