Facebook and Law Libraries

I’m leaving tomorrow for SEALL, where I’m going to be doing a presentation on Facebook and Law Libraries.  I’m not sure if the slides will be posted on the SEALL website or not.  If they’re not, and you’re dying to see them, let me know and I can send you a CD.  (70 slides + lots of screen shots = too big to e-mail.)  Also, if you’re interested in Facebook and Law Libraries, check out this article in the newest issue of AALL Spectrum.

After SEALL I’m going on vacation, so no new blog posts until after April 8.

Web 2.0 Challenge for Law Librarians

It looks like the CS-SIS of AALL is going to be offering  a Web 2.0 training course July 21 – August 18.   The planned topics are: Blogs & RSS, Wikis, Social Networking Software & Second Life, Flickr & Social Bookmarking Software, and Selling Social Software @ Your Library.   Registration is limited to 90 participants and if you’d like to be notified when it’s open, fill out the form here.

Of course, if you don’t want to wait until July to get some practice using Web 2.0 tools, there are several library-centric Web 2.0 training programs available.  (Blue 2.0, for instance.  The people organizing that one are really awesome!) These programs are all pretty much designed to be self-explanatory and will allow you to work on it at your own pace.

March Madness

I’ve spent the entirety of my life living in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana so perhaps I have an unrealistic impression of the importance of the annual NCAA basketball tournament.    It’s entirely possible that not all of you have been filling out tournament brackets with your friends since grade school.  Not that I condone or even acknowledge the existence of any betting pools, mind you.   It’s all for bragging rights, of course.

*cough*

Anyhoo, it occurred to me that this would be a prime opportunity for a little social networking.  There’s several Facebook apps available for creating brackets and competing against your friends and colleagues.  Some even offer cash prizes.  Here’s a small sampling:

• The Official CBS Sports/NCAA bracket
• 2008 Bracket Challenge
• SI bracket challenge
• PicksPal Bracket

Last year I used PicksPal to create my bracket on their website (which came with badge HTML to post on blogs/personal websites/etc.), but I can’t tell if they are directing everyone to Facebook and Bebo now or if once the brackets are announced, they’ll put it up on their website.  It looks like ESPN will also have a bracket competition tomorrow.

And don’t forget, if you want kick it old school, but not so old school that you’ll have to hand write in your selections, Microsoft office has templates available.

Facebook Badges

Don’t mind me, I just need to have my badges displayed somewhere so that I can gank them for my SEALL presentation.

The MySpace/Facebook connection

It seems like every time someone makes the news, reporters immediately jump on Facebook or MySpace to see if there’s any information to be found.    In the case of the recent Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal, there was.

She actually didn’t have to delete everything.  She could have just limited her profile visibility to her friends or left the New York network (in the case of Facebook) or set her profile to public (in the case of MySpace.)

I hope I can remember to mention this anecdote during my SEALL talk.

A Heartwarming Tale of Blogs and Libraries

This is a little off-topic from what I usually post…

Before I was a blogger, I was a blog reader. One of the first blogs I started to regularly read was pamie.com, the blog of Pamela Ribon. At that time, I just knew her as one of the moderators on Television Without Pity, a website I spent more time on than my Civil Procedure homework. Now she’s a writer for the television show “Samantha Who.”

She’s a life long lover of books and so five years ago decided to start a book donation system. If memory serves correctly, it was in response to the Salinas, California branch library getting closed, but I’m not entirely sure about that. This donation system (which she runs with one of the co-founders of TWoP) has evolved into the Dewey Donation System.

All of this was just a long-winded way of me pointing you to this letter Pamie received from one of the librarians she helped this year. If you don’t feel something while reading that, well then I’m afraid you have NO HEART.

Oh, and Dewey ends today.  HOWEVER, don’t let that stop you from donating to a library.  You can always go to Amazon.com’s Wishlist area and search for “library”.   There’s over 3000 to choose from!

Weird Social Networking Experience

Lately I’ve been drifting out of library science literature and reading more-ACM type literature to get a different perspective on the whole social networking thing.  One point that has been brought up several times in discussing the difference between Facebook and MySpace is that Facebook, with its networks based on educational or professional affiliations, is primarily used to build upon existing off-line relationships.  MySpace, on the other hand, is much more of a free-for-all and encourages online-only relationships.

Reading that was totally an Oprah-esque ‘A-ha’ moment for me and explained one of the reasons why I’m so much more comfortable on Facebook.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m a misanthrope, but I have no desire to go out and make a huge circle of friends.  Facebook is just an avenue for me to maintain contact with people I already know from real life – primarily co-workers and friends from library school.  (Although that has changed recently…I’ve been getting a lot of “friend” requests from librarians that I’ve never met in person. )  So I generally don’t have to worry about dealing with strangers.

I thought the same was going to be true for my Zune Social account.   Earlier this week, however, I got a friend request from someone I don’t know.  At least I don’t think I do.  I asked and he (at least I think it was a he) was very coy about it.  From what I can gather, this person somehow stumbled upon my profile – which is open to the public, after all – and liked my taste in music* so decided to “friend” me.   I’m kinda weirded out by it, but I guess there’s really no harm done.   I just never really thought of Zune Social as something other than a place to share music with the few people I know that have Zunes.

*For the record, here’s my current list of top listened to artists for this month: Fatboy Slim, Gogol Bordello, Lilly Allen, Thelonius Monk, Presidents of the United States of America, Mika, Amy Winehouse, Green Day, Sharon Jones, The Breeders, The White Stripes, The Clash, Dave Brubek, Limp Bizkit, Dropkick Murphys, Weezer, Charlie Parker, Sublime, Kanye West, Dizzy Gilespie, Bud Powell, Beastie Boys, Charles Mingus, and Nirvana.  It’s really only a weird combination unless you know that I like to listen to up tempo stuff on my walk into work, stuff that will not distract me while at my desk,  and jazz on the walk home to decompress.

University of Kentucky Island to Open in Second Life

I used to really hate Second Life. (Wikipedia entry on Second Life for those unaware of it.) However, over the past few months, that has changed. I still don’t really ever foresee myself creating an avatar and diving in – after all, I don’t have time to fully explore my first life. I also find that there are huge technological aspects to Second Life that make it impracticable for the computer novice and generally my goal in using technology is to expand access, not limit it. And then finally there’s the fact that I get motion sickness if I look at Second Life stuff for too long. Like “need to lay on the floor and hold my stomach” motion sickness. It’s a pretty bad scene.

That being said, I have come to respect Second Life and understand that it may have some really neat applications in an educational context. Fortunately, I have many colleagues here at UK who are fans of Second Life and have been exploring these applications so I don’t have to. On March 20, the Official University of Kentucky Island in Second Life will be opening. Here’s a video with some pretty cool scenes of it, including the awesome looking virtual William T. Young Library.

There’s also a blog with updates on the project here.

You may notice in the video a woman wearing Victorian garb dancing. I’m not sure about Second Life protocol and if it’s cool to reveal who that person is in real life, but I know her. (At least I think I know who that is.)  She’s wearing those clothes because apparently in Second Life there’s a group somewhat similar to Society for Creative Anachronism – but not the SCA – where people create old fashioned clothes for their avatars and SCA sort of stuff in Second Life. So, just to be clear, not only have they created a virtual version of themselves, but they also then take an extra step of doing the SCA thing. Virtually.

That is so wacky it almost makes me want to join Second Life.

My Mom Facebooked Me

I spent a good chunk of my afternoon at the annual Women’s Law Caucus luncheon, which this year honored soon-t0-be retiring UK Law Executive Dean Carolyn Bratt.   The luncheon was attended by over one hundred members of the Lexington legal community, Judges, as well as UK Law Faculty and students.  I sat with a group of students since sitting with lawyers and hearing about their 60 hour work weeks usually depress me.

Admittedly, I was zoned out for most of the lunch, thinking about ideas for my upcoming SEALL talk.  When I refocused on the table conversation, I realized the students were speaking – let’s say not favorably – about a faculty member at the law school.   I don’t even no who they were talking about, but at the exact instant that I focused in, one of the students realized I was sitting there and gave the sideways head nod in my direction to the speaker as if to say, “SHUT UP.”

At that moment, I realized that for at least some of the students, I had become “The Man.”

So what does this have to do with Web 2.0?  Well…I, like many educators on Facebook, struggle with the question of whether or not we belong on Facebook.   And if we do decide to be there, how we should behave.  Are we their “friends”? Does one “poke” a student?  Look at their profile?  Send good Karma their way?   I don’t have any answers to this, although there is a group of educators on Facebook (Faculty Ethics on Facebook) who are trying to come up with a set of guidelines for this activity.  Also see recent Chronicle articles here and here.

I recently was introduced to the feelings that my students may be having towards me when they come across my profile on Facebook.  About a month ago, I logged into Facebook to see that I had a friend request.  It was from my mother.  Yes, instead of wearing a t-shirt that says, “I Facebooked Your Mom”, I can now wear a t-shirt that says, “My Mom Facebooked Me.”  Unlike our disastrous MySpace experiment, she signed up for Facebook on her own initiative and seems to be sticking it out.

I think there’s a couple of reasons for this.  One, Facebook is much more private and she’s not getting bombarded with friend requests from strangers.  Two, her students (Have I mentioned my mom is a high school Sex Ed teacher lately? *shudder* Feel. My. Pain. ) are teenagers and thus primarily on MySpace.  Finally, and this is why I think Facebook is better than MySpace, is that she is really enjoying the applications.  Especially Srabbulous.  My mom is a FIEND for Scrabbulous.  (And, I’ll have the good folks at Hasbro know, we’re enjoying it so much that we’re probably going to go out and purchase a physical set so we can play when I’m at the farm. )  She’s not so big on the virtual gifts, though, but I have to run to a meeting in about a minute and can’t go into details about that fun experience.

But it has had some weird moments.  Like when she e-mailed me to see if I was feeling better and she only knew that because I happened to put it in my status message that I was sick. (I generally try to keep my parents on a need-to-know basis when it comes to me being sick since I’d hate for them to worry.)  And I’m waiting for the inevitable quiz down about my male friends on the site.   But so far so good, I guess.  If she can handle it, so can I.