After watching the videos and reading an article or two about Second Life I really have to wonder if libraries have a place in Second Life. Given the current climate in libraries, budget cuts, reduction in staffing, increase in use and circulation, do librarians really have time for Second Life? Is Second Life on its way out? I fully understand the usefulness and application of most of the social media tools for librarians and libraries that we’ve explored in this class. With a few exceptions, (Tumblr and Glogster), I appreciate their affordances and see how they could be used by libraries.

In order to have a pleasant experience in Second Life, it seems that one must have a computer that can handle it as well as a really good internet connection. This makes SL inaccessible to lots of people.

I never got a chance to fully explore Second Life, and if I find that I have the time and inclination I hope to someday. I did pick out a name for my avatar, Flossy Glendale, and chose a red-head avatar (since, in my mind I’m still a red-head but people have recently told me otherwise). As fellow Simmons student, Emily Singley, pointed out on the discussion board, “Many of the professors and students here at Simmons doubt the relevance of SL for libraries – or at least, that has been my impression so far.” That’s been my experience as well at the Simmons GSLIS West campus. Perhaps that’s why I approached this module with bias. I was hoping that other students’ experience of SL would dissuade me of my bias but it never happened. It seems like there’s a general opinion that we don’t see how SL is useful for libraries or librarians.

If the future of libraries is mobile (as more and more people have smart phones), how does SL fit into this picture? Some smart phones can support augmented reality (not the iPhone, though), and I think this may be the future of virtual worlds. Will there be a Second Life mobile app?

Greetings from Maine! I’ll be here until August 15th. The photo was taken with my iPhone Hipstamatic app. That’s the view from our front lawn looking towards Kearsage Mountain and Mount Washington in the distance. I’ve been registrar for a residential two-week summer camp here in Fryeburg, Maine since 2004.  My job is to receive registrations; assign housing; and total the number of campers and communicate those numbers to the camp director who in turn shares that information with the camp cooks.  I also assign teens an adult sponsor and compile lists for our fire marshalls. I use Google docs to create spreadsheets and upload registration forms and share them with the camp director, treasurer, assistant treasurer and anyone else on our staff who needs the relevant information. Running camp is really a collaborative effort of all of our staff.

Every year we produce a Bulletin with all of the information about that summer’s camp session including the registration form that gets mailed to our members and friends in the Spring. This year for the first time ever we produced the Bulletin collaboratively over one weekend with a total of 4 people, one of whom was working from a distance. It was a great experience because we each brought our strengths to the project. We have one person with graphic arts and design skills, 2 talented photographers, and 2 great proofers and editors. We put together a really great looking Bulletin over the course of a weekend and had fun too! What really made us a great team was that we put our egos aside and completely relied on and trusted each other to do the job that they are good at. The added bonus is that we are all volunteers and we do all this work out of love for our camp. It feels so good to work like this that I wish that my previous work situations were like this and really hope that I can find a group of co-workers in the future that can work together in this way.

I’ve been thinking quite bit about the simple fact that I need to set limits for myself when it comes to participating in social media. It’s overwhelming the amount of social media that it’s possible to participate in. It boggles the mind at times. The plain truth is that there are a lot other responsibilities and obligations, not to mention assignments for another class that require my attention. While I still think it’s important for librarians/information professionals to be involved in social media I know for myself, personally, at this time in my life, I must set limits. I’m okay with this. Plus, I find social networking sites to be really distracting. I tend to use them to distract myself for a few minutes when I’m busy with school work.

Also, it’s important to me that I have some down-time, off-line, disconnected and even off-the-grid time.

We’ve had some good discussions this week about participation in social media. One thing I’ve been thinking about is how we present ourselves in social media. Are we always professional? Can we let our hair down, so to speak, and be ourselves? Or do we always have to be careful about who is lurking or, more importantly, are we under surveillance? A recent NPR story, “Elusive Debtors Foiled by Their Social Media Sites”  is a good example of how sharing too much information can be detrimental. There are lots of other examples of how we need to be protect our own privacy on the web. Have you tried the “Scan for Privacy” tool for Facebook? If you’ve carefully gone through all your privacy settings hopefully you won’t find any major, glaring gaps in your privacy settings. So, what is our role as librarians in web 2.0? Is this, yet, another opportunity for us to educate the public about privacy? And when we do that are we, as librarians setting good examples ourselves by not over-sharing information?

How we, as information professionals/librarians choose to participate in social media, I think, depends on what we want to get out of it. If you’re setting up a Twitter account or Facebook page you need for your institution then when you’re posting under that account then you’re, obviously, representing that institution and your posts need to reflect that. If you have a personal Twitter account and you want to keep it personal then you need to set it up that way. If you have a Facebook account and you’re concerned about what a potential employer may learn about you on Facebook, then, by all means remove any potentially harmful information or posts. Have you blocked any people from your past from finding you on Facebook? I know I have and offer no apologies about it. How much information do you share with high school friends you haven’t seen in over 25 years?

How do we participate? Carefully, thoughtfully and when appropriate, professionally.

Logging into my blog shouldn’t be that difficult.

I joined Twitter in January of this year after attending ALA Mid-winter in Boston. Up until that point I hadn’t really considered the affordance of Twitter. (By the way, my dictionary doesn’t seem to like the word “affordance” but I will proceed regardless. ) What I learned at ALA, and not in a workshop or anything like that but simple sharing of information from a fellow GSLIS student, was that there was a conversation happening on Twitter about ALA while I was there, in the event that I was attending. People were tweeting all around me. Why would this be so significant? Because on Twitter I could get the vibe of the event. Was I the only one sitting in the auditorium listening to a well-known author talk about here latest book and thinking that she was rather full of herself? Well, no! Not at all. I was not alone. Twitter also helps people at events such as ALA to actually, physically meet up! What a concept! I heard of several “Tweet ups” and thought that was a cool way to network. That’s a really good example of using social media to advertise a social event.

Although I wasn’t in on the buzz (or tweets) happening during ALA Mid-winter I decided to explore Twitter once I got home and find out how librarians and libraries are using Twitter. In the spring I took LIS 488 Technology for Information Professionals where we used a hashtag to create a “back channel” on Twitter. This gave me further opportunity to explore how Twitter can be useful. I particularly like the use of hashtags because it’s a way to group tweets together on the same topic. We had several discussions in LIS 488 on the usefulness of Twitter. Is it useful at all? Or is it just another thing to do? I’m finding it a good way to share information. Since librarians, by nature, love to share information and collaborate, Twitter makes it so simple to share a link (shortened is better) and write a brief message to go along with it. I recently read somewhere that Twitter and Facebook are used more often for sharing links than emailing. On the other hand, I don’t want to be an over-sharer so you probably won’t ever find me using Foursquare and announcing my every move.

Over the past few months I’ve been interested in how Twitter is used in classrooms. Here you will find some examples of how Twitter is being used in the classroom: http://www.emergingedtech.com/2009/06/6-examples-of-using-twitter-in-the-classroom/ One of the benefits of using Twitter in a classroom is that it allows students who are shy the opportunity to participate in a discussion. Is this important? I think so.

One thing that I often think about is how a tool has a use that is not its original intended use. For example, my rock hammer is not for pounding in tent stakes but I’ve used it for that. Twitter was developed as a micro-blogging tool and its users have looked at it, used it and come up with a wide range of uses. Hashtags and re-tweets were not developed by Twitter. Hashtags and re-tweets were developed by the Tweeple. I think this is a good example of how social media tools can be adapted by its users.

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