Discussion Question 1: How might libraries (public, academic, and school) use blogs in their professions? Can you think of other examples in which other professions might use blogs and readers?
Libraries could use blogs in a number of ways, but the one way that I keep thinking about is to let patrons know about new additions to the collection. Having worked in the circulation department of a public library influences my ideas and this is a perfect example. Ten to fifteen years ago in the library where I worked, the Tech Services department would have a list printed of each week's new items that were ready for circulation. Our department would receive a copy of this list and post it on a bulletin board for the circulation staff. Patrons had to ask for it in order to see it, but first they had to know about it! For patrons who are avid and voracious readers, having this list available would be a wonderful service. Having it available as an RSS feed would be wonderful and convenient. The next job I get in a circulation department, I will suggest this and volunteer to set it up--now that I know what questions to ask to implement it. It would be valuable in any type of library.
Professional blogs for librarians help share information from conferences and other pointers about career development. Librarians can share ways of updating their collections and especially their services to patrons. Important legal and legislative information pertaining to libraries can be disseminated this way as well.
I imagine pretty much every profession has a blog of some type available. Even piano tuners can share information. The Piano Technicians Guild has not progressed to the point where I can subscribe by RSS feed, but several independent tuners have a blog where they share experiences with customers, business development ideas, and technical pointers.
"Readers" save time by letting the subscriber know when there is new information available. As the information glut grows, we get in more of a time crunch. Not having to go from site to site saves time online and allows other work to get done while still keeping up with news and information. With newsletters, I find that I would forget that I was subscribed and neglect checking for updates. With a "reader" I have a nice compact list and if my interests change, I can just click good-bye to a subscription.
Question 2: What are the benefits of subscribing to a professional blog? What are the benefits of writing a professional blog?
Subscribing to a professional blog gives people another way of staying up to date with changes in their career. It can give insights into dealing with problems, especially unusual problems that coworkers may not have faced. If a certain type of business has a legal issue or some legislative development, the information can be shared easily through the blog.
Writing a blog helps the blogger to reinforce the learning gained. As a teacher learns from teaching, writing helps reinforce our ideas and make speaking about them, as well as developing them further, easier and more fluent. It may also help the blogger feel useful to others which is an important aspect of our lives that often goes unexamined.
Question 3: In what way is blogging and readers different from how information was created and received in the past? Does this allow for a greater democratization of information? How can the quality of information received through readers be less than the quality of information received in the past?
Blogging is different from earlier information sharing in that it is available almost at the touch of a button. In addition, a comment made by a casually interested layperson gets as much space and emphasis as a critique by a degree-holding certified professional. This has the potential to make the medium more democratic. On the other hand, this exact same situation allows for misinformation to proliferate because any-old-body can comment on anything. This possibility makes the availability and access to peer-reviewed journal articles, through subscription databases or other sources, essential.
A less important issue than the content of the information, but one that seems to offer no end of frustration for people like me--people who are called "grammar snobs" by their Linguistics professor--is the decline of grammar, spelling and punctuation in these blogs. This diminishes the quality because it makes the information appear unprofessional, unpolished, and shows a low level of attention to detail on the part of the author. It also leads the reader to question the level of all-round education and expertise of the author if the author seems not to know, for example, the difference between its and it's, or generally seems to be lacking in language skills.
28 January 2009
RSS Feeds (Library Media Class: Week 1, Additional Assignment)
Task: Find about five websites that offer RSS feeds.
My list includes six sites from widely differing organizations.
1. news.bbc.co.uk/hi/default.stm
The RSS icon link is in a box near the bottom of the BBC's home news page.
Subscribing allows feeds, alerts to email or mobile phone, subscription to podcasts, articles or newsletters. Subscribers can choose by subject or region and to receive text or video.
2. netflix.com
Members can get an RSS feed to their personal queue, past rental activity, to recommendations from other members or reviews from members or professional critics. The feed can be limited to public information such as the top 100 rentals or new releases, or it can be personalized.
3. uua.org/rss/index/shtml
The website home for Unitarian Universalists is updated regularly with news of interest to Unitarians and friends. UUA also publishes a magazine called the UUWorld which is available digitally by FeedBurner.
4. lanl.gov
Los Alamos National Laboratory's extensive website offers interested readers the chance to "create a custom RSS feed" from LANL's public relations department. On the "News Media Home," there is an RSS icon near the bottom of the page. Subscriptions can be customized per specific organizations within the Lab, by topic, by number and frequency of stories, the source of the news, and by the format of the news story. (See www.lanl.gov/news/index.php/fuseaction/syndicate.main)
5. sierratradingpost.com
Sierra Trading Post is a discount retail active wear clothing and outdoor equipment supplier. Atwww.sierratradingpost.com there is a box toward the bottom of the page on the left where you can click on "Sierra Blogging Post." Clicking there takes you to blog.sierratradingpost.com where the blog entries are posted. You can drop by and read or subscribe. Subscribers can choose to get feeds of the blog's posts and subsequent comments, or just the posts.
6. Knitters Anonymous
Knitters and yarn enthusiasts might be interested enough to read about other knitters' experiences on the knitanon blog at www.knitanon.com/blog/. The subscription can be streamlined by interest or by a limited number of regions. The creators and most of those involved are in the Bay area. The photos from the website, plus more photos, are archived on flickr.com.
My list includes six sites from widely differing organizations.
1. news.bbc.co.uk/hi/default.stm
The RSS icon link is in a box near the bottom of the BBC's home news page.
Subscribing allows feeds, alerts to email or mobile phone, subscription to podcasts, articles or newsletters. Subscribers can choose by subject or region and to receive text or video.
2. netflix.com
Members can get an RSS feed to their personal queue, past rental activity, to recommendations from other members or reviews from members or professional critics. The feed can be limited to public information such as the top 100 rentals or new releases, or it can be personalized.
3. uua.org/rss/index/shtml
The website home for Unitarian Universalists is updated regularly with news of interest to Unitarians and friends. UUA also publishes a magazine called the UUWorld which is available digitally by FeedBurner.
4. lanl.gov
Los Alamos National Laboratory's extensive website offers interested readers the chance to "create a custom RSS feed" from LANL's public relations department. On the "News Media Home," there is an RSS icon near the bottom of the page. Subscriptions can be customized per specific organizations within the Lab, by topic, by number and frequency of stories, the source of the news, and by the format of the news story. (See www.lanl.gov/news/index.php/fuseaction/syndicate.main)
5. sierratradingpost.com
Sierra Trading Post is a discount retail active wear clothing and outdoor equipment supplier. At
6. Knitters Anonymous
Knitters and yarn enthusiasts might be interested enough to read about other knitters' experiences on the knitanon blog at www.knitanon.com/blog/
26 January 2009
Censorship, Authorship, and Identity (Library Media Class: Week 1, Session 2)
Discussion Question 1
Web 2.0 technology has allowed a whole new level of social interaction with networks such as MySpace and Facebook. I joined Facebook about two years ago to have another option for my daughter, then still in high school, to communicate with me. A wonderful example of the expanded opportunities that Web 2.0 has created via these websites is something that happened just yesterday because of this class. Checking into Facebook, I changed my status because I was gratified at having succeeded in creating this blog. The status change said, "Morgan may be an old dog, but she has a new trick." Within the hour, my daughter responded, "Oooo, what is it?" and I replied, "This dog can blog!" No visit, letter, phone call or other intentional message needed to be relayed.
But the results did not stop there: a friend of my daughter commented that I wasn't a dog, and two friends in my generation posted congratulatory comments. Before the 2.0 technology, I would have had to announce a minor accomplishment like this in at least three conversation, emails or a holiday letter in order to get these reactions, and it would have taken weeks, not hours. In fact, because it was a rather small feat, I probably would not have mentioned it.
Collaborative projects are easier than ever because people can get their ideas to one another via words, pictures and even videos--all without knowing much at all about computer code or hiring a programmer. From planning an international conference to developing a knitting pattern, the transfer of information is substantially easier because the correspondents need worry only about the content of the message, and don't need to know anything about formatting or coding the message.
Question 2
It is inevitable that copyright and authorship will take on new meaning with the development of new technologies. This has been demonstrated clearly in the past few years by changes in the perception of those involved in the recorded music business. The creators, owners, regulators and users of copyrighted materials have differing and evolving understanding of what it means to own recorded music, and what profits are due to the various parties involved. Gone are the days when a producer could be sure of buying rights to a song or recording and being assured that anyone who could play the music at home would have to buy a product, generating profits that would be funneled through the producer's corporation. The music industry fought tooth and nail to retain its control through technology evolutions such as Napster, but continuing development forced changes in the whole industry as well as its legal regulation.
Where I noticed this in my library work was mostly in recorded books, where one element of the book had been lost or damaged. If the recording was a bit dated, it was sometimes not possible to replace the tape or CD from the publisher because it had gone out of print. But even if we had two copies of the item, according to copyright law it was illegal for us to reproduce the damaged element for replacement purposes. Often the entire book (or opera or video series) had to be withdrawn. Now, because much of this type of information is digitally stored, it can be accessed and replaced through subscription services.
Authorship can also be an issue for libraries. The sheer volume of information and the speed with which it is disseminated make it impossible for an author--or a library--to keep track of where a body of writing has gone or how it is being used. In libraries, there are usually copy machines available for patron use. The machine will have copyright warning posted, so someone copying pages at least has been offered the relevant legal information. As more and more information is digitized and available online, the opportunity to shove copyright information in front of a user diminishes. Cut-and-paste functions, and now links or embedding, make it so easy to transfer information, it can be done with very little thought. Sometimes, in reading Internet postings, it is hard to find the original source, so that authorship can be difficult to determine. In these cases, present copyright law would have little impact on illegal behavior or legal restitution.
Question 3
Commerce, while not always directly pertinent to libraries, is another concept undergoing a change due to Web 2.0. My shopping habits are very different than they were even five years ago. We have traditionally relied on Consumer Reports and similar publications for product information. We rarely needed it the past several years, and now I never access it in the library or online. The customer reviews on commercial websites such as amazon.com, made possible by Web 2.0 technology, usually give plenty of information to make a decision about a purchase. A further effect has been a decline in the number of physical retail businesses relative to their online counterparts. Internet shopping has developed into an easy, expedient and reliable alternative to retail stores. This ability to post ratings may affect the choices I make at the library as well; it could influence which items I decide to borrow.
Identity has become a more nebulous concept with the development of the technology. With sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and VibrantNation, as well as the proliferation of blogs, people can develop identities that are true to their personalities, that are based on only part of their personalities, or are a complete fabrication. I have an account with Facebook and also one on VibrantNation. (VN is a social network for women over 40.) While there is no intention on my part to deceive or wear a sort of virtual mask, I think my perceived identity on each of these could be a little bit different just because of the type of information and social support I seek or share from the two sites. Does this mean I have three distinct identities or simply that I wear different "hats," as we used to say? The change in "identity" is a result of differing goals and completely innocent.
The incidence of identity fraud and identity theft have increased enough to alarm us all. The ease with which these, especially the fraud, are perpetrated is astounding. Even I, with my limited computer knowledge, could fabricate a fraudulent identity quickly and seamlessly by creating a Facebook page for a fictional person, and then to communicate and forge relationships with others who might or might not be real people. The possibilities for this type of activity are so numerous that there are even terms for subclasses of the fraud, such as "identity cloning" and "identity concealment." A person's signature used to be a keystone for identity validation, but handwritten signatures are moot for online commerce.
The cartoon at the top of this post describes beautifully one of these problems with Internet identity. (By Peter Steiner, published in The New Yorker July 5, 1993.)
On the other hand, some critics point out that with expanded storage capabilities and tracking, our Internet activity leaves traceable evidence that can be followed, and cannot be erased, to verify our true identities. See http://jackatcet.blogspot.com/2008/07/on-internet-everybody-knows-youre-dog.html.
Web 2.0 technology has allowed a whole new level of social interaction with networks such as MySpace and Facebook. I joined Facebook about two years ago to have another option for my daughter, then still in high school, to communicate with me. A wonderful example of the expanded opportunities that Web 2.0 has created via these websites is something that happened just yesterday because of this class. Checking into Facebook, I changed my status because I was gratified at having succeeded in creating this blog. The status change said, "Morgan may be an old dog, but she has a new trick." Within the hour, my daughter responded, "Oooo, what is it?" and I replied, "This dog can blog!" No visit, letter, phone call or other intentional message needed to be relayed.
But the results did not stop there: a friend of my daughter commented that I wasn't a dog, and two friends in my generation posted congratulatory comments. Before the 2.0 technology, I would have had to announce a minor accomplishment like this in at least three conversation, emails or a holiday letter in order to get these reactions, and it would have taken weeks, not hours. In fact, because it was a rather small feat, I probably would not have mentioned it.
Collaborative projects are easier than ever because people can get their ideas to one another via words, pictures and even videos--all without knowing much at all about computer code or hiring a programmer. From planning an international conference to developing a knitting pattern, the transfer of information is substantially easier because the correspondents need worry only about the content of the message, and don't need to know anything about formatting or coding the message.
Question 2
It is inevitable that copyright and authorship will take on new meaning with the development of new technologies. This has been demonstrated clearly in the past few years by changes in the perception of those involved in the recorded music business. The creators, owners, regulators and users of copyrighted materials have differing and evolving understanding of what it means to own recorded music, and what profits are due to the various parties involved. Gone are the days when a producer could be sure of buying rights to a song or recording and being assured that anyone who could play the music at home would have to buy a product, generating profits that would be funneled through the producer's corporation. The music industry fought tooth and nail to retain its control through technology evolutions such as Napster, but continuing development forced changes in the whole industry as well as its legal regulation.
Where I noticed this in my library work was mostly in recorded books, where one element of the book had been lost or damaged. If the recording was a bit dated, it was sometimes not possible to replace the tape or CD from the publisher because it had gone out of print. But even if we had two copies of the item, according to copyright law it was illegal for us to reproduce the damaged element for replacement purposes. Often the entire book (or opera or video series) had to be withdrawn. Now, because much of this type of information is digitally stored, it can be accessed and replaced through subscription services.
Authorship can also be an issue for libraries. The sheer volume of information and the speed with which it is disseminated make it impossible for an author--or a library--to keep track of where a body of writing has gone or how it is being used. In libraries, there are usually copy machines available for patron use. The machine will have copyright warning posted, so someone copying pages at least has been offered the relevant legal information. As more and more information is digitized and available online, the opportunity to shove copyright information in front of a user diminishes. Cut-and-paste functions, and now links or embedding, make it so easy to transfer information, it can be done with very little thought. Sometimes, in reading Internet postings, it is hard to find the original source, so that authorship can be difficult to determine. In these cases, present copyright law would have little impact on illegal behavior or legal restitution.
Question 3
Commerce, while not always directly pertinent to libraries, is another concept undergoing a change due to Web 2.0. My shopping habits are very different than they were even five years ago. We have traditionally relied on Consumer Reports and similar publications for product information. We rarely needed it the past several years, and now I never access it in the library or online. The customer reviews on commercial websites such as amazon.com, made possible by Web 2.0 technology, usually give plenty of information to make a decision about a purchase. A further effect has been a decline in the number of physical retail businesses relative to their online counterparts. Internet shopping has developed into an easy, expedient and reliable alternative to retail stores. This ability to post ratings may affect the choices I make at the library as well; it could influence which items I decide to borrow.
Identity has become a more nebulous concept with the development of the technology. With sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and VibrantNation, as well as the proliferation of blogs, people can develop identities that are true to their personalities, that are based on only part of their personalities, or are a complete fabrication. I have an account with Facebook and also one on VibrantNation. (VN is a social network for women over 40.) While there is no intention on my part to deceive or wear a sort of virtual mask, I think my perceived identity on each of these could be a little bit different just because of the type of information and social support I seek or share from the two sites. Does this mean I have three distinct identities or simply that I wear different "hats," as we used to say? The change in "identity" is a result of differing goals and completely innocent.
The incidence of identity fraud and identity theft have increased enough to alarm us all. The ease with which these, especially the fraud, are perpetrated is astounding. Even I, with my limited computer knowledge, could fabricate a fraudulent identity quickly and seamlessly by creating a Facebook page for a fictional person, and then to communicate and forge relationships with others who might or might not be real people. The possibilities for this type of activity are so numerous that there are even terms for subclasses of the fraud, such as "identity cloning" and "identity concealment." A person's signature used to be a keystone for identity validation, but handwritten signatures are moot for online commerce.
The cartoon at the top of this post describes beautifully one of these problems with Internet identity. (By Peter Steiner, published in The New Yorker July 5, 1993.)
On the other hand, some critics point out that with expanded storage capabilities and tracking, our Internet activity leaves traceable evidence that can be followed, and cannot be erased, to verify our true identities. See http://jackatcet.blogspot.com/2008/07/on-internet-everybody-knows-youre-dog.html.
24 January 2009
Woof! (Library Media, Week 1)
Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Look at me creating the first entry in my very own blog. This class, Media Services, promises to be much more interesting than I had anticipated. I was under the impression we would be practicing outdated skills such as using a slide projector or instructing patrons on the use and care of film strips. Web 2.0 is not only new and interesting for me, but will prove much more useful. I'm looking forward to the sessions.
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