The Roving Librarian

So I spent most of last week getting over the flu, only to promptly get a lung and sinus infection. Not awesome, but it did leave me with some time on my hands to begin to explore the world of Second Life (SL). Here is a little about my experiences and thoughts about it so far.

I signed up for a SL account under the name Elle Munforth (if anyone wants to try finding me). Since then I have logged on a few times, though I had a couple bizarre experiences that have not really enticed me to go back. When I first signed up I spent some time trying to figure out how to move around, talk to people, change clothes and appearances. Some of these I did better at than others.

I found it is very easy to move around in Second Life. I think it would be more interesting if I had a specific place to go. I went to a number of different places. At first I ended up on the wrong side of a number of spaces because they are adult only spaces and my account does not have an adult rating. Therefore, whenever I tried to end up going to an adult rated space I just ended up on the other side of a force field like wall. Sad. I also tried going to top recommended spaces but found they were often empty. I tried a night club – empty. Then I tried a coffee shop – empty. So I eventually went back to Bay City Municipal Airport, Hau Koda. I then tried to go to a Second Life Hot Spot. I choose Kowloon. When I teleported there a message popped up that said “Caution: Firing of Guns is Prohibited” and then said that anyone who breaks this rule will be banned. I thought this was strange but started walking down the alleys, looking at shops, trying to figure things out when all of a sudden I hear this strange popping noise, I turn around and there is a guy running towards me and shooting me with some sort of gun! I have no idea what he was doing and before I could start a chat with him he disappeared. Thewhole experience was strange and disconcerting. It made me feel extremely uncomfortable and I quickly transported back to Bay City Airport.

The next time I logged on to SL was more successful. I met up with Bryan, who helped me go shopping for new clothes and hair. I can see how people could spend a lot of time amassing large wardrobes and different looks for their avatar. I was a bit annoyed at most of the choices for women’s clothing. In general it seems that SL female avatars are extremely stereotypical and provocative. I wonder if others have felt this as well. I know that to identify more with my avatar I need to spend more time making it look and feel more like me or someone I identify with, but this has not been easy. It seems that SL is a place where people use their avatars to embrace totally wild, random and different styles, personalities and choices, not to actually reflect themselves. I know a number of people have expressed that they feel they just do not have time for a Second Life and I agree with them, but another issue that I have with SL and one of the major reasons why I am struggling to find a reason to participate in it is that I do not feel I can be myself at all. And I am not interested in being someone else.

I currently have the flu, which has kept me horizontal on the couch for the last few days mostly sleeping but also watching more TV in the last four days than I have in probably watched in the last year combined. While channel surfing yesterday I came across a news story that made me think. Well, made me think as much as my cough-syrup induced haze could.

The news story (and interview) was concerning Barrow County Georgia high school teacher Ashley Payne, who was forced to resign from her job in August when a parent complained about pictures that she had posted on her Facebook page of her holding alcoholic drinks on recent trip to Europe. This included wine in a restaurant in Italy and beer at the Guinness brewery in Ireland. The weirdest thing is none of the photos actually show her drinking the alcohol and she does not even look intoxicated in the photographs. However, the Barrow Journal reports that Payne’s principal, “objected to photos which showed Payne holding alcoholic beverages while on vacation and a status update which used a pejorative term for females.”

The whole story gets even more bizzarre when the issue of policy comes up. Again according to the Barrow Journal the school district does not currently have a social media/networking policy for its employees, but its board is set to vote on a policy on December 1st.

Part of the policy reads: “Employees who post information on Facebook, MySpace or similar web sites that include inappropriate personal information such as, but not limited to: provocative photographs, sexually explicit messages, use of alcohol, drugs or anything students are prohibited from doing must understand that if students, parents or other employees obtain access to such information, their case will be investigated by school and district officials and if warranted will be disciplined up to and including termination, depending upon the severity of the offense.”

Okay, my emphasis has been added because this is the part of this policy that I cannot understand. I get the drugs part because they are illegal, but I do not understand the alcohol or anything else part. This policy is so vague and broad. Does this mean that a teacher cannot post photographs of them LEGALLY drinking (or holding) alcohol at all because a student might manage to see it? Payne’s lawyer argues that this policy would even prevent an employee of Barrow County from having a glass of wine at a restaurant because a student might see them.

What about the “anything else” part. There are a lot of things that underage school children are not allowed to do but a teacher (because they are an adult) is, such as, the legal consumption of alcohol, driving a motor vehicle, viewing and owning pornography, etc. No matter how other people feel about these activities they are legal for an adult to do in their own free time. It seems like this policy could be manipulated in a number of ways.

So what I keep thinking in regards to this whole situation is: is it possible that employers can use social media/networking policies to control what their employees do when they are not at work? Can it really be legal for employees to be disciplined or fired or forced to resign because of what they post on their social networking sites, even if what the post is totally legal? I hope not.

Here is a Screenr Video that I made. I could make a lot of these. It was so easy to use!

Last weekend while stuck in the car for six hours I was flipping through the newspaper reading about some of the films being show at the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) when I noticed a name that was familiar. Turns out there is a film in VIFF this year called 65_RedRoses that is all about a young woman, Eva Markvoort, from New Westminster (where I grew up) and her journey a few years ago through a double lung transplant. Eva is a year younger than my brother and was in French Immersion with him and she is four years younger than me, which is huge when you are school aged, so I don’t really know her. That hasn’t stopped me from being totally amazed by a few different aspects of this story.

When Eva was little she was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis (CF). A few years ago, while she was in university she was told that without a double lung transplant she would die. She quite school, moved home with her parents, let her film-maker friends start filming her and after what must have been a difficult wait, had a double lung transplant. What is most amazing is that she has kept a public live journal since July 2006, more than a year before she received her transplant. Her live journal 65_RedRoses is unbelievably intimate, personal, honest and moving. Through it Eva has captured so much about what it is like to live with CF and makes it more real and understandable for people who do not know much or anything about this disease. Reading through her entries makes you feel enormously privileged to have her share her experiences with you. If anyone can read even a few entries and not become an organ donor I don’t know what to make of that.

The reason that she started the Live Journal was to seek support from other young people living with CF. Apparently people with CF are discouraged from meeting with one another in person because there is a risk they will spread potentially fatal superbugs to each other. Now because of the internet and web 2.0 people with CF, like Eva, are turning to the internet to form supportive communities. Now people with CF have a way to connect to each other and offer support, advice, and understanding cyber-shoulder.

At the end of our module this week one of the questions we were asked to consider was “Haven’t we always shared and collaborated?” If we is information professionals I think the answer is probably “Yes” but there are obviously examples out there of groups who have not shared and collaborated before because they were not able to. The example of Eva and 65_RedRoses gives us a very different example of how social media is being used by people to share, support and collaborate with each other and social media software is what has given them this option.

This week (and next) we are looking at the topic of collaboration in libraries and archives. One question we are asked to consider is “Is collaboration important in the information fields? And why?” My answer would be a very solid “YES!” because I am not sure that most information professionals or organization would be able to function without it. We are also extremely luckily because many social media tools are allowing for easier and broader collaboration.

The main reason that I think that collaboration is important is because I don’t think that it would be possible to do a very good job without the help of others, especially when someone has first entered the profession. I am always in awe of the knowledge that older librarians at my work posses. However, it has often taken them twenty to thirty years to gather that knowledge of a collection and subject area. I once had a science and business librarian tell me that it took her ten years to feel totally proficient in those subject areas. Now social media tools offer us an easy ability to share information with our co-workers. Collaboration software can help staff spread and disseminate knowledge to staff and patrons through out a work site, branch or library system, possibly even to other organizations. As John Russell discusses a staff wiki could gather subject guides in one easily accessible place, create an reference manual that is accessible and can be easily edited, or be used as a project management tool for committee and working groups.

I also think that collaboration is important because it may help prevent technology overload. It can be overwhelming to have to go out and learn about the newest technologies, software, etc. If information professionals collaborate and make information available to each other it will help make the learning process easier and create a more knowledgeable community.

Overall, I think that collaboration comes easily to information professionals because in general they really like to share what they know with others, co-workers or patrons and now there is software that is supporting this process quite nicely.

Who doesn’t love Wikipedia? Most of us are probably guilty of using wikipedia more than we should. Especially when wanting to know some quick fact or find out the basics for a subject we have no knowledge of. I am even guilty of using it as a verb. Example: “I should wikipedia that.” I do not use it as an academic source and I encourage my library patrons to use wikipedia as an introduction to a subject, not as the one and only source in their research paper. I like Wikipedia, but I don’t quite trust it and today I read a newspaper article that is making my understand why.

As most know director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland last week on a US arrest warrant and now his wikipedia page has been locked. According to the Telegraph the page was locked after editors began fighting over what information to provide readers and what information should be emphasized (Oscar winning director vs self-admitted child rapist). Obviously wikipedia editors are not interested in present the facts in a neutral manner, they want the facts presented in a way that benefits their own personal views of Polanski. This makes me think, how often does this happen and did Wikipedia moderators only catch it happening on Polanski’s page because it is such a hot topic? The Telegraph article points out that other pages, such as the Church of Scientology have been locked because of editing problems, but how many other pages fly below the radar?

I will keep using Wikipedia, but I know I will read article carefully and with a critical eye. The problem is how many other people will just take Wikipedia’s word for it? And can anything be done about that?

On Monday I picked up the Metro newspaper and on the cover was the Dalai Lama, who is in town for the 2009 Vancouver Peace Summit. The Metro (and CBC) quoted the Dalai Lama as saying, “I think technology may have some benefit for a smart brain, but no capacity to produce compassion.” He then went on to say that compassion and awareness is what will lead us to peace. EBay founder Pierre Omidyar disagreed with the Dalai Lama (gutsy move!) and said that the Internet allows us to discover more about other people than we ever have before, helping us find commonality with other groups of people, and that this will help us move towards peace. This began an internal debate in my head about these two different opinions of technology and interestingly linked into our discussions this week in class about the positives and negatives of web 2.0.

Can web 2.0 help us build more compassion, understanding and commonality? I think that Omidyar is partially right, technology can get us part of the way. Some web 2.0 tools, such as RSS, can definitely be used to gather information, which helps us be more aware and understanding. Getting RSS feeds from world news organizations to a RSS reader saves a lot of time and allows a person to read more, but does it really help a person understand. As much as being informed is a good thing, how much knowledge can we gain from reading information gathered by RSS feeds? We are still removed from what events we are now more knowledgeable about. We are still receiving our information from secondary sources. Maybe this void is part of what the Dalai Lama sees as problematic. We think we know what is going on because we feel more connected but are we really?

An example of this from my own life is from my Facebook account. I like Facebook because it is an easy way to stay connected with my friends who live overseas or some what far away and I do not get to see very often. I like reading their statuses, checking their pages, looking at their pictures and sometimes sending them messages. It makes me feel more connected to them than I did in the past when everything was via email. I feel more like I know what is going on in their world. But I have come to the conclusion that I don’t think this makes me more connected to them on any more than a superficial level. There have been a few times when friends, who I though I had a handle on what was going on in their life, totally surprised me with information about them I had no idea about. I had used Facebook to keep track of them and Facebook had forgot to tell me that they had moved to a new job, broke up with a long term partner, had a grandparent pass away. This has made me realize that though web 2.0 is great in some ways, it fails in others.

So yes, my RSS feeds, Twitter account, Facebook interest groups and subscription podcasts make sure I know what is going on in the world and I appreciate that, but they leave me feeling like I have only skimmed the surface.  Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that I have no conclusion. I think that technology and web 2.0 can only take us so far towards the ideas of compassion, understanding and commonality before we have to start interacting with one another in a more direct way because no matter how connected web 2.0 allows us to be, in the end we are interacting with each other while staring at a computer, not another person.