America's Next Top Information Professional

I’m a bit late to note this, but as reported on Archives Next and through the SAA Archives and Archivists list, Wikipedia has made some changes to their policies. Basically, these changes make it easier for professionals from archives and special collections to add or edit pages using specialized knowledge from their collections, without being flagged as having a potential conflict of interest. See the change itself here.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGNTiNCjs10[/youtube]

While I wait for Vista to load (I’ve been having serious technical issues with my old workhorse iBook G4), here’s a little story. In our assignment for Dean’s class for this week, we’ve been instructed to dip into a variety of social media tools and report. I’ve already been using Google reader, flickr, Twitter, and del.icio.us for a while, so my plan had been to try other products (e.g. Bloglines). However, this evening, my darling roommate asked me, unbidden, to explain how Twitter works so I thought I’d post the highlights of our conversation here.

Basically, I explained that Twitter is a form of microblogging: you write statements of 140 characters or fewer, which are posted to a sort of list. You can follow other people’s tweets, which means that you will see their posts interspersed chronologically with your own — and other folks can follow your tweets, too. (You can also restrict this.)

She said that was more or less what she thought, she just wasn’t quite sure how you do it, or what it looks like. We talked a bit about trending topics, the range of users, and some of the ways that Twitter has been used, such as during the protests in Iran. In a much smaller scale, I learned about Michael Jackson’s death on Twitter, a good hour before it was reported by the New York Times.

I’ve been using Twitter since about December of last year, and I have to say I remain amazed at how much people hate on it. Repeatedly, I’ve been asked, exasperatedly, what “the point” is. This points to a disappointing truth about affordance: some people will just not want to see the possibilities of any given tool. As librarians and archivists, we certainly have colleagues who have been resistant to various new technologies, from descriptive standards to OPACs. I’m not saying that we need to accept everything that comes our way, but open-mindedness tends to make things more interesting. However, on a personal level, if Twitter doesn’t work for you, don’t use it. It really is as easy of that.

*I overheard someone say this in the library where I worked this summer. The answer is: heck yeah, girl!

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBb4cjjj1gI&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fhelloboys.tumblr.com%2Fpage%2F3&feature=player_embedded#t=160[/youtube]

This update from the Whitehouse blog is full of interesting statements, but this was my favorite part:

“Our policies lag behind new trends, causing unnecessary restrictions on the use of new technology. Past practices too often resulted in inefficient use of purchased IT capabilities across the federal government. We are dedicated to addressing these barriers and to improving the way government leverages new technology.”

From an archival point of view, I want to point out that sometimes those IT restrictions ARE necessary. Not to overgeneralize, but the forms and registers that governments use have been developed over the ages because they provide sufficient evidence of how those governments work. While there is obviously room for improvement, we need to be wary about how we adopt exciting new technologies, especially in terms of necessary recordkeeping. Nonetheless, this should be an interesting endeavor. I have a lot to learn about cloud computing, by the way.

On a related note, apparently, the WH is “archiving” user contributions to social media websites. It’s odd that this article has such a spin towards a potential violation of privacy. I got an email about this from the Society of American Archivists listserv. As the sender noted, “How can collecting information that was deliberately and voluntarily posted to a publicly accessible website violate anybody’s privacy?” I suspect the issue is that this information was posted on third-party sites, including Facebook and Youtube, rather than directly on the White House website. The allusion to the Presidential Records Act surprises me: my understanding was that the Act is limited to records created BY the presidency, not things ABOUT it.

I intended to post this this morning, but I’ve been having some internet connectivity issues. Better late than never, eh?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo[/youtube]

This morning on Q, Jian Ghomeshi talked to the creators of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. They discussed the role of copyright in this kind of “literary mash-up” — namely, that the creator came up with a list of books in the public domain, and another list of, um, hip stuff like zombies, ninjas and monkeys, and just started drawing lines between the two columns. He specifically said he’s waiting for copyright on The Great Gatsby to expire. Oddly, no one mentioned the role of fair use in all this…I’m curious what potential there is for these literary mash-ups of currently copyrighted works. It certainly sounds like satire to me.

The *other* thing that really intrigues me here is that they’ve marketed this as a Regency romance. During my practicum at Mobile Services in Seattle, I learned a lot about romance novels, and my impression was that Austen really doesn’t fit in the category. Like, regencies may emulate Austen, but she wasn’t really writing romance novels so much as satires of them. While we’re on the subject, my favorite site for reader’s advisory for romances is by far Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Those ladies know their bodice-rippers.

A few weeks ago, my friend Kathryn mentioned that, if she could have access to only one website for the rest of time, it would definitely be IMDB. It’s an interesting question to ponder: if the Internet were burning down and you had to grab one site, what would it be? I haven’t been able to commit to anything, but a strong contender is Youtube. Besides allowing me to watch cute animals and my favorite music videos anytime I want, it also permits the dissemination of obscure film and video. This has the mixed potential of both raising awareness of rare materials, while also failing to preserve that material for the longterm. (This is an issue that comes up periodically on the archival listservs — see, for example, this exchange from the Association of Moving Image Archivists list in 2006.)

Anyway, this summer, I had the pleasure of working with writer Matthew Stadler at the University of Oregon in Portland. He hosted regular show and tell sessions for students and staff, and had everyone bring a “Youtube chaser” for between sessions. I’ve decided to carry this tradition on in this blog. Enjoy!

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w536Alnon24[/youtube]

Howdy, folks.

My name is Kelly, and I’m a third-year student in the joint Masters of Library and Information Studies and Masters of Archival Studies program at the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia. Or, the MLIS/MAS program at SLAIS at UBC, for short.

So, I’ve had blogs before, starting with a livejournal account with a dreadful color scheme, way back as a first-year undergrad. But it’s a new school year, and a perfect time for a new blog, this time special for my LIBR 559 course, which is focused on social media for information professionals.

I’ll leave you with a link to Catherine O’Sullivan’s 2005 Calvin Pease award-winning article, Diaries, On-line Diaries, and the Future Loss to Archives; or, Blogs and the Blogging Bloggers Who Blog Them. She has an intriguing argument about how blogs form personal “papers,” and the issues involved in longterm preservation of ’em. (From American Archivist, vol. 68, no. 1.)