Author: Lois Shupp

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Final Class!

  • On reflection, what about social media has captured your attention as an information professional?

What has captured my attention as an information professional is the prevalence of social media that I really had no idea about.  There are so many different programs and media outlets that it is very overwhelming.  It could be a full time job just to keep up with it all.  I think it’s surprising how many libraries don’t utilize as many of the free services that are out there.  Most libraries have a website, some a Facebook page/blog/Twitter, and in a lot of cases, that’s it.  As an information professional, I want to utilize more of these services at my libraries.

  • Looking ahead, what social media will have a limited application in archives, libraries and museums?

I think that sites like Facebook/Myspace will have a really limited application when it comes to archives and museums.  While they are great for sharing information, I don’t think they can really be applied as a helpful resource like it could for a library branch.

  • What has this online experience been like for you?

This online experience is a lot different from the other online classes I have taken but I enjoy it so much more.  The other classes I’ve taken often rely on me watching 2 – 3 hour long lectures that were recorded in class where I don’t have much participation.  I felt like I had a lot more chances to participate and connect with my classmates even though it was online and most of my classmates live very far away.  Using and exploring all of the different social media outlets was overwhelming and challenging but definitely a learning experience.  I’ve never used Twitter before but I think it is something that I will keep using, maybe sparingly, but something new to explore.

 

My group presented our topic last night via Skype, Prezi, Drupal, and Screencast.  I loved working with my group, everything went very smoothly and everyone went above and beyond the call of duty with their parts.  It was great to work with a group that was all online and so spread out but still able to work all together on a project.  I think our Emily Carrchive paper and Drupal site (thanks Jonathan!) are of really high quality and would be great to actually implement.

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Aggregation!!

At the library system I work at, we just begun using Thinkfinity as a way to share information back and forth between the young adult related librarians in the system, which includes the directors, young adult librarians, or (like me) circulation workers who work as young adult librarians without the title (haha.) .

Thinkfinity is a pretty great space to use if we actually utilized it as a way to share more information.  Currently, it is mostly used as a way to share reviews of teen and children’s books we receive for gratis from the publishers.  Each publishing house as a message board type area where users can update their reviews so other librarians can check them out to see if they want to purchase one for their collection or, as I use it, to see if we want to use it for story time or as a teen book club selection.  Before, a spreadsheet was created in Excel and the librarians would email this back and forth with their updates.  I never looked at this because it was awful to try to find the new entries and some of the librarians would update it with such minimal information that this was useless.  I think if we explored the functionality of Thinkfinity, we could use it for so much more information sharing, such as programming suggestions and the like, but it is currently being under utilized and a lot of the people who signed up initially have forgotten about it, as happens with a lot of social networking resources.

A new social media 2.0 development in my library that is on the upswing: FourSquare.  We’ve offered users of FourSquare a free DVD rental (usually costs $2) for their first check – in at the library.  We’ve had a few people take advantage of this and hopefully a lot more will follow suit.

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Create something!

For module 4, I created a Glogster poster.  Glogster is a pretty easy program to use and it allows you to create an interactive design for really any topic you are interested in.  I created an author poster about Cormac McCarthy (http://shuppl.edu.glogster.com/cormac-mccarthy-by-lois-shupp/).  This sort of design could be used for any author as a way for librarians to easily be able to look up information about books, but mostly as an interactive design for younger readers to find out information about author’s they like. 

I personally think Glogster is more designed for kids, than for adults to use, but if adults were to use this service correctly, they could definitely appeal to kids.  I would love to work with the payed accounts to see how different they are and what the different effects are.  I think young adults would really love playing with it as a way to share information with friends and maybe it even could be incorporated into school assignments as a different way to share information.  I liked how you could imbed audio into the Glog. 

I hadn’t heard of this program before using it for this class but this would definitely be something I would be interested in using in the public library setting.  If my library had the capabilities, I would even run a teen program on it as a new kind of technology that they could use to share ideas.

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Internet collaboration takes a wrong turn?

I currently have just logged into my Facebook account and came upon a post that an acquaintance from college had put as their status: “I can’t believe I’m actually going to do a bloody Facebook poll: should Bob* and I get married? Why? Why not? Serious responses only please.”

Now, I’m into the whole collaboration/polling thing as the next person.  (And I consider this to be a collaboration of reasons why/why not, I might be wrong in my viewing it as this)  However, I think that is a life decision that is taking the whole collaboration of friends and acquaintances too far.  While it may be good to poll friends before purchasing a new car (they might have/had the one you want and have useful information), I think deciding whether to marry a person needs to be a more face to face dialogue between the two parties involved and perhaps their families and/or closest friends, not the 600 people you added as your friend on Facebook that you might sort of know.  I’d love to see what you all in the blogosphere think.

# end rant.

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My preferred online role

While reading the various articles and looking at this image in Module II, it caused me to reflect on my online participation.  I see myself as more of a joiner/lurker.

I do not keep a blog (this is something that I just am not good at doing.  I also am not good at keeping a journal, even though I’ve tried various journals/blog spaces/etc.  I just can not make myself update them regularly because I don’t feel like a) I have anything to say to the internet at large b) I don’t want my friends to read them if I would happen to be venting (I tried a private blog but I still didn’t update that…)) and don’t really post any newer information anywhere else other than commenting on friends’ pages.  The only creation I do really is posting my pictures on my tumblr/flickr sites that I keep.  However, I also do not keep up with these all that often half of the time.  I do join social networking and other sites such as Tumblr, Google +, Facebook, etc.  Twitter is my newest toy (along with Instagram) but I’m still figuring out how to use it and all the tagging is a bit overwhelming for me.  When I am not doing homework, paying bills, or doing things for work, I am spending the majority of my time on social networking sites, thus making me a joiner.

Now, as for me being a lurker, I do look at a lot of sites, blogs, profiles, etc. but I often do not comment on them, share them, or say anything about them.  I observe from the periphery more often than I add my two sense.  I just feel more comfortable that way than I do adding my information on the web.

I’ve been trying to become more of a poster/creator for the internet because I feel it is important for me to have these skills as an information professional but it definitely something I need to work on.

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Functionality

Some brief words about myself and technology

Whew! I feel like I’m a bit late on this.  I’ll first give a brief introduction of who I am before going into excuses, haha.

My name is Lois.  I am currently a grad student at the University of Pittsburgh however I complete all of my classes online because I live on the other side of the state near Philadelphia.  (I live in Spring City to be exact, but it’s a very tiny town).  I currently work part time at 2 public libraries and sub at a third when they need me.  I have one more semester after this before I receive my degree (Wooo!) and I would like to eventually work in an academic library setting at a smaller liberal arts school.  My dream job is to work in an arts library at a museum or art college.  I graduated in 2008 with a double degree in Digital Communications with a concentration in art and Studio Art.  A little more about myself, I enjoy cooking, listening to music, reading (who doesn’t….), collecting records, going to shows, and hanging out outside. 

Now for excuses, I haven’t posted as of yet because I was prepping for a weekend at the University of Pittsburgh.  Once a semester, all of the classes you take meet together in person for presentations, lectures, and the like, so I was prepping all of my presentations (3!) and finishing up all the work due for the weekend.  So I am catching up to everything that is going on with this class. 🙂

So far, I really like how this class is set up.  UBC’s set up of Blackboard (or Vista) is quite different than the one used at Pitt and at my undergrad.  However, this version is SO MUCH NICER AND INTUITIVE.  I really enjoy how it updates me to what has changed with the little asteriks.  It is taking a little getting used to however.  I have looked over module one and met with my study buddy, Jamie, via Google Chat.  Since he’s 3 hours behind me (I’m in Eastern time), we figure email is probably gonna be our best bet, although I am a night owl.

So for my first post, I figured I would discuss the question “Does form follow function with technology? Or is it the other way around with technology?”  I think that it can go either way in some cases.  Sometimes, we need technology to fulfill a need, such as a computer program for say a hospital to keep track of medical information.  In this case, we make a program that will fulfill these needs.  However, as technology advances, this program could change so it’s following a new form instead of the inital function it was created for.  I think after a technology is initially created for a function, the form is likely to change along with changes in techology to make that more user friendly and to continue to be sustainable.  If a program no longer continues to adapt to the surroundings with what it needs, it becomes obsolete.  An example that comes to mind is Myspace.  After it did not continue to advance and change at the rate Facebook did, it became for the most part obsolete.  Here is a link to an article I read about how one user thinks Twitter will become obsolete if it doesn’t begin to add more user functionality.

Peter Yared – Here Comes Twitter 2.0
http://peteryared.blogspot.com/2011/05/here-comes-twitter-20.html

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