Thing 9: Photo Sharing

I cannot begin to express how much I love Flickr, from my personal account to the great things Library of Congress is doing. I love the ability to geotag photos, make comments, and generally share photos.


Image: New "Camera"! , a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from smanography's photostream

One of my favorite uses of Flickr is to search for photos licensed under Creative Commons - when I use photos in my LibGuides, I always use ones licenced this way.

To find CC licensed photos, start with the Flickr Advanced Search. Select the box by "Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content" and if you're using it commercially, select that box too. Then search! Always double check, but in most cases, you just need to provide attribution whenever you use the image. I try and provide a link to the end result on the person's flickr account as well, because people like to see their photos in action. 

If you find yourself needing attribution often, I suggest grabbing this attribution bookmarket. All you do is click and hold the link that says "show flickr attribution" and drag it to your Firefox toolbar. Then whenever you're on a flickr page, click the bookmarklet button and it will generate a popup window with all the attribution information you need! Very handy!

Thing Seven: Sharing Slide Presentations

I made this presentation for JSRCC's Technology Summit this past spring. I really like the ability to embed powerpoint into websites - it provides a great place for backup and for promoting discussion after presentations.

Facebook for Education

View more presentations from srharta.

Thing 6: Chat

While we participate in LRC Live, we do not have a localized chat service here at JSRCC. As much as we would like one, the reality of the matter is that we just do not have the staff to really commit the time. One of my projects this summer is to play around with LRC Live's qwidget and hopefully get that up and running.

If we did have the staff resources, I would go with Library H3lp. Unlike some of the free standalone services, this allows multiple librarians to be logged-in and allows the ability to pass questions to another user, as well as a fine-tuned librarian interface. I haven't kept up with the project recently, but I believe they now have a way of accepting text messages to the chat interface as well.

I believe that, if at all possible, libraries should offer a basic chat service that would ideally accept IMs from multiple platforms, including text messaging and Facebook. Increasingly, students prefer not make voice calls or even use email - they want the instant gratification that comes with a text or a chat.

While I was a graduate assistant in the History, Philosophy and Newspaper Library at UIUC, we rolled out a chat reference with limited hours. It wasn't terribly popular (but then, our library patrons were generally graduate students and more willing to just come into the library). Most of the questions we got were "what are your hours?" and "do you have this book?" The few actual reference questions we received we encouraged the patron to come into the library so we could discuss this further. In most cases, those patrons would not have initiated contact at all, so the chat started off as a question in a space they felt comfortable, and we were able to bring them over to where we as librarians felt comfortable.

Thing 5: Wikis

Wikis are very useful tools for libraries. Most places I've worked/interned have used at least a basic wiki as a means of internal communication. By their nature, anybody can be made an editor, and the information stays consistent and in one place (unlike, say, a chain of emails).

When I redesigned the RALC website, I chose to include a wiki so that all RALC members could participate as editors on internal communication. Though I still function as the main website administrator, any RALC member can add minutes of their meetings and update contact information on the fly.

Social Networks - expanded

I promised before a longer post on social networking.

The JSRCC library currently has a facebook account, twitter, a blog and delicious. I personally am fairly active in the Richmond Twitter community, and have a Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, delicious, etc etc.

Social networking is a very interesting aspect of the past few years. Websites like Facebook and Myspace have allowed people to keep in touch with others in new exciting ways, and I know from personal experience Twitter has been a great tool for finding out more about Richmond as well as meeting people with similar interests.

I am keenly interested in how libraries and educators can utilize social media (both in the classroom and beyond). I think when you break it down, you're dealing with a means of communication, which in and of itself is not new. Taking into consideration the fast-paced world in which we live, where information (nevermind how accurate it is) is available at the push of a button, it's no wonder why students often feel overwhelmed and tune out more traditional (and slower) methods of communication. Employing a chat or texting program might encourage student participation in everything from office hours to reference questions.

We live in a time of rapid technological development. Some of these current companies are likely to be fads... but what will be their lasting impact on the way we communicate (and learn)?

I have personally been active, in some form of social networking, since I was in high school. Facebook opened up to my college when I was a senior, and I've been a member ever since then. 

Playing Catch-up

So, as life is wont to happen, I got busy and this project got pushed to the backburner. I'll be playing catch-up a bit today, but breaking it up into multiple posts.

I'm headed to DC for ALA tomorrow, then I'm taking some vacation time, but I promise I'll do better about keeping this up. :)