David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

Wake County is Censoring MySpace

By

Update – take time to browse through the comments on this post. They’re that good. So far, comments include one person who agrees with the board,  someone trying to compromise, much wondering aloud about what the library plans to censor next, discussion about the futility of censoring a single social networking site, one person who seemed to find the censoring a bigoted act, and even one anonymous Wake County employee. Wow.

First, read the story (found via LISNews).

The Wake County Board of Commissioners has decided “all public computers will now be banned” from visiting MySpace, because MySpace is apparently an “attractive nuisance.” The county “may start censoring other ‘nuisance’ websites on the web in a few months.”

Here’s what the Board states on their Hot Topics page: “Although myspace has many legitimate uses, it also serves as an attractive nuisance for those who gather in the libraries for purposes other than using the resources and collections for recreation, lifelong learning or cultural purposes. Some have used myspace in libraries to recruit gang members, to sell or purchase drugs, or to view or post pornography.”

Second, on Legitimate Uses of MySpace:

The article and the County’s press release page didn’t list legitimate or non-legitimate uses of MySpace – they only claimed that there were both. For kicks, here’s a small list of “legitimate” uses of MySpace:

Third: Content Container vs. Actual Content:

MySpace is a content container. The actual content is found on the millions of individual MySpace pages – some not terribly offensive, others pretty offensive to some groups. However, does it make sense to ban the content CONTAINER, when the majority of actual content found in MySpace isn’t terribly offensive? I don’t think so.

Why? Because logically, that argument allows for other content containers to also be banned. Hmm… can you, dear reader, possibly think of other content containers that might contain content that some library customers might find offensive?

HOW ABOUT BOOKS?

No – I don’t really think Wake County wants to ban books. But I also don’t think their decision is ultimately a logical one.

What do you think?

,

Travel 2.0?

By

Steve Rubel just wrote about the web 2.0 impact in the tourism industry, of all things. In fact, you might want to watch his blog for awhile. He says “Over the next several weeks I am going to start posting about the global medium to long-term impact Web 2.0 will have on different industry sectors.” Now THAT should be highly interesting!

Anyway… check out the tourism article. Some great quotes:

“In the Web 2.0 era, the power is shifting. The authority figure is no longer the travel agent or even the media. It’s us.”

“We’re empowered with technology and we’re using it to catalog every
place on earth using video, photos and text. We are telling it like it
is and sharing it globally.”

“Yahoo Trip Planner: Who needs a travel agent when there’s 43,000 people eager to help us.” (similar to Amazon’s book reviews).

Wow. Just wow.

Inviting Participation, Part 5: Specific Tools – MySpace

By

This is part 5 of my Inviting Participation in Web 2.0 series of articles.

So far, I’ve introduced both active and passive forms of inviting participation using web 2.0 tools, and explained how to do both using blogs. This time, let’s examine MySpace.

MySpace is like a closed web 2.0 free-for-all, complete with blogs, shared calendars, “friends,” videos and photos that can be commented on, music (some can be downloaded), customized webpage “skins,” and IM – and most of this can be searched or browsed. And the kids that frequent my library absolutely LOVE it. This post will point out ways to invite participation using MySpace.


First, for active types of invitation – asking, of course! But one can ask using some cool MySpace-specific tools, like:

  • Event invites: Up at the top of your MySpace user account page is a menu bar that includes Events. Events allows you to post your event (think cool library event here), including all the juicy details like time, location, and event description. The active part comes when you send the Event – because that Event is sent to all your MySpace Friends (ie., everyone included on your Friends list who hasn’t blocked Events). It pays to make a lot of MySpace Friends!
  • Bulletin Board: Bulletins are messages that are sent to all your friends at the same time. Think of them as a group email. Yet another tool that allows direct communication with everyone on your Friends list.
  • Blog: Blogs show up on your profile page, and other MySpace users can subscribe to them.
  • Invites: Why not invite local MySpace users to be your friend? MySpace allows you to search by zip code – go ahead, check it out. How many MySpacers can you find in your zip code? There are over 3000 in mine.

Passive types of invitation:

  • Make an attractive MySpace skin. Better yet, allow your teen advisory council to make the skin for you. They might take more ownership of the page that way (which, in turn, invites them to participate)
  • Allow users to be your Friend without having to take extra steps
    (like knowing your last name). That immediately cuts down on the number of friends you’ll get.
  • Allow comments
  • Use MySpace Forums and Groups (think discussion boards, listservs, and chatrooms) to start interesting conversations.
  • Take inviting photos (and repost to Flickr)
  • Take inviting video (and repost that video to YouTube)
  • Include direct links to your catalog to new books, videos, and music at your library.
  • In blogs and something called “Blurbs,” point to things your target audience would be interested in (and link to those things!).
  • IM – use MySpace IM and also allow anyone to IM you. Also post your AOL IM name on your MySpace page.
  • Share your calendar.

This is certainly not everything you can do using MySpace! Does anyone have some ideas to add? I’d be interested in hearing them.

, , ,

ALA Midwinter 2007: Raising the Next-Gen Resource Sharing Librarian

By

Mary Hollerich, Audrey Huff, Michael Porter, and Michael Stephens spoke.

Mary Hollerich (National Library of Medicine):

  • Spoke a little about kids today: different learning styles, tech savvy, collaborative, thriving on change, multitaskers, learning resource sharing on the job
  • Resource sharing is more than just ILL: blurred boundaries with ILL, circulation, and acquisitions
  • Expanded concept of resource sharing: lots of cooperation – in reference, collection development, cataloging, even storage facilities…
  • Grad school wishlist: target audience: future managers of resource sharing products and services
  • keepin it real: internships, assistantships, practicums
  • She’d love to see online continuing education courses (hmm – SHE could do them using OPAL!)
  • Also use listservs, blogs and wikis for discussion
  • She’d also like to see a mentoring type program that pairs a “newbie” with a more experienced practitioner

Audrey Huff (Northwestern University School of Law):

A Next-Gen LIS graduate is:

  • comfortable with technology and change
  • a user of resources
  • pro user and pro access
  • aware of the professional forums available
  • has collaborative experience – can work with teams

She took lots of reference classes, but there were no classes on access services (no ILL, circ, resource sharing classes) – where are the classes/issues relevant to resource sharing?

Her advice:

  • do internships (become a practitioner as soon as possible)
  • look at the literature

On the job: she’s looking for info – what works, how to use stats, how to understand patron expectations, understanding resource-sharing platforms and systems, etc… (me – all the stuff library school doesn’t teach!)

Michael Porter (WebJunction):

  • The title on his powerpoint is “Gimme Gimme Gimme” – cool
  • Libraries are two things: content and community

step 1: break down barriers

  • institutional barriers
  • personal fears… another type of barriers

step 2: show your true colors (went from black and white slide to a color slide – nice)

  • sometimes hard to think about the “me” in “gimme” – it’s ok to think about ourselves – we want the same things

step 3: effectively use me…

  • me is our users
  • me is You, too!
  • We can be librarians, and we can also be users…
  • Lots of people here use Netflix – wow!
  • Move from calling it ILL to calling it Fulfillment (that’s inserting a more customer service, corporate mentality into the library)
  • Give me what I want
  • be there for me when I want you – be available when needed
  • give me my stuff the way I want it – content not container idea
  • Be where the user is
  • prove your importance to ME!
  • Let ME do it myself! Unmediated ILL…

Michael Stephens (Dominican University):

Pondering the future…

  • Cool new librarian titles
  • Immersive Learning Librarian (the gaming librarian – wow)
  • “we are looking for a librarian 2.0 in preparation for a library 2.0 world” – from a job ad
  • Nextgen Librarian – at Wayne State University….
  • talked about how the world has changed via web 2.0 stuff
  • Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything … looks like a good book
  • showed lots of examples of what libraries are doing to reach out in new ways
  • “the trendspotting librarian” – we need to understand what’s coming next
  • use wired, etc to trendspot – ads, articles
  • the adaptive librarian: education flexible professionals, you have to be flexible
  • the experience librarian – coolness.
  • Experience – Lunds grocery store is reserving community rooms…
  • the sharing librarian – we need to be open, decentralized, etc…
  • we need to: learn to learn, adapt to change, etc…

, ,

ALA Midwinter 2007: OCLC Social Networking Panel

By

These are notes from the session I participated in…

Lisa (need to find her last name!):

  • They created I-Go, a library toolbar. Quicklinks to library resources. The search on the toolbar searches lots of stuff (ie., library resources). Cool. It DOESN’T search Google.
  • MySpace: www.myspace.com/undergradlibrary – cool URL. They have chosen to not actively recruit friends. They repost info into the myspace blog. Have a federated search tool embedded within their myspace page. Also have a link to add this search tool thingie onto your myspace page. Cool. And they allow the search to show results without proxy – then you have to enter username etc to actually get articles
  • Facebook: David Ward is their Facebook profile… had to use a name. And then plastered their real library name on the page, so it appears in searches.
  • Facebook flyers: displays as an ad to their UI network. $10 a day.
  • Second Life: are starting to work with this via the CyberCity infoisland thing.

I spoke next (Jenny took good notes)…

Jenny Levine:

  • ALA is exploring creating online community for members.
  • Not sure why she posts to flickr, other than it’s fun.
  • Has a friend that keeps friends updated with Facebook.
  • Joined the Facebook group “when I was your age, Pluto was a planet”
  • “social retailing” – HD monitor that feeds out of the dressing room, so friends can see what you’re trying on… and help you decide what looks good on you.
  • Twitter – text message your status… why do this?
  • Yahoo groups as an example of online community – her example is a very active group.
  • Ways to interact: use ebsco’s rss feed, other library feeds… they can display on the yahoo groups page! That way you support the group and go where the users are… cool idea!

, ,