Showing posts with label Social Networking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Networking. Show all posts

Monday, November 3, 2008

Week 21: Video Sharing

This week you’ll learn about YouTube. Listen to the podcast and read the info below, and if you have any questions about anything along the way, be sure to contact us — we’re happy to help!



What is YouTube?

YouTube is a popular video hosting & sharing service that was founded in 2005, and was bought by Google in 2006. YouTube lets people view videos, and allows registered users to upload videos. In addition to hosting videos, YouTube lets users rate videos and add comments, turning it into a social networking service.

There are other places to find videos on the internet, but YouTube has become the most popular central location to find videos.

To watch a YouTube video you don’t need to install special software, figure out your bandwidth setting, or sign up for an account. You don’t even have to visit the YouTube web site to view a video. Videos are easily embedded in blog postings or on web pages — like those Common Craft videos we’ve provided here in the Adventures in Technology blog!

When you explore YouTube it’s possible to find comedy, cute pets, music videos, notices of videos that have been removed due to copyright infringement, and people making fools of themselves. There’s everything from 1960’s TV commercials, to library dominoes, to the most annoying dog in the world.

In a January 2008 Pew Internet Project data memo Lee Rainie reports, “The audience for YouTube and other internet video sites has risen sharply the past year. Nearly half of online adults now say they have visited such sites.”

How are people using YouTube?

Besides watching and uploading videos, YouTube provides social networking features for those who set up a free account. These features include the ability to…

  • create a profile, like this one for Racine Public Library
  • customize your profile with favorites, playlists, and subscriptions to channels & tags
  • upload & tag your videos
  • “friend” other YouTube users
  • send messages, and even broadcast messages to all your YouTube friends
  • rate and add comments to videos

How can libraries use YouTube for marketing?

Here are some great examples of creative ways libraries are using YouTube:

How can library staff use YouTube as a reference tool?

Have you ever needed to help a student find a famous speech or a news clip? You can find videos of Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, the first moon landing, and John F. Kennedy’s “ask not what your country can do for you” speech from his 1961 inaugural address.

How can I create a video to share on YouTube?

You’ll first need a device that can capture digital movies. This could be a camcorder, a digital camera, and even a cell phone that has this capability. YouTube accepts a wide range of video file formats such as .WMV, .AVI, .MOV, and .MPG. You’ll then copy the movie to your computer and upload it to YouTube; or you could edit it with software like Windows Movie Maker or iMovie (for Macs) to add titles or special effects before uploading it. For details, visit YouTube’s help center and Video Toolbox. This 3 minute video explains it all (and is especially funny if you’ve seen an episode of the 1983-1995 Bob Ross “The Joy of Painting” TV show.)

Another way is to create a screencast using Screencast-O-Mati, then export it as Quicktime video in .MOV format (watch this screencast to find out how), which you can then upload to YouTube.

How else can I get a video onto YouTube for our library?

Consider setting up a YouTube contest! Here are some examples:

There’s even an entire section of YouTube just for Contests.

Assignment:

Watch some of the library videos linked to above, or use this link http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=libraries&search=tag to find other videos tagged “libraries”.
Explore YouTube to find a video on any topic that interests you.
Create a blog post about your experience:
a. Write about what you liked or disliked about YouTube.
b. Add a link to a video, or embed a video in your blog post.
c. Write your thoughts about libraries’ uses of YouTube.

Not sure how to embed a video in a blog posting? I used Screencast-O-Matic to create a 1-minute screencast that shows how to do it.

Optional assignment:

1. Sign up for your own YouTube account at http://www.youtube.com/signup. (Good news for those of you with too many usernames & passwords already -– if you have a Google account, you can use your existing Gmail address to create a YouTube logon.) Create some playlists, “favorite” some videos, subscribe to some tags, explore & have fun!

2. If you have access to a device that can capture digital movies, create your own YouTube account at http://www.youtube.com/signup and upload a video clip. If you feel so inclined, link to or embed your video in this week’s posting on your blog.

Fun Extra:
Enjoy some of my favorite book/library/literary YouTube videos:

Posted by Melissa at 6:00 AM 1 comments
Tags: , , , , , ,

Monday, July 7, 2008

Week 10: Library Thing

LibraryThing

This week you’ll learn about phenomenal LibraryThing!

Listen to the podcast and read the content below. If you have questions about anything along the way, be sure to contact us. We’re happy to help!




What is LibraryThing?

LibraryThing is a wildly popular web site for creating and sharing personal library catalogs and book lists. Created by programmer Tim Spalding and supported by librarian Abby Blachly and a crack team of techies, LibraryThing has become the premier social book site on the web. Its users are called “Thingamabrarians.”

Here’s how it works. You can sign up and sign in in one step by providing a username and password (LibraryThing takes privacy very seriously, so they don’t ask for any personal info). You may add up to 200 books for free, or pay for an unlimited yearly or lifetime membership.

When you add a book to your LibraryThing account, the book is automatically cataloged by importing data from libraries and booksellers. Six Amazon.com stores and over 80 libraries supply basic book information. If you can’t find the correct book, you can add it manually.

So far, so good, right? Well, there’s much more! After you catalog your books, you can tag them. (Stef and Joy will get into tagging in more depth next week, but for now, just consider a tag a simple label you can make up.) You can add cover art. You can write reviews. You can add a LibraryThing badge or a “random book widget” to your blog’s sidebar. You can compare your library with other people’s collections and comment on the profiles of your LibraryThing “soulmates.”

Explore LibraryThing

As you can see, LibraryThing has the potential to be the ultimate readers’ advisory tool. They make it even easier with their “Suggester” feature. The Suggester provides book recommendations based on users’ catalogs with similar books. Conversely, the “Unsuggester” lists books it thinks you won’t like, and is good for more than a few laughs!

The Suggester works by leveraging the massive amount of Thingamabrarians’ participation to find truly smart recommendations. Unlike Amazon.com, which just looks at what you’ve recently bought (which can include random gifts that skew your results), LibraryThing uses the richer data gleaned from comparing users’ whole libraries.

LibraryThing also makes it easy to see book data from several book-swapping web sites such as BookMooch, What’s On My Bookshelf, and Bookins.

Finally, LibraryThing loves libraries and works with them on exciting projects such as “LibraryThing for Libraries” (LTFL). LTFL is a way for libraries to integrate LibraryThing tags and recommendations into their catalogs. See it in action at any of these libraries and check it out for yourself! (Some books won’t have the extra LTFL data - if all else fails, search Danbury PL’s catalog for Harry Potter and scroll down. :)

Related sites

There are a few other social book sites out there which deserve mention.

Shelfari allows people to catalog their books, and puts more emphasis on the social aspects of interacting with other members. goodreads is another, reviewed briefly at infodoodads. Finally, Revish has the added feature of a reading journal that you can use to keep track of what you’ve read.

Assignment and Tasks

  1. Create a LibraryThing account and add at least 10 books. (Speed tip: when adding books, try scanning the publisher’s barcode with a regular circ scanner wand - it worked like a charm when I tried it.)
  2. Write a blog post that:
    a. links to your LibraryThing account
    b. reflects on a couple strengths and weaknesses of LT
    c. lists a book you have or like, and a book that the Suggester (or Unsuggester!) recommends.

Fun extra: FOR DUMMIES book cover generator

Since this is a bookish week, we thought you’d enjoy this one: supply your own title & cover info, and the Dummiez Book Cover Maker 2007 will generate a “For Dummies” book cover image. They say you can even buy your image as a fridge magnet!

Posted by Melissa at 7:47 AM 2 comments
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Week 9 Social Networking

Social Networking

This week you’ll learn about social networking tools, with a focus on MySpace and Facebook.

Listen to the podcast and read the content below. If you have questions about anything along the way, be sure to contact us. We’re happy to help!





What is social networking?

Sit back and watch this 2-minute video that explains what social networks are and how they work:

A social networking service focuses on building an online community of people who share interests and activities. Most social networking services are web-based, and provide a variety of ways for community members to interact via chat, IM, email, blogging, discussion groups, etc. Members create profiles that include personal interests & photos, exchange private or public messages, and join groups.

What do people do on social networks?

  • Create a profile: you can share as much info or as little info as you’d like, within your comfort level
  • Communicate: you can blog on your page, send bulletins, post photos, and more
  • Interact: you can “friend” other members and build a network of friends who can stay in touch via the social network; some social networks offer a “feed” that updates you on what your friends have updated on their pages.

There are lots of social networking sites out there; here’s a chart showing the notable ones. That aside, for this week we’ll just focus on the two “500-pound gorillas” of social networking, MySpace and Facebook.

MySpace

As of January 2008, MySpace is the 3rd most popular U.S. web site. MySpace attracts 300,000 new registrations per day, and has more than 110 million monthly active users around the world.

Originally MySpace was for people 18 and older and all data was public. Over time, the age limit dropped to 16, and later to 14. The youngest users are given the option to make their profiles visible only to people they’ve friended, and their profiles don’t appear in search results.

Users may post personal profiles including photos, videos, and lists of favorite books & movies. They can email, post bulletins, and chat with their MySpace friends.

Facebook

Facebook is the second-most popular social networking site. As of January 2008, Facebook has more than 62 million active users worldwide. It attracts one quarter of a million new accounts per month, and receives over 65 billion page views per month.

The name Facebook refers to the paper facebooks provided by some colleges, which depict members of the campus community as a way to get to know students & faculty.

When Facebook launched in 2004, only people at Harvard University could sign up for an account; within a few months it opened up to other colleges, then to high schools, and now anyone 13 or older with a valid email address may create a Facebook profile. At present, people using Facebook are mostly college and post-college; more than half of Facebook members are out of school. The fastest growing Facebook demographic is 25 years old and older.

Originally Facebook didn’t allow institutions to create Facebook accounts, but in November 2007 they opened up the ability to create business and institutional profiles. Now you can create a profile for your library so you can interact with other members of Facebook, they can become your library’s “fans”, and you can create updates that feed into the newsfeed your friends will see on their own profile page.

In May 2007 the “Facebook Platform” was created, which allows third-party developers to create applications that work within Facebook. Two library-specific apps are:

  • Facebook Librarian provides links to a range of resources that include WorldCat & Google Scholar, plus an “Ask a Librarian” link
  • WorldCat provides a search box so anyone can search the database right from your page

A big difference between Facebook and MySpace is… to view a Facebook profile, you must have a Facebook account. This makes Facebook a private social network; MySpace is a public social network. You can see just as far as a public search listing into a person’s profile before logging in to Facebook.

Why would a library be interested in creating a social networking presence?

Even though social networking services were set up with the individual in mind, libraries are creating a presence in both MySpace and Facebook…

  • To be where millions of people are hanging out
  • To reach a community of potential library customers
  • To use it as a forum to announce the library’s events and services
  • To communicate informally in an approachable, friendly, and fun way

Meredith Farkas writes, “I think there is a big difference between ‘being where our patrons are’ and ‘being USEFUL to our patrons where they are.’” In that spirit, instead of simply creating a MySpace or Facebook page with your library’s photo & hours, consider “surfacing” your library’s services right there: try including your library’s MeeboMe widget to make it easy for people to ask questions or give feedback, or try embedding a search box that goes right into your library’s catalog.

But are social networks the right place for libraries?

There’s been debate in the library community about whether social networks are the right place for libraries to be.

  • Pro: librarians need to go where people are, to be there at the point of need.
  • Con: libraries are unwelcome guests in social networks, and it’s wrong for us to try to create a presence there.

For a good overview of the pro’s and con’s, read Libraries in Social Networking Software.

What’s your opinion?

As an alternative to a library presence in a social network, individual librarians can create their own MySpace and Facebook pages so they can network with others. Judi Sohn’s 12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally has some helpful tips for doing just that.

Great places to find other library folk with which to network are these Facebook Groups:

Examples of ways libraries are using MySpace and Facebook

MySpace
Note: when visiting these web sites you might want to use Firefox with the Adblock Plus add-on; I think you’ll enjoy MySpace more without all the advertisements!

Facebook:

Assignment:

Facebook:

A.
1. Watch this 2-minute video to get details on registering for an account.
2. Go to Facebook to register & set up a profile for you.
3. On your blog write about your experiences and post a link to your Facebook page.

B. Already have a Facebook account? Become a fan of Racine Public Library and Friend Jill Hanson Lininger. And then write on your blog about your Facebook adventure.

Fun Extras

Open an account for you at MySpace.

MySpace:
1. Take the MySpace Tour.
2. Go to MySpace http://www.myspace.com/ to register and set up your page.
3. On your blog write about your experiences and post a link to your MySpace page.




Posted by Melissa at 8:00 AM 3 comments
Tags: , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)