Category: online tools

Categories
online tools

From Blogging to Glogging

Inspired by Jessica’s blog post on glogging, I thought I’d try my hand at it, as well. See the results of my experiment below. (Hover over the Glogster banner for the option to view it at full-size.)

 

 

The verdict on Glogster? Pretty fun and pretty easy, although it took me more than an hour to create the simple poster above. Of course, I’m new to the platform, and much of that time was spent trying to choose colours, frames, wall patterns, etc. That is one of the potential pitfalls of social media, in general, I think – it’s really easy to spend a great deal of time on things of relatively little consequence.

In this particular case, I was trying out a new technology as a learning experience for an academic course, so it was a good investment of my time – learn something, use a new technology, earn participation points for class.

But if, as a manager, I gave an employee the task of creating a Glogster poster to promote a service in the library, I would probably give a very specific timeframe for completing it, because it would be all too easy for an employee to spend all day on what should be a relatively simple task. When we get carried away by all the bells and whistles a tool offers, too often the task becomes a vehicle for showing off our technical skills rather than communicating our message in the most effective way possible.

I have seen very intelligent, highly educated people waste an inordinate amount of time choosing colours, fonts, and effects for a Powerpoint presentation that, ironically, made the finished product look amateurish. (Personally, if I never see a “checkerboard wipe” in a Powerpoint presentation again, it will be too soon.)

As always, the tool must serve a purpose greater than “it’s cool.” It’s important to be open to the opportunities that a new technology can give us, but before investing a great deal of time and money in obtaining, mastering, and using the latest thing, ask yourself:

  1. What do I want to accomplish?
  2. Will this tool help me accomplish that goal better (more quickly, more easily, etc.) than what I’m currently doing?

If the answer to Question 2 is “yes,” then the tool is worth further investigation. (For instance, if a very expensive tool will help you accomplish a task that you only do once every 5 years and can be easily outsourced, then the tool is probably not worth your investment.)

If the answer to Question 2 is “no,” move on. A tool is only a tool when it helps you accomplish something worthwhile. Otherwise, it’s a waste, no matter how pretty and shiny it is.

Categories
2.0 librarians online tools

Your Online Presence: How Much Is Enough?

Despite the stereotype of the Shy Librarian (which is also an online game where you get to dress up your very own smokin’ hot librarian – who knew?), it seems like the biblioblogosphere is full of information professionals with something to say. A Google search of the term “librarian blog” yields more than half-a-million hits, and the more emotionally loaded term “librarian rant” gets you 5,680 results.

(My favorite example of the latter is the appropriately titled “Unemployed, depressed old librarian’s rant” on DiabetesDaily.com, which starts: “I live in the western part of Kentucky where jobs are scarcer that hen’s teeth. I was released from my prison job for being too nice.”)

So what is the “proper” use of social media for information professionals? Like most things, it depends. Where are you in your career? If you’re two months from retiring, I wouldn’t worry about it. For those just starting out, there are many, including Hack Library School and American Libraries magazine, who believe that a strategically designed online presence, including an e-portfolio, is necessary to help you stand out from the crowd of recent library school graduates. If you have any desire to someday hold a title such as “Emerging Technologies Librarian”, the answer is obvious: Start tweeting immediately, no matter where you are or what you’re doing. Even if you’re at church. Even if it’s a wedding. Even if you’re the bride. What am I saying? Especially if you’re the bride.

Henry Jenkins, currently the Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California and the past Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program, in Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, says:

Rather than dealing with each technology in isolation, we would do better to take an ecological approach, thinking about the interrelationship among all of these different communication technologies, the cultural communities that grow up around them, and the activities they support. Media systems consist of communication technologies and the social, cultural, legal, political, and economic institutions, practices, and protocols that shape and surround them (Gitelman, 1999). The same task can be performed with a range of different technologies, and the same technology can be deployed toward a variety of different ends. Some tasks may be easier with some technologies than with others, and thus the introduction of a new technology may inspire certain uses. [p. 8.]

The focus shouldn’t be on using technology; the focus should be on what we want to accomplish. Only after we have determined that should we begin thinking about what types of social media (if any) would work best to accomplish our goal. If your goal would be best served by a blog, by all means, blog away. If your goal would be best served by a plain, old-fashioned phone call or an in-person chinwag, do it that way, and don’t even think of apologizing for not being “2.0” enough.

Because information professionals are supposed to be knowledgeable about all the latest technologies (and we should do our best to stay informed on the topic, so we can serve our patrons better), we sometimes get distracted by all the bells and whistles and forget that any technology is just a tool. A tool is only useful if it helps you accomplish what you want to accomplish. Remember:

What you want to do and why you want to do it is always more important than the how of getting it done.

Categories
mash-up online tools

I Am Officially Addicted to Mash-Ups

In researching the term “mash-up” for this course, I came across several very cool “music video” type mash-ups, and now I am trolling the Internet incessantly, looking for good remixes. (I believe this is still healthier than my previous productive-activity-avoidance technique, which was watching back-to-back episodes of “Maury Povich.”)

Rather than send emails to my friends every 15 minutes, I’ve decided to collect my favorites here.

Blue Monday meets Car Wash, with a little bit of Funkytown

Star Trek meets Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps

Stayin’ Alive meets The Wall

Come Together meets Closer (warning: adult lyrics)

Thunderstruck meets Ghostbusters

Paradise City meets Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Blue Monday meets Can’t Get You Out of My Head

Can’t Touch This meets Love Shack

Rap meets Weng, Weng, the Impossible Kid (warning: adult lyrics)

Categories
mash-up online tools

A Preliminary Definition of “Mash-Up”

This has yet to be added to by my study buddy, but it’s a start:

A mash-up (sometimes called a web application hybrid) is an application that combines data, content, functionality, presentation, and/or other features and services from at least two different sources in order to produce a new creation. The mash-up may or may not serve the original purpose(s) of its source materials. Peter Evans-Greenwood has proposed a new definition for the term:

A mash-up is a user interface, or user interface element, that melds data and function from multiple sources to create one single, seamless view of a topic, eliminating unnecessary decisions and actions.

Less formally, “mash-up” is often used interchangeably with the term “remix” to describe the combination of two or more songs to make a new composition, such as DJ Sandstorm’s mash-up of Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island” with Christina Aguilera’s remake of “Carwash,” or a “music video” created by combining the visuals from one source with music from another (such as Cake’s remake of “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps” laid over footage from the original “Star Trek” series). These types of mash-ups are almost always unauthorized, using the source material without the permission of its original creators, and are generally created for entertainment purposes.

Sources consulted: Dean Giustini’s Social Media Glossary, Peter Evans-Greenwood’s website, YouTube, Wikipedia.

Categories
librarians online tools

How (and If) Librarians Use Online Tools

WebJunction, the self-described “learning community working together to ensure that all library staff have the resources they need to power relevant, vibrant libraries” whose mission is “to promote learning for all library staff by providing open, affordable online learning communities” (WebJunction website, “About Us”), recently (July 6, 2011) released the results of their survey of WebJunction members about their use of 10 types of online tools and resources. The tools in question (listed in descending order of reported daily use) are:

  • Email discussion lists
  • Professional or social networking sites
  • RSS feeds
  • Chat or instant messaging
  • Online library news or magazines
  • Blogs
  • Wikis
  • Bookmarking sites
  • Mobile apps
  • Discussion forums
  • Video sharing sites
  • Photo sharing sites
  • Online games
  • Self-paced courses or tutorials
  • Webinars or other online events

Interestingly, this survey separated personal use of these tools from use in a professional setting, which I believe makes the results more relevant to a discussion of how librarians use online tools as librarians, rather than as private individuals. I find this to be an improvement over the similar survey WebJunction released in July 2010, which asked members about their use online tools but didn’t specify whether the tools were being used for personal or professional use.

Even the current study is flawed, however, because of the vagueness of the term “use of online tools in professional setting.” Does that mean that the tool is actually being used for the business of the library, or just that it’s being used when the librarian is on the clock? These could be two very different things. As the Annoyed Librarian points out in her critique of the survey:

I’m also skeptical about what using the tools “in a professional setting” means. I would speculate that the majority of librarians using social networking for “professional” purposes aren’t really using it for anything to do with their jobs. At least that doesn’t seem to be the case for the librarians I know, including myself.

They may hang out on Facebook or Friendfeed or Twitter communicating with other librarians, and maybe even about topics related to libraries, but rarely about their actual library work.

What if the question was changed to, “used the tools for work,” defining “work” as “the stuff you actually do for your job,” rather than, “any activity even tangentially related to libraries that I could therefore consider professional activity”? I suspect we’d find a huge difference in the statistics.

While the survey has serious flaws, including a relatively small (1,039 responses), self-selected study population (members of WebJunction are, presumably, interested in its mission “to promote learning for all library staff by providing open, affordable online learning communities” [WebJunction website, “About Us”]), and a tendency for WebJunction to use the survey findings to promote its own products (such as webinars), the results do provide an interesting starting point for a discussion of how, and whether, librarians are using online tools in their work.

What do you think?

Spam prevention powered by Akismet