Wiki - too easy to be true!

I went to the Oxford web 2.0 wiki, a site, I must add, that I've found very helpful in my endeavours to develop Web 2.0 applications at our college library! I used Firefox, logged in with my Twitter username and password and found myself adding a case study within a matter of minutes. Having never contributed to a wiki before, I was massively surprised by how easy the process was! In fact it's a little bit scary; I almost accidentally edited a page I really have no grounds to touch! Luckily, or unluckily, a complete history seems to exist for every page. On the page I made, this shows (embarrassingly) all the little things I had to correct after publishing!

Russian proverb

Ягодка по ягодке – будет кузовок.

Transliteration: Yagodka po yagodke — budet kuzovok.
Translation: Berry by berry, a basket will be [full].

Is it really possible to engage with Twitter?

Twitter has probably not been the easiest Web 2.0 application for me to get to grips with. I find the character limit difficult; I seem to spend a lot of time paraphrasing my comments to keep within it. Yet, I maintain that in most cases this is a good thing. I, for one, am too verbose far too often. Increasingly it seems that library users don't have time (or want to make time) for library emails and other notices. Maybe restricting notices to 140 characters where possible would be more effective? That said, I'm not aware that the number of posts I could make in a day is restricted on Twitter. Perhaps I could still, therefore, overload others with numerous uninteresting messages that, worse still, are so brief they're incomprehensible.

“Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.”
PLATO

I like the option to retweet other people's things on my page without having to worry about plagiarism. Using hashtags to unite tweets seems useful and easy too, although I'm yet to see good conversation on Twitter. Commenting on other peoples tweets is simple enough but, as I suspected when I joined, really connecting and delving into topics for meaty debate feels like too much effort when there's hardly space for a sentence in each tweet. Used properly in the right context, I'm sure these sorts of restrictions could be exactly what's required. Twitter is undeniably popular. Perhaps because it caters for this need?

Twitter could be good if...

I've been very curious about Twitter for a long time. It seems to have had a lot of media attention and I've been wondering what I've been missing. Tweeting, as far as I can see, is a lot like writing status updates on Facebook. However Twitter profile pages, unlike Facebook profile pages, contain little other than updates. I imagine that the character limit is especially good for those who want to focus on rapid communication, without really connecting and conversing with people.
I decided to follow lots of people who I found listed on http://tweepml.org/100-British-Librarians-on-Twitter but have discovered, disappointingly, that few of them say very much about libraries; many tweets seem to be about quite mundane aspects of people's lives like watching TV, insomnia and football. It reminds me of The diary of a nobody, only it's a lot less entertaining. I also decided to follow the updates of the British Library and the Bodleian Law Library. Following updates from institutions such as these seems to make more sense; I'm being made aware of events and changes in the libraries that could be very useful to me should I be a regular visitor. I feel Twitter will hold a lot more appeal for me when I find someone/some institution who tweets about things that are particularly interesting to me.

LinkedIn loosely

I joined LinkedIn cautiously. It quickly became apparent that this site is designed for networking with a focus on careers. I was quite anxious about creating a detailed profile which, if was to contain all the information I was prompted for upon joining, would have basically constituted all that is on my CV; I'm not convinced that I want this to be easily available. I'm concerned that I may be solicited for products I don't want or irrelevant jobs. I understand that I can alter the privacy levels of my profile, but if I am to use LinkedIn for purposes of career development, isn't it important that those who could potentially help me in my career have a reasonable degree of access to it and therefore a good idea of what I can offer them? If the information is not maintained regularly or I put up something which seems misleading, my profile could give others a bad impression. It seems I'd have to live dangerously (...well, sort of) to benefit. I have attempted to join a few groups and am waiting for my membership to be approved.

Facebook

We, at the college library where I work, have been considering setting up a Facebook page for a while. Taking lots of Oxford's libraries Facebook pages as inspiration, we've been attracted by the following opportunities:

* NEWS UPDATES - Facebook allows libraries to provide up-to-the-minute library news that some of our students may be interested in, but that we feel doesn't justify more of our emails in our students' email accounts. This would have been particularly useful when a large part of our collection was being transferred to a different room in the library. Those who were interested in the books that were being moved wanted to know where they were and where they were going to be and when, but many students were unaffected by it. Essentially, Facebook allows library users to find out about the library if they want to, and if they're not interested, they won't be bothered by us; we can be open, pro-active, communicative without being nagging, 'in their faces', and disturbing with information they don't want.

* RSS FEEDS - RSS feeds from relevant blogs can be displayed on Facebook pages.

* PHOTOS/VIDEOS - Facebook allows libraries to make photos and videos accessible online.

* GENERAL INFORMATION - With Facebook we may promote libraries/let our communities know who we are and what we offer easily.

* LINKS - Libraries can make a Facebook page almost like a portal; to provide links to library resources online. They may even connect their Delicious accounts to Facebook.

* COMMENTS/MESSAGES - Facebook provides an easy opportunity for library users to contact library staff.

You Tube

I've been a big fan of You Tube for a few years. Be this as it may, I've decided not to create my own account because I've been too tempted to enter into some of the terrible debates that appear in the comments sections under some of the videos; I'm sure it's best to refrain from all of that! One thing that frustrates me slightly about You Tube (aside from all the arguments about whose cover version of this is better than that etc.) is the lack of search limits. Specifically, I mean the inability to cut out all those videos that are inaccessible to me for one reason or another. It's annoying when full of hope I see the video I've been looking for appear on the search results page only to find that when I click on it, I get the message 'This video is not available in your country'. The content owners can limit access to the videos they put on You Tube to certain countries or geographic regions and if your computer’s IP address falls outside that geographic region, You Tube will display this notice when you try to play it. Sometimes YouTube also blocks specific content in order to comply with local laws in countries where You Tube has launched. This seems perfectly fair, but if I can't watch them, I don't want them slowing down my quests. You Tube is, on a more positive note, easy to use, not cluttered with adverts and contains a wealth of videos from all over the world on almost every subject I can think of.

Podcasts

I've spent lots of time browsing the suggested podcast sites.

The BBC's website seemed really attractive, intelligently organized and easy to use. I discovered the podcasts of a few radio shows that I like to listen to. I thought it a great idea to collect the best bits of their broadcasts on Google Reader.

Podcast.com was a bit too busy for my liking. Amongst podcasts that seem to come from reputable channels and offer intelligible and interesting files, there were many others which seemed like amateurish nonsense. Some podcasts brought up lots of error messages and others took a long time to download. The ratio of quality information to rubbish on the internet seems to be quite bad generally. This site reassures me that people who like to organize data truly make the world a better place. (Gosh librarians are just brilliant aren't they! Hee hee!)

Podcasts from the University of Oxford seems like a good idea in essence; as a student, I think I would have really appreciated the opportunity to re-listen to parts of my lectures. When my eyes were too tired to read about subjects, it would have been good to listen to others talking about them instead. Files seemed few and far between, however, and many appeared to be quite old. Perhaps demand doesn't warrant the time and effort of putting lots of files out there at the moment? Perhaps this is a field that will develop.

Networks are probably about as Delicious as vobla

I added the Language Centre Library's Delicious page and the History Faculty Library's Delicious page to my network. It was interesting to compare sites. I made a mental note that I should add notes to my bookmarks; titles don't always say enough. I considered the differences between Delicious pages for individuals and Delicious pages for institutions. I'm already delighted with my own personal page because I know what I've tagged, I have my own tags that make sense to me and I'm not sifting through other people's irrelevant sites to find my own. I'm unsure, however, of how successful library Delicious accounts are for library users. I was stunned to see the Language Library has 891 tags. 87 barkmarks are tagged with the term 'English'. Bookmarked sites don't always have much in common with others that share the same tag; both a Swahili English dictionary and a link for the website of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers are tagged with 'English'. It's great that you can search for tags within tags, but I wonder if finding things is always so easy with Delicious when an institution has hundreds, maybe even thousands, of diverse bookmarks. I suppose the term you decide to tag an item with is extremely important. Synonyms could make things difficult. Maybe it could be good to use LCSHs for standardization? Classification is always a tricky business. Perhaps sometimes it's just easier to find what you're looking for through a search engine like Google? Many people in Russia like to eat vobla (dried-up salty fish) with beer. I think it must be an acquired taste, and maybe something you'd only want to eat at quite a specific time and place. Chocolate on the other hand, is delicious all the time. Networks, I think, are more like vobla than chocolate.

Delicious

I wish I'd joined Delicious earlier. I've been bookmarking/adding 'favorites' for a long time and have felt frustrated when I have wanted to check websites but haven't been able to access my personal laptop. The Internet seems to be liberating me in a million different ways. Delicious means that if I lose my laptop, I don't have to spend time googling the websites I use most often and copying and pasting urls on another computer again. Delicious seems to be quite easy to get to grips with. I only wish there were more graphics; I think it would be easier to pick out the website I want from a list if it could be identified with a logo.

Picnik stick-ers