Teri's Blog

I can’t believe it’s the end of the term and this is our last post, but I have definitely learned a lot about social software. To begin, in answering the questions “has your view of social software changed since starting this course? If so, how?, my view of social software has changed dramatically. Specifically, I now view twitter in a positive light and I actually find that it’s very useful in its own 140 character way. Also, I have learned that twitter can be effective for many organization and institutions who can incorporate twitter in to their system. For example, in the public library, librarians can use twitter as a way of informing patrons of quick changes or post announcements. I find that twitter is especially useful this way because, many parents and young adults are busy and often times may not have the time to go through the blogs but instead get the information they need quickly and efficiently through twitter. My views on twitter, I believe, have come a long way.

2. Of all the social tools we’ve reviewed this term, what are your “favourite” tools for libraries and why? What would you consider to be the low-hanging fruit, i.e. the tools that could be implemented easily and with the greatest impact

My favourite social tool for libraries and one that I think would be implemented easily and with the greatest impact would be using blogs to host information for patrons. I find that I like blogs the best because of its flexibility. Blogs do not restrict librarians to only a few characters like twitter, but librarians do have the option of just writing something as simple as 140 characters or write something that contains 140 words. Blogs also allow librarians to create links to other social software such as linking a weblog to the library’s twitter account. One can also post pictures of text. It can hold almost any type of information a librarian wants it to, it is this flexibility that makes blogs so useful.

3.What social software tools (if any) do you consider to have the least potential for library service and why?

Although my views about twitter has changed and I no longer think that there is no use for a software that only allows 140 characters per post. I still strongly believe that the 140 character restrictions also limit the usefulness of twitter in libraries. Other than announcements and frequent short updates, I cannot think of many other functions that twitters can be used in libraries. Unlike blogs where one can write as much as a person desires.

4.Tell us about your personal experiences with the social software tools we’ve used & looked at this term. Which tools have worked for you, which haven’t?

My personal experiences with social bookmarking and tagging have been, one can say, fruitful. From the time that I discovered that we were allowed to bookmark various websites, I have been using it especially organizing websites for different courses and assignments. Through my undergraduate years, I have found this particular tool very useful and at times even a life saver. However, I have rarely used social bookmarking website such as deli.icio.us and have always used other means mainly through web browsers. However, there were crucial times when my computer crashed and I lost important websites that I needed for school. I began using other bookmarking tools instead of the browser after my computer crashed a few times. Now, I find that bookmarking tools can be useful in that, I don’t lose all the saved websites and that I can access the bookmarks wherever internet is available.

5.How has the distance ed. experience been for you?

The distance education experience for this semester has been an eye opener. I have never had a blog of my own and for fourteen weeks I did. I blogged almost every week and it was an experience that I am very grateful for. I think if it wasn’t for this class I would not have experienced blogging, but now that I have I think I may continue to blog even after this semester.

6.Do you have any suggestions for improving the learning experience of this course? (e.g. readings, weekly activities, assignments, etc.) (be honest, I can take it!)

I love the way this course has been organized and structured. The blogs the comments and having the opportunity to read what other people have to say on something is also exciting. In terms of the structure of the course I don’t think there needs to be a revision. I loved the readings, especially the slide shows that give you a brief introduction to the subject of the week. Perhaps making it mandatory for the final project to incorporate a tool instead of the option of a paper could be something fun and different.

7.How would you sum up your experience over the past 13 weeks?

I would sum up my experience over the past 13 weeks as great and fun. I have most definitely learned a lot and different from other courses is that I have experienced a lot. It is not often that I pick up a habit (blogging in this case) after a course. I definitely enjoyed and would love to take another course relating to this class in the future.

Hi everyone this week I am taking a blog holiday. Have a great week!

Hi everyone this week is my blog holiday. Have a great week!

For this week’s reading I particularly liked the article, Success Story: RSS Moves into the Mainstream at the University of Alberta Libraries  by Randy Reichardt. There were a number of things that Reichardt said that were interesting and that I strongly agreed with. Specifically, I liked how Reichardt gave us examples of not just how RSS has moved into the University of Alberta, but also how any library could be using RSS feeds. For example, he mentions that: “Library functions using RSS include announcements, cataloguing, collection development, databases, instruction, Internet resources, new books, new journal issues, news, reference services, reviews, and tables of contents.”

Every week when we talk about a new tool, I always think to myself how could this software be used in a library, and how can it benefit both the staff and the patrons. I really like the way Reichardt lists out the many ways RSS can be of use in the library because this gives me a clearer picture of how useful the tool can really be. Often times, I don’t see all the options the tool can be used in the library and sometimes I only see a few until I get to the case studies, so I thought this articles did a great job outlining the use of it early on.

I especially liked the description by Rechardt on how the tool can be used for alerting patrons about new books that have arrived in the library. I have for a long time been looking for a way where I can quickly check which new books arrived since I have always struggled to either get the book and end up on the very long wait list or even know about the book. So for Rechardt to mention that RSS can do this I think is really great to hear. But this is just personally for me, I am not sure why this always happens to me but I almost never know when new books come in at my local library which can be frustrating.

Additionally, I also thought that the emailing option was creative. Every day my inbox gets so clogged up with many emails about things that are announcements and new updates which can be very difficult to separate from emails that I need to tend to immediately. Having this option does allow a better emailing management method and I can see myself and others benefiting from this.

Case study: The University of Oklahoma Libraries RSS feeds was how I thought RSS feeds would be utilized in libraries. I explored around the site and found that you can find updates on almost every subjected available. I think this is what I like most about RSS feeds. I find the list of subjects a good way to organize things and I found it to be easy to use and I found the information of the book I wanted very easily as well.

For this week’s readings, I particularly liked the article, M-libraries: information use on the move by Keren Mills. To begin, in general I am not very familiar with this type of technology. The introduction of apps and cloud computing is all very new to me, I have only just recently received my first smart phone. I am actually very surprised and excited at how apps are going to play a role in libraries now as we have just barely moved into using twitters and blogs as part of the library, implementing apps into the system seemed fast but I am confident and excited about it.

The reason why I liked this article more than some of the other readings for this week is due to the suggestion the author makes for libraries to consider when incorporating this new technology. The list she provided includes: piloting text alerting services, piloting a text reference service, providing a mobile OPAC interface, ensuring that the library website is accessible and will resize to smaller screens, providing audio tours of the library, and allowing mobile phone use in the library.

Personally, I love using text messages as a form of communication which is why I loved the suggestion of piloting a text reference service. The author describe this method as: if a library has a high volume of enquiries that have brief answers such as brief definitions or facts, then reference librarians can respond to the patron through text messaging. Specifically, I like this service because, there were times in my life when I was not close to a computer or any device that could provide internet to me but I did have an important question that I would have liked to ask the librarian. I didn’t think that phone referencing was available or sometimes I find that simply firing off a text message can be most cost efficient than actually calling someone and incurring more charges as you have to wait on the phone for the answer. Also, this technology is more convenient and more flexible. This sounds like an excellent idea to me.

The other suggestion that I simply thought could be useful in the library context is piloting text alerting services. Virtually, these notifications could be about anything from alerting a patron when their books on hold have become available, or if workshops have changed times and days. Most of the population now uses mobiles and the users check their phones frequently, and not everyone can access their email or the internet on their cellar phones so piloting a text alerting service can be very helpful and useful.

 In addition, I know that a lot of libraries want to reach out to non-users and many of these non-users are younger patrons, teenagers and young adults. I have once read an article on the use of texting messaging among the youth and I remembered it describing the ridiculous amount of text messages a student receives and puts out. Thus, I think perhaps implementing this service can draw teenagers into the libraries as these notifications can show them the many different services the library provides simply and easily over their phone. I think as a teenager I would have loved to use this service.

Case study: For the case studies this week, I was drawn to the DCPL iphone App mainly because I have just fallen in love with my new iphone. Having an app that shows a single post can be useful as patrons are not overwhelmed with information and receiving updates in small increments can definitely be helpful. I have also read the comments located at the bottom of the page and it appears that most people love this app and are all for libraries implementing apps in to their system. I think this is a great way to reach out the public, draw and retain them in. This app seems to be very successful.

I hope everyone had a great research week! Coming back to school after a good rest is always hard! But just to jump in, for this week’s reading the How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live article by Stephen Johnson was very true and interesting to me. Like Johnson I didn’t understand the use of twitter at the beginning of its inception, and I asked the same question ‘why does the world need twitter?.’ 140 characters, what can that do. After I worked on a project involving twitter in the library context, I saw how useful it can be and it instantly changed my mind about it. However, Johnson pointed out a further advantage that twitter has.

My reservations about twitter included the questions why would anyone care what anyone else who’s not a celebrity is doing everyday. In the article, Johnson mentions things like ‘what your friend ate for breakfast’, is not critical information and who would want to know about it. However, he also mentions that when we call our friends, we ask the very same questions, ‘how was your day, what did you eat today, what are you doing’, and thus what makes this so different than twitter? After realizing that his point was very true, I now think that if twitter can actually be very useful for personal use then organizations can also find a use for it as well. I simply liked how his example made everything so clear to me all of the sudden.

Also, I enjoyed the second part of his article named ‘the open conversation’. I found that this was rather new and innovative. I have definitely never thought of using twitter as a source of contributing to live time conversations. I was amazed at how interactive people could get with the combination of twitter and instant conversations. In theory I don’t think that it would have been able to work, however this reality shows me that, carrying on conversations with twitter contributions produce several key advantages. For example, I think having others bring in their advices and suggestions are always beneficial in that all the grounds of the conversation are covered. Something that was also mentioned in the article.

Using twitter in this format can also allow more people to join the conversation who are not originally invited to the conversation or ever aware of it, and bring public opinion into play. Simply following the twitter thread can make it rather popular thereby when more people join, more useful information is produced. I think this method should be used in conversations that want to include the public. It makes society aware of events that they were otherwise not informed of, and giving them the opportunity to voice their opinions as well.

Having the twitter included also suggests that a transcript of the conversation is also produced. Transcripts are always recorded in some way of another and I think that using twitter can definitely produce a natural transcript, one that does not require a person to deliberately write everything down, as it just naturally happens. After reading this article, I have definitely found a new way of looking at twitter for both personal use and conversation purposes, and may try it myself one day.

I wonder what other people think of Johnson’s ‘the open conversation’ method. I certainly found it interesting.

Case study: The twitter account for the West Palm Beach Library was very interesting. I liked how they update news on their twitter account such as “ no French class today but we’ve got meditation from 6 to 7.” I think twitter’s main purpose for libraries is updating for people who could be very busy and have no time to check the library’s website regularly. By just skimming the twitter account, a person can always be updated quickly about changing news regarding their public library. Definitely a very useful tool.

For this week’s readings, the article, Myspace and Facebook: What higher-ed can learn from social computing by Matthew Williams, was what I thought to be very interesting and important. One thing the author pointed out was something that I think professors who are against such technology should consider. The author mentions that many instructors are against social networking programs such as Facebook. Specifically one professor said it was an ‘abuse of technology”. I found this quote to be highly untrue for the very same reason that the author points out that Facebook and Myspace do not only exist for the purpose of entertainment. For one, we have seen social networks at work within libraries for very useful reasons, and have been rather successful.

Additional reasons include, students using these networks for team projects and other school purposes. I for one have used Facebook many times as an organization device with many of my past team members. I have never once thought that Facebook was such a huge distraction to the point where it could be considered as “an abuse of technology”. The article points out that instructors believe that students often times do not pay attention in class or to their guest speakers because they are too busy working on their blog or writing on the walls of others. I don’t deny the fact that there are some students who might access their Facebook account while in class, however, I find that my mind is the most distracting device and not so much social networking sites. Sometimes my mind has a mind of its own, and it wonders to other places which can be out of my control, or I day dream about other things as well. This I find prevents me the most from paying attention in class, not so much social sites.

The author also points out that, perhaps it could be that the students aren’t interested enough in the material presented to them, therefore they do other things. I found this to hold much truth. I have had criminology classes where a professor has told amazing and exciting stories of his research, and for an hour and half, twice a week, the entire class would be silent, simply listening and absorbing his every word. We were all listening carefully to what he had to say and at the end not only was his class entertaining, but we learned a lot and the stories were easy to remember making exams a breeze. With this, the author also mentions that the question is not how to separate students from these social networks but how to engage them into the classes. Something I found very true after taking my criminology courses.

Overall, I liked what Matthew Williams had to say. I have to say I agreed with most things he say and resonated with it as well. I also thoroughly enjoyed what he had to say.  

Case study: It comes to no surprise that I liked the Hennepin County Library Facebook page. I am a big fan of Facebook and was drawn to this site immediately. I like their logo as their display picture instead of a picture of the library. It makes it uniform when they post things on their walls and their logo appears. Most importantly I liked that there are over thirty thousand people who like the page as well. This really shows that the page is visited by a lot of people therefore it is working. I just like that it’s a normal Facebook page with videos and photos as well as a serious site for patrons to visit.

I wonder what other articles and case studies people were interested in this week.

After using my De.icio.us account to tag ten items pertinent to this course, I have learned a number of important benefits when using a crowdsourcing and social bookmarking tool. Like I have read many times in our readings, but have only experienced while working on both my group project and this assignment, convenience and ease is important in making social bookmarking tools effective and useful. Although many web browsers nowadays have the bookmarking option too, it is impossible for me to feel that my bookmarks are safe while saved to a web browser. The main reasons are tools like the delicious website allows users to access their saved sites from any computer with the internet anywhere in the world. Also, in the unfortunate case that a computer crashes, something that has happened to me many times, all the saved websites will also be lost. By saving sites to delicious, a person does not need to worry about losing their resources especially if the information is of utmost important to them.

Also, the ease of using delicious was unbelievable. Prior to my experiences with delicious, I have always thought that using bookmarking tools would be difficult and would take me a long time to save a webpage. However, after this experience, I have realized that the template created by delicious allows users to easily fill in the blanks and save their websites without any problems. This is a very attractive method, by making the device easy to use, many will find the user friendly factor appealing and use it themselves and suggest it to others.

Additionally, the tags that the social bookmarking tools provide, allows users to properly organize their websites into as many different tags as they need. For example, I have found that, I could save websites for this assignment under “LIS9763” while also saving websites to other specific topics such as “knitting”, a personal topic. Tags not only allow for great organization purposes but also great flexibility for the users. These tags make for easy retrieval, as I know which tag the website I am looking for is under. I definitely found the importance and usefulness of tags while completing this assignment.

Lastly, social bookmarking tools can be greatly beneficial to libraries. As there maybe thousands of useful and important websites that patrons can benefit from, social bookmarking tools allows the librarians the opportunity to save all the sites to a specific account and share it with the public. This gives patrons a chance to access the sites that can be useful to them quickly and easily, without the going through the millions of websites that exist on the World Wide Web. Having all the useful websites in one place can definitely help libraries list out their information sources and attract the both users and non-users to the library.

In this week’s reading, the article that resonated with me the most was Folksonomies: Power to the People. As I have only used tagging tools a mere few times in my life, I found that understanding folksonomies is rather difficult. I think this article does a good job explaining folksonomy, especially while using the constant example of Flickr and Del.icio.us. throughout its article. Specifically, I liked the way the author outlined the benefits and drawbacks of folksonomies, which was titled under ‘properties of folksonomies’, It has never occurred me to think about the problems or benefits that social software sites like del.icio.us creates.

In addition to the list of benefits the author provided, I also think that tagging is something personal which is something I like so much about Del.icio.us. I like the way both Flickr and Del.icio.us allow people to organize their information. Websites are just sites until a person deems it important to them and tags it. After using Del.icio.us for the group project, I have learned to love it and will most definitely use it in the future. Every website that I tagged to my account is something personal to me. I like the fact that I am able to say that this list belongs to me and it’s unique and important to me and not anyone else. Most importantly, I really appreciate how I can draw on it to help me in any way when I need to and that it is always there.

Also, after working on the group project, I learned that tagging tools says a lot about a person. By looking through their list, you can determine what the person likes, dislikes and does for a living. This read into the person is beneficial in that it allows others to better know the person, something that could be important to many.  

On the other hand, some drawbacks that were listed in the article, I found to be true but something rather normal also. I didn’t see it as something bad or good. For example, the author expresses that the proposed tags do not have a hierarchy, although this may be true, everything remains to be organized under a number of tags, all websites can be found in their rightful places that the tagger has placed them in. This gives great flexibility to anyone who can personalize their tags using personal keywords that resonate with them. At least for me, this makes easy retrieval.

Additionally, the author says that folksonomies are great for serendity and browsing but not for searching purposes. Again, although true, I don’t find this to be a tremendous problem. While using my Del.icio.us account, I never used it for searing purposes, in fact with every website I needed, I knew where I could find it, as I was the person who tagged each site.

I wonder what other additional benefits or drawbacks people have encountered while using tag.

Case Study: The case study that I was most interested in was the Ann Arbour District Library. Initially I was drawn to this library because of the Harry Potter example provided to show the different tags that the book is under. After I followed the search instructions to Harry Potter the Deathly Hallow, I saw all the tags listed on the left column. This example showed me that on one hand, it’s nice to see that the book is tagged under so many categories, however at the same time, I can see how it can be a disadvantage and searching for these tags would be difficult.

I would be interested to know what other case studies others found interesting.

For this week’s readings, again I loved the “Social Bookmarking in Plain English”. Although I have used bookmarking in the past, specifically on Explore and Firefox, I have never used one on bookmarking sites, for example Del.icio.us. Also, for this week’s readings I decided to focus more on the articles relating to Del.icio.us, since our group project for this week was crowdsourcing and social bookmarking, and we chose to use Del.icio.us as our social bookmarking tool. I thought it would be appropriate to read and write on it as it would allow me to become more familiar with Del.icio.us.

Unfortunately this would be my frist time using Del.icio.us and I have found so many benefits of it over using the bookmarking option available on the web browsers. As mentioned in the article “Tagging Flickr and Delicious”, when a person bookmarks all the website on their delicious account, they can retrieve the websites even if they aren’t on their home computer. I think for me and many people I know this is a very important benefit. I have had my computer’s hard drive crash on me a couple of times throughout my undergraduate and graduate studies. With the crash, all the sites I bookmarked on my web browswers were lost.

I found this extremely frustrating and upsetting because bookmarking has become such a big part of my life and losing all the data I have is time consuming. It would take an immense amount of time for me to search up every website and bookmark them all again, sometimes not being able to even  located the website again. Using a bookmarking tool would definitely be extremely useful. Also having the possibility to access it from anywhere is also amazing since it is rare for people to take their laptops around with them, and extremely difficult for people with desktops.

Also, I liked how the author emphasizes the Del.icio.us lesson. I think it is very true what the author says about the fact that personal values precedes network values. After using delicious for my project, and many years of bookmarking websites on web broswers, I find that I am very in love with my list of bookmarks. Some can say it describes my life. I have bookmarked both personal interest sites and ones that are academic related. It can show others what I am interested in and what I study, I very much value this list.

Case Study: For this week, I particularly liked the PennTag. I thought it was amzing how they created a bunch of words at the top of the page where it would lead you to other links. I speficially liked the area where they grouped the most ‘popular tags’ together. To me popular tags are just like frequently asked question sections. I find that what I want to know most people have already asked and its a quick and efficient way for people to find what they want. I definitely think that libraries can do something similar. Perhaps they can create a del.icio.us account and save websites that they think are important to patrons. They can also grouped them all into a ‘the most popular websites’ section so that patrons can see what other people are looking at.

Also, I thought the “Photos from Duke’s Yearbook’ was very interesting and clever. I liked how they have pictures of Duke during the winter, I think this can be beneficial in that, students from around the world are able to look at the site and get a real good image and feel of how the university is without actually being physically present. Perhpas, a library can do the same. Host pictures of events in progress, or new additions to the library or really anything new at the library. Sometimes providing a picture can be a more useful way than attempting to describe an event. Showing patrons how it happens can help them visualize themselves in that setting better.

Additionally, I wonder what other case studies people found interesitng.