Month: July 2011

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Creating social capital through collaboration or getting together to make it worth your while

So topic of the week in Social Media class is collaboration, more specifically collaboration with social media. We also worked in groups on a wiki entry. Our group did a wiki entry on social media for youth services:Social Strategies for Youth Service Librarians.

While doing research for the wiki I rediscovered a youth services program using social media and involving collaboration, (or maybe cooperation in some cases. For the difference see Jessica’s excellent post.) The program is TeenRC. It is a social networking site for teens that revolves around reading, writing, literature and other materials. It was developed and is administered by dedicated youth services librarians, but it’s content is teen created. Teens create a catalog of books they have read or would like to read, they can write reviews, share their own writing, have discussions (not just limited to literature) in the forums, and there are regular special events like author visits and interviews, or contests.

It seems like a fantastic site with a lot to offer but libraries have tried to run sites like this before and since without success. Either the administrators lose funding or interest or the teens don’t join. One of the things that really makes this site work is the number of libraries collaborating on the project. There are 332 participating libraries with TeenRC.  Not all of those libraries have creative control over the project of course, but they are involved and this means the site is available and suggested to a much larger audience. If you can get a small number of teens to join from each of those libraries you end up with a pretty good user base. If they like it, they will spread the word and you will get more teens joining in. And they are more likely to like it, the more people that are on it because social networking sites grow in social capital as they grow in size. This make a larger social networking site more valuable to an individual and more likely to stick around.

Now I’m only brushing on social capital which is a complex sociological theory and I can’t find the article I originally read about social capital and social networking sites (if anyone has a good link, post it in the comments!). As I understand it and remember it, social capital is the value we derive from our social networks (online, offline, professional, social, familial, etc.). The larger and more connected our networks the more value they have. The strength of the connections is important too, so there have to be a balance between quality and quantity. (Think of the person with 1000 facebook friends, does he really know all those people, does he get anything beyond a number on his page from them.) For a social networking site to be of value it have to have many subscribers, thereby offering it’s users the opportunity to expand and strengthen their social networks.

The same rules apply to libraries trying to use social media in programming. You have to use existing social media with enough social capital, or at least potential, or it won’t offer the user anything and the project will flop from lack of users. Or in the case of TeenRC, create your own social networking site, but collaborate with others to ensure a good start up group size and encourage growth from there. The collaboration also means reaching people geographically distant with is one of the great affordances of online social networks.

I really like TeenRC. I haven’t really gotten into the site because to take full advantage of it you have to be registered and to be a registered user you have to be a teen, but I like the idea and I will follow it’s development. I hope it continues to grow and change and live.

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The Social Media Panopticon or I’m feeling watched and alone.

My undergraduate degree is in criminology and you can bet we spent many hours in that program discussing different theories and studies of surveillance. So when the subject of surveillance in social media came up I was definitely interested. The discussion though has had the side effect of making me feel surveilled in my online activity. I feel watched by friends, colleagues, my professor, future employers, future students, and maybe even the government!

It started with Anders Albrechtslund and his article Online Social Networking As Participatory Surveillance. Albrechtslung suggests classical theories of surveillance,  like Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon and the theories of Michel Foucault, fail to cover the widespread participation in social media. He supports an expansion of current surveillance theories to incorporate a more horizontal structure instead of top down. For support, he illustrates how through social media people voluntarily open themselves up to public scrutiny. Even just the information you have to enter to create an online profile for facebook or twitter impressive. Then once you have that account, you participate in sharing details of you life to the world, without really thinking about it.

This is the crutch of the matter. We do it without really thinking about it. When we share something on facebook we don’t think about the world reading it, we see it as sharing it with our friends. I knew, but didn’t really think about, all the ways in which the things I post online could be used. My words can be taken out of context and used in ways I never intended, my birthday party photos used against me at a job interview, my profiles scanned for criminal tendencies.  Sure I knew these things were a possibility  but not until recently have I really though about it and now I am feeling it’s full effect.

One of the benefits of online interactions, including social media, is the freedom to express yourself,converse and connect with others, share. I like sharing. But now I feel watched and the freedom is gone. I want to share my thoughts and feelings but fear how they will be taken out of context and used against me and I won’t have the chance to defend myself. I might not even know it’s happening. And that was the function of the panopticon: each prisoner was isolated and arranged so each individual at any given moment could be observed from the guard post but the prisoner never knew when he was being observed  and so acted as if he were being observed at all times. In the social media panopticon the person in the guard post could be anyone and they can observe not only your current behaviour but all your past behaviour as well. And you don’t know when they’re watching.

So now, living in a new place away from the people I like to share things with, I hesitate to reach out and share like I did before. The effect will fade, I’m sure, but it doesn’t mean the surveillance in social media fades with it. I guess it’s like coming to terms with the millions of cameras on city street corners.

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Public Lending Rights or If it’s not about the money, why is it about the money?

PLR or Public Lending Rights. I first discovered these on monday in my International Issues class and got all upset about them but so many countries have a PLR system I figured I must be missing something so I sought out more information. As of last night I had a better grasp on the systems and the reasons for them but I still didn’t like them and I was going to write a passionate blog post but it was going on ten thirty after a very long day of school work and I just wanted to go to bed. This morning, er, afternoon now, my passion is missing. I guess this will be my sober second thought rather than my passionate musings.

PLR or Public Lending Rights is a system that gives money to authors whose books are loaned out at public libraries. Many countries have a PLR system including the UK, Germany, Australia, and yes Canada. My initial discovery of PLR was the UK system and that is the one I read the most about, but each PLR system is similar.

Why have a PLR? The argument is that authors suffer a loss of revenue from book sales because libraries are purchasing one book then lending it out to many people for free. Because authors are a nation’s public and cultural asset the government must subsidize it’s authors.

Okay, I’ll grant you that yes, many individuals get to read a single library copy that has only been paid for once, but I question the claim of loss of revenue. The assumption is that if a person cannot get a copy of a certain book at the library they will go out and buy it. But then again, maybe they just won’t bother reading it. What about the awareness and free advertising a library gives an author and his/ her works?

Who pays? Each country with a PLR system has set up an annual fund for the administration and disbursement of PLR. ONce the administration costs are taken out, whatever is left is spread among the registered authors based on whatever formula their system is using. In the UK it is based on how many times a book is loaned out in a sample of libraries, in Canada it’s based on how many copies are in a sample of library catalogues. The big thing for me is that it’s not the libraries that pay, at least not directly. There are also caps on how much an author can receive so that a few bestselling authors don’t hog the entire fund. (Along with this is the idea that if your book is so popular, you probably don’t need the subsidy.) In 2010, the Public Lending Right Commission of Canada’s disbursements totalled 9.9 million dollars but individual payments average $583 with the cap at $3486. Obviously, this is not enough for someone to make a living on. But proponents of the system argue it’s not about the money, it’s about the justice of it, the recognition of the author’s rights and how they are suffering from the free public lending of their books.

What get’s my goat: The accusation or insinuation that libraries are somehow stealing from authors. Marian Engel, one of the founders of PLR in Canada openly accused “Canada’s librarians of “ripping off Canada’s writers” by lending out their books for free, thereby undermining their book sales.” (Andreas Schroeder, Canada’s PLR Program: The Untold Story) As a soon to be librarian, and a lifelong user of libraries it’s hard to imagine libraries ripping anyone off. Libraries already do so much with so little, couldn’t they have picked on someone who was actually out there to make a buck rather than an institution that gives everything they take, back to the community.

If it’s about justice, where’s the justice? If it’s about money, go after someone who has some.

Good, if dated, article about the PLR program in the UK: Dworkin, G. (1988) Public Lending Right – The UK Experience. Columbia-VLA Journal of Law & Arts 13(1).

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LIBR559M

I’m Lazy, Who Knew?

Yup, I’m lazy. This isn’t exactly a recent discovery, but it was reaffirmed this week when I joined Google+ and almost instantly started to refer to it as G+ in my speech. I’m just surprised I could so quickly resort to it by a short form. At least I could catch myself typing it.

I’m not sure if “G+” has made it into common usage yet, but I fully expect it will because I’m not the only lazy one out there. In his article Why I Blog, Andrew Sullivan refers to the tendency to shorten terms for the internet as the “monosyllabic vernacular of the Internet.” The trend to shorten everything in online language plus the fact that Google already has “Gmail,” added to the popularity of iEverything, makes me think G+ or something similar will soon become part of the internet vernacular.

I really enjoyed Sullivan’s perspectives on blogging. He mentioned many things I will have to mull over while I work on getting this endeavour going. One thing that really struck me is his emphasis on the immediacy of blogging. I always understood blogs to be a more immediate form of information and news sharing because of how quickly they can be put together and published, but I forgot about the editorial side. Now that I have written a few things that have had to go through a lengthy editorial process I can appreciate the feeling of freedom instant publishing gives an author. It’s also dangerous.

My professor (Dean Giustini) has been educating information professionals about and through social media for a while now. On his wiki, on a section of blogs he states “New bloggers should be cautioned about the pros/cons of blogging… They should be encouraged to proofread their entries before posting to ensure that they take this form of writing seriously.” Okay, so no lengthy editing process, but don’t go overboard with informality. Make sure you do a basic self edit. More evidence of my lazyness, I hate proofreading my own work. I am terrible at it. More often than not I will read over my own errors. Luckily, the format of a blog affords me a huge population of possible editors, whom I’m sure will not hesitate to pick out my errors. If that’s not motivation to do a double check before hitting publish, I don’t know what is. Sullivan makes note of the blogosphere editing, saying, “now the feedback was instant, personal, and brutal.”

Okay, so as I move forward with this venture there are a few things I have to keep in mind:

  • PPP: Personal but Professional and Polite.
  • People will read, people will comment, people will not always be as nice and diplomatic as I strive to be.
  • Prompt. Write today’s thought’s today on things going on now.
  • Point. Would I read it?
  • Proofread.
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First Post or How I can fiddle with something for two days.

UBC Blogs offers 30 different free themes to choose from. How hard can choosing a blog theme really be? Two days later I have finally chosen, but I am not completely satisfied. But the good news is that I can change it to something better if I find it.

I have only created one blog before this and it was as the final project for one of my core courses. I only used the basic functionalities of the blogging application. I have a lot to learn about how I can customize my blog to fit my needs and personality. I am looking forward to playing around and figuring things out. Things will probably change.

I learned: Just get something down, something out there, you can fine tune it later. (Apparently I have to learn this one over and over.)

PS. The picture in the header is my own, from one of my favourite places in the world, Mayo Lake.

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