Thing #8: Second Life

A little over a month ago, my brother sent me an article about Second Life. Apparently someone just made their first million dollars in (real) money. I didn't really realize what a big deal it was. I guess I'm out of the loop. I thought Myspace was the new hip thing. I know there's a lot of chatter about Second Life and to be honest I am wary of it. I like to think of myself as a (future) Social Psychologist.... it's scary to me to think of people interacting more in a virtual world than in the real world.

My brother and I are working on Third Life..... You create an avatar and it controls your Second Life avatar... which then controls you.

OK, Seriously though I CAN see the potential in SecondLife for libraries and academic research..... as a TOOL. Watching the SJSU video and reading about virtual museums, and *gasp* the possibility of only virtual books gives me the impression that people want to use these in place of their real-world counterparts. Students are going to go to Second Life class instead of going to a lecture hall. It's just scary to me, that's all. I think face-to-face interaction is very important. However, I can see virtual libraries as a helpful tool for undergrads and even grads studying. I am having issues thinking of ways it can benefit the larger community.... although I can see how faculty members would like to post recorded lectures or assignments... I just hope that high schools don't start using SecondLife. Not everyone has equal access to computers & the internet.

I told my brother about the uses of libraries in Second Life. He had this to say....

Bubba: "I want my iPhone to chat with my treo and then they can mate in second life to create a flip phone that will send emails to my camera.........

.......then they will transform. like the transformers.
take over the world!!
Decepticons UNITE!
Autobots Roll Out!"

Thing #7 Social Networks 2

Yes. I have a Myspace page. To be honest, I had one already. I go through phases of using it. I'll get into it for about a month and then slack off.... then there will be to many messages to answer and comments to return. It's too much. I haven't logged in to my personal one since May I think. I can't log in until I answer all the messages...I don't want to be rude-even in fake life.

I do have a Interlibrary Lynn Myspace account though. Maybe I'll upload a picture or two. I was thinking about the library/academic uses for Myspace and I remembered that students have an option to list classes they are taking. They enter in their school and then the class code (Psych01) and it will link their profiles with everyone in the class (who also have a Myspace who also entered the class). A separate page is created with blogs you can create with subjects and what not. Forming study groups, help with homework or complaining about teaching styles can all be done on this page. Maybe if there was a way to automatically create a library link whenever a student enters 'UCSC' as their school. If we did have those special, nifty research pages for the class it could link to that as well.

Thing #6: Social Networks 1

Social Networks.....

MySpace.....
aaah. Myspace. I know it's very easy to get sucked in to Myspace. I have many friends who do most of their social interactions through their myspace profiles. The etiquette rules on myspace are what get me... so and so commented on your page and you took more than one day to respond....or you logged on and didn't send them a picture back.... too weird. It also creeps me out that people you've never met before find you and ask to be your friend. I guess it's a good thing.... but still kinda creepy. Oh, and the only protection on there for young people is changing your age to under 14....which makes your profile private. But that isn't enforced and it can be easily changed.


Facebook...
I've never really used Facebook, but it looks fun and I've heard good feedback on it. I do like that you can link pictures with everyone. Although I would be nervous about putting my name and face out there... I heard someone talking about Facebook in lecture a couple of years ago and she said "Yeah, I only use Facebook because it's more elitist. People who use Myspace aren't even in college." ......that alone turned me off to Facebook. Although I guess now it's open to everyone. I'm still not in to it.

Ning...
I like the fact that this is arranged for groups. I found a lotr group and there are all kinds of posts and comments AND RSS feeds! Very cool. Still probably not for me though.

.....Still trying to think of ways libraries can use these sites though. I mean I could see setting up library or academic research related pages, but will people really use them? If people are going to myspace to leave comment pictures of the fun time last night, are they really going to stop off to do research on their paper?

Thing #5b: RSS & Newsreaders 2

Well I subscribed to a few more feeds. It's interesting to see how easy the RSS feed URL is to find on some sites. Some browsers prompt you to save the feed but I think it would only work for the computer you are working on at the time (unless it prompts you to sign in to Bloglines or similar site of course). I usually sign in to Bloglines, find the feed URL & copy paste it.

I had to hunt for the feed URL on both the American Psychological Association & American Sociological Association sites. It was not user friendly. The ASA feed is interesting too; when I look at it on Bloglines, I don't get the "forum" it promises. Instead, there is just the link that opens up a new window back in the ASA forum site. Weird. It's hard to tell sometimes if a site doesn't have an RSS feed, or if it is just hidden. Of course the LAKERS homepage had a quick easy link on the left-hand side of the screen in the menu bar. SO easy. Now I can keep up on my LAKERS!!!

Thing #5a RSS & NewsReaders1

Wow. I feel so high-tech. I had no idea what the little orange icon on all of those websites was. Now I know. It's an RSS feed....or as PollyMae calls it the R.O.U.S. We both got help from Kerry today and I think I'm going to go to the check-ins from now on.

So I didn't really know what the rss things were... I knew they were cool and somehow related to podcasts but I had no idea how to use them. I set up subscriptions to other lib2.0 blogs and a few nerdy news sites, but I am definitely going to add more. Kerry was telling me there is a Firefox extension that allows you to have a running ticker instead of logging in to bloglines for new postings. At first that sounded like a good idea, but I think I would get too distracted while working. I would rather dedicate 10 minutes a day to logging in Bloglines and reading my news.

I know that after Lib 2.0 I'm going to be using bloglines. I can get all my news reports in one place! I think that libraries could get a lot of use out of RSS feeds; PollyMae & Kerry found the Santa Cruz Public Library RSS and it's very cool. There was a different feed for each genre or you could subscribe to 'all books' I wish UCSC had an RSS feed! You could use it for upcoming events or exhibits. You could probably even specialize it per department. Undergrads or grads could get updates on news from their departments, or new library resources.

Thing #4 ... Discovering Flickr

This is a picture of beautiful Hanauma Bay on the island of O'ahu in Hawai'i. My father grew up here and he used to swim in this bay everyday......yet somehow I was raised in Barstow.

I really like Flickr, it's pretty interesting. It is a little strange scrolling through the pictures and seeing random faces. I feel like I'm looking through a stranger's vacation album and I'm not supposed to. I do really like the creative commons link provided by Lib 2.0 but I wish it would be easier to find through the homepage. Sarah Troy had to help me find it. It helps when trying to figure out if you can post a picture or not. By the way I must give credit to christopherdale for taking this gorgeous picture.

I'm having some trouble thinking of good uses for libraries.... and that makes me feel lame. However, if I was a sociology major doing a research paper on Hurricane Katrina, I could find pictures and legally use them in my paper right?

Also I'm a little confused.... should I be thinking of library use of Flickr as a photo database alone or as an aid to a library blog?

hmmmm...

#3 Blogging 2 (week 2 task)

So, I explored the different blog search engines to see if I could find out what people thought of Self Check Machines. My personal topic of interest was to see if anyone was gossiping about either of my siblings (probably hard to catch since most people wouldn't use a first and last name in a blog). Here are my stream of consciousness thoughts on the search engines.....

Technorati.
Ha! Should be called Technocrappy. I couldn't find anything.

BlogScope:
I really like the "hot keywords" feature... it's interesting to see what other people are searching. At first I was impressed with the color-coded graphs.... but it started to feel a little overwhelming. If you're like most people you want instant results and you don't want to think about them. I know that sounds horrible, but come on you know it's true. If you're doing an in-depth search, these features may be helpful but the negative skews, popularity curves, time restrictions, etc. made me feel like I was back in Stats class.

Sphere
I really like this search engine. The first thing I noticed was the large search menu at the top of the screen with bold, large text. VERY user friendly. I also liked the fact you could sort your results by relevance or date and that you could choose a time range of posted blogs to search.

Blog.ask.com
I must admit, I've been a little wary of ask.com ever since they killed Jeeves. I really liked that guy. ... but after searching I was reintroduced to the best feature of ask.com: the binocular function. It is incredibly helpful to have a little preview of potential pages of interest--especially when looking for a blog. The other search engines did show the first few sentences of the blog results but the binocular feature allows you to read more than that to make sure the post is about your topic.


.....oh and no one has said anything bad about my brother or sister.

ummm.....

ok so I just tried to look for library friends on this blogsite and the home page has YouTube videos and Fergalicious lyrics on it......oh and all the links are in Spanish. hmmmmmm.....

#2 Blogging 1 (Week 1 Task)

Hello Ms. Blog.

Polly Mae, Sarah Troy and Kerry Scott helped me set up this blog. I'm new to all of this so I hope I'm doing it right. Polly Mae says I am. It was actually very easy to create, I'm interested to see how I post & receive comments on these entries.

FYI I work in Interlibrary Loan and my first name is actually Sheri-Lynn....hence my extremely clever title.

haha

-Sheri