Learnin’ 2.0 Group Project

Here’s a link to our group project WordPress blog. We adapted Helene Blowers 23 Things Learning 2.0 initiative.  While we didn’t reinvent the wheel here, it was extremely instructive to see how one of these modules could be created so quickly. The tools are all out there, you can tailor it to the needs of your library or organization and  take off.

I wrote/created the pages for Delicious, Flickr, IM/Meebo, and RSS Feeds.

Here’s the recent Helene Blowers article that assess the trajectory of the programs success.

Thanks to Michelle and Emily for their hard work, good thinking, and cooperation on this project.

Paper abstract

I’m gonna try and take a leap from my context book, Feed. I’ll extrapolate a bit more on the dystopian warnings contained therein. Hopefully be a bit clearer than I was in the context report post. However, I would also like suggest how these technologies (exemplified by the FEED) describe how close we are to this type of reality. Maybe not chips in the head per se, but corporate control, ubiquitous adverts, surveillance without our thinking we’re being surveilled, and the constant bombardment of information. Exaggerated as the narrative may be to make its point, I suspect we are pretty darn close in some respects. I’d like talk about what that implication is for the next generation of library users, namely digital natives, and how they perceive libraries and how libraries can continue to meet their needs in meaningful ways (not by simply adding the latest technology to the mix without evaluation and study and application and relevancy). I’ll try to briefly outline some of the characteristics of digital natives, talk about some of the generalized behaviors and attitudes, and then tie that to the human ways libraries can marry technology and service so as to not only remain relevant to them , but hopefully be more relevant than ever going forward. I’ll also touch on some of the concerns I have for digital natives (and digital immigrants) using ubiquitous Web-based social technologies with respect to privacy, identity, and reputation.

more Annoyed

Just got finished reading Francine Fialkoff’s editorial in the latest issue of Library Journal.  Interestingly, it’s making me think of one of the principle criteria of adding Web 2.0 tools to libraries. Evaluation. Evaluating which tool is right for your library, not simply throwing technology against the wall, seeing what sticks, and calling yourself 2.0. In the end, I think evaluation constant and careful evaluation may be the most important component for building a bridge between the technologies and relevancy and success. Which tools are working and which ones aren’t? What are your patrons saying about them? How are they being utilized? AND are they worth your investment in them or might something else work better?

Thereby, adding a derisive blog to LJ’s Web presence doesn’t really equate to ‘dislocating the expert’ by ‘publishing an anonymous author’.  Fialkoff defends LJ’s decision to include the A*****d Librarian on their roster of outside bloggers. But I think her defense is as tepid as a library throwing up an external blog and setting up an Meebo account an’ calling itself technologically advanced. Adding a loud-mouthed, controversial voice to the conversation is fine, but considering LJ purports to be a PROFESSIONAL journal, only if that voice enriches the conversation and user/reader/subscriber experience. It must be (constantly) evaulauted before Editor-in-Chief  Fialkoff can say “I hope that AL’s annoymus voice has a long run here”.

The context book: Feed

I’ve been reading M.T Anderson’s Feed and thinking “whoa”  this hits the spot for the ‘context’ book assignment. If it hadn’t been published in 2002, I’d call it pretty darn prescient. As it is, a lot of these of trends, or technologies, at least manifestations of them, are/were already happening. A few years ago, I didn’t really imagine I’d be broadcasting a considerable chunk of my daily minutia ON THE WEB via Twitter and/or Facebook or _______ (fill-in-the-blank). These days, I’m explaining why Facebook and Twitter are cool to anyone who’ll listen. And I’m spending a lot of time ‘there’.  On the Web.  Social Networking.

Feed is a dark, dystopian novel. It’s a biting satire that describes a world, frankly, that doesn’t seem too terribly far off.  Sure, it’s exaggerated. Sure, it outlines the really dark implications of a world where corporations monitor and manipulate information. But these implications, ones Anderson forecast back in 2002, have really germinated today. How far off are we am I from having a chip planted in my skull, or the forearm, or the back of the neck so we I can get our RSS and our Tweets straight to my skull with no middle-man?

Feed knocks on the door of one of the major issues–as I see it–related to the ubiquity of these Web 2.0 technologies. As we continue to adopt them and, yes, employ and utilize them, are  they able to slowly influence our lives and change/ erode our previous conceptions of privacy with our even knowing it?

Dead C – Eusa Kills

Social Networks

Have I droned on about this enough? That’s what I had to say four months ago. My view hasn’t changed much. But I’ll see if I can expand on those thoughts a little:

So yeah. I’m on Facebook. I’m on Myspace. Linkedin. Last.fm. Goodreads. Librarything. Now I’m following a bunch of folks on Twitter. These Tweets, that’s social networking too, right? Talk about value? I just read some of Michael’s notes from the ILI 2008 Conference. Still, I’m trying to wrestle with exactly what it is I GET out of all of this. I really do enjoy making these connections with people. But It can definitely get complicated and muddled. Am I really friends with Alastiar Galbraith and Aaron Schmidt? Not exactly. But as Kyle says, these social networks open doors. As for Alastair and Aaron, I admire their work (in music and in libraryland, respectively) and I like being connected to them vis-a-vis their Internet presence. If there’s actually someone behind that presence, and they are responding, I can get in touch with ‘em and we can have a conversation. I can walk through that door. I can offer to buy ‘em a beer next time they’re in Chicago. And If they look at my profile, they’ll certainly (now) know a little about me (and my daughter) as well.

Another part of it is RE-connecting with old friends. I don’t know if other folks on Facebook have noticed this trend, but I am finding that people are joining Facebook in droves. OK. That might be stating the obvious. Sure they are. But I’m talking about people THAT I ACTUALLY KNOW are joining in droves. People that have—up until now—categorically repudiated or avoided social networking sites. People that I would have never imagined participating in social networking are participating. Are attitudes chaning again? It’s kinda cool. So, yea, I’ve reconnected with old friends that I don’t think I would have found ANY other way. Now, I’ve got them all sorted—kinda—in one place.

One example:

I have a friend that I went to high school with and his Mom passed away earlier this year after a long bought with cancer. I worked with her in a library in Gainesville, Florida five years ago, before moving to Chicago. I’d long since mislaid lost my friend’s phone number. So I sent him an email yesterday, to the only address I had for him (but one he never seemed to reply from) with little expectation of hearing back from him. Then, outta nowhere, on the same day, I find a mutual (high school) friend on Facebook, we trade messages about Chris’s Mom, and she sends me his cell phone number this morning. I’m pretty happy about that.

Of course, there are other valuable connections to be made as well, but these are a just couple quick examples of why I enjoy, and find great value in, social networks. And I do sometimes reach out to folks I don’t know to expand my network. But I also respect that they may have a different view of who their ‘friends’ are…so I make the connections when I can.

There are some other issues that go along with this that I find very interesting. I’m wondering how this transparency—putting oneself out there and making connections—impacts notions of privacy and identity. I think that’s where I’d like to go with my paper topic. If anyone has thoughts or links to articles or suggestions for books, I’m all ears.

Lastly, if you’ve not read danah boyd, she writes eloquently about social neworks and social networks and teens.

International Open Access Day

I learned in class this morning that it’s Open Access Day. Internationally. AND today is the inaugural event. The website is hosting a blogging contest, with offers of FREE swag to the best answers to these questions:

Why does Open Access matter to you?
How did you first become aware of it?
Why should scientific and medical research be an open-access resource for the world?
What do you do to support Open Access, and what can others do?

Open access is changing the way we access information, so let’s hope it keeps gaining traction.

What do folks think?

Embedding Flying Nun video

I was glad this documentary about the seminal independent New Zealand music label ( Flying Nun Records) was put up last year. I used to have a video tape of it, recorded off NZ television by a friend, but that’s long since been lost in various moves and shuffles. The independent (rock/pop) music of the early-80s to mid 90s New Zealand, centered around Dunedin and Flying Nun Records, had an unbelievable wealth of great bands, great albums, and great songs, and it’s stuff that had a profound impact on my music education/development. It’s stuff that I go back to ALL the time . Much of it (The Chills, The Clean, Bailter Space, The Dead C, Alastair Galbraith, Tall Dwarfs, The Bats, The Pin Group ) sounds every bit as good, if not better, today than it did then. Of course, this isn’t to say that NZ isn’t producing music currently that’s just as, say, vital to my getting through the week (Birchville Cat Motel, Pumice, Anthony Milton, Dead C, etc.)

If anyone has a copy of those Marie and the Atom EPs please get in touch …

In the meantime, check this out. It’s the first in a 9 part series:

apple picking (up)

Virtual Experience

It seems like I’ve been participating in virtual communities for ages. But as I sit and actually try to recall, and add up the years, it doesn’t seem so long after all. I think I started posting on a few music related message boards about 8 or 9 years ago? A long time by some standards, but for some reason it seems like much longer. I can’t recall exactly what sucked me in to begin with, maybe nostalgia for my old record store days? Or a new yearning to connect with some music nerds? Most often I was lurking, trying to figure out the various voices that were posting there. I do know it started with the Matador Records label discussion board and shortly thereafter the FMBB (Fake Matador Bulletin Board). I hung out there for a while, trying to unravel and decode the dense web of familiarity and the shorthand that passed for conversation.  I reckon I was hoping to learn more about bands and, uh, chat with some like-mind folks across the ether. I did, of course, meet many new folks, virtually and I slowly, modestly, began to participate in the conversation(s). In retrospect, I’m glad I did. I eventually came to know several people through postings and email, some I’ve met in person and a few others that I have still yet to meet. Yeah, this was years an’ years ago now, but a couple of us still keep in touch. At one point I was even gonna start a record label with one guy. It never came to fruition — the music we were going to release was crushed under a morass of complications. (Interestingly, it’s supposed to be released sometime this year. This summer, I visited with a virtual-who-turned-actual-friend at the Pitchfork Music Festival and we talked (mostly) about our kids.

From time-to-time I still post on the Matador Records’ discussion board. I still subscribe to some music listservs. It’s often fairly self-involved and myopic, posting about a band one is listening to, hoping to find another gem in the haystack, etc. That said, there is real community out there. And people make real human connections on the Web.