Why are some layouts better than others?

why did Hi-5 never really take off? or Myspace get surpassed? I know that I really dislike MAANG ( NSW GOVT ) because it is slow, crowded, hard to sort through and MANY other reasons, but in the end  a lot of this is personal. I like to see larger segments of text fro example. Who judges what is a good layout?

We will be using Delicious through the duration of the subject. It will provide you with a platform on which you will be able to store and share relevant online materials throughout the subject and beyond into other subjects, or professional and personal activities.

Use the Help feature to learn about how to set up a network linking your account to others. Add the usernames, ‘SISsocialmedia’ and ‘lyn_hay’ to your account, and if you find any great resources which you think others in INF506 will like, please share these using the ‘for:sissocialmedia’ tag.

Get started – go out and tag a few resources!

If you wish to use this task as one of your three (3) OLJ tasks for Assignment 2, you will need to write a short evaluation (no more than 350 words) of your use of Delicious as a social bookmarking tool – include a critical evaluation of the effectiveness of different features and/or functions, as well as a brief statement on the different ways an information organisation may be able to utilise Delicious to support information services, learning and/or collaboration of users and/or employees.

I have been using delicious for a few years now to save bookmarks in the cloud. I found this useful as I was often working on several different computers and needed to be able to access links from any of them. To add a bookmark is quite simple, and once there, you have access to them from anywhere. Furthermore you are able to write over 1000 character description, so I can add details such as why I chose to save this site, a brief overview of it so I can be reminded of its content or to type in the information about the website in APA bibliographical form. I also appreciate the statistic of seeing how many other people have bookmarked a certain page. This statistic can infer how well respected or used a site is.

For this degree I have kept links in two places, on my OLJ and in Delicious. It is far easier to find the links in Delicious. This is both to do with the layout of the links page and its use of tagging. The tagging on delicious is simple to do. Certain sites have suggested tags, as well as letting you make up your own, so you can use the tagging as a Folksonomy. The use of tags makes searching also very easy, similar to using a Keyword search on a library catalog. This allows you to search for similar websites, in this way you can use Delicious to “Filter Up” http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6663770.html?nid=3302 information, finding the best examples, this can be done by looking at the number count, or by following peoples whose judgement you trust.

The Following and stacks features of delicious I had not used before INF506. It is very useful for links which need to be shared by a whole group or for following a specific person or group. Links could be shared in a manner similar to a libguide, or within a class as a list of resources. This is given an extra dimension in that within a group people can add more links, or comment on the usefulness of already shared links, allowing for critical evaluation of information, and teh adding of new information, making the group links a living document. The Stacks feature seems quite similar to other social networking news sights, such as Buzzfeed or reddit, in that the links are presented in a similar manner, even if only on a certain topic, like the lyn Hay Daily. The Stacks feature is a new feature, only added since the creators of Youtube purchased Delicious from yahoo. http://www.webmonkey.com/2011/09/delicious-bookmarking-relaunches-sans-yahoo/

The searching, tagging and following features are what differentiates Delicious from just saving your bookmarks all in one place. They can be shared, transported and accessed from anywhere in an efficient manner.

The First one which jumps out at me is Facebook.  ( especially after looking at ASU’s facebook page, and my local library Facebook page, since I am currently sitting in its study room)

F-Facebook, having a presence on facebook with a fan page or a group is a must. Facebook is so popular now that it is expected.

I would love to have a Facebook page, but currently Facebook is blocked by the NSW DEC webfilter, so students would not be able to access it at school. And Using it as a teacher for school work, may raise questions about privacy use and contact, which while insignificant, can be stressful and would take the Z FOR ZEAL out of a lot of social networking use.

This is a pity as a web presence is useful for libraries. At a Library I worked at last year I altered the library homepage to include a direct link to the catalogue search, posts about latest books, announcements on the Premiers reading challenge. which while useful, would have been far more visited on Facebook.

Direction- What are you planning to accomplish for your library with social networking?

At the moment my old library has no social networking or even a webpage. (the webpage was removed a few years ago until it was decided what format to use for the school, and five years later this has not been done, so no homepage). To move into web2.0 a homepage will need to be made. plans will also need to be made into which social networking tools, if any the school library could use.

I for one think a homepage is the place to start, to post updates, link to important sites, even the Mylibrary link on the DET portal could be useful for this. As for full social networking with interaction, I would love a Facebook page to do all the same things, but in a more easily accessible and interactive manner. I also think students are more likely to LIKE a page on Facebook and check it occasionally, than FOLLOW their school library on twitter. I have never heard the students at my old school discuss twitter, whereas I often caught them on Facebook.

Ebooks- You can share these on social networking to increase their exposure.

At MVHS I added the link to all of the HSC texts available for free in eBook form to the Library homepage (the list taken From Scan Magazine Article 2009 Vol 4 Gray, M). I don’t see why this could not be done by any library with a place to link it, and Social networking would be useful for this.

the eBooks are good because a link to Project Gutenberg is 30,000 books a school library doesn’t have to pay for, but is handy for students with eReading devices or even the DER laptops.

V-Video whether on youtube or elsewhere, use video to enhance and engage with your users via social networking.

My old school uses Clickview, and another school I worked at last year was looking at TV for Education. Since Youtube is blocked for students in NSW state schools, Clickview is a common way to deliver video content.  While the Clickview videos are linked to the search engine, a specific link to clickview on a library homepage, and its search engine, would be beneficial considering the high volume of its use in the school.

Since The School pays for Clickview home, allowing the videos to be viewed by anyone on any computer, provided they have the schools password, making this feature more available to our students via social networking would be efficient.

These systems can also be used to host Videos we produce, if we wished to do so, in a manner similar to the library minute.

A-active, in order for your library patrons to view you as being serious about your social networking and for it to work for you and your library, you need to use it on a regular basis.

I like this one, when I was in charge of a library’s homepage I made sure it was updated with new books once a fortnight, had reader reviews, links to the PRC registration etc. If I could use a Social networking sight, given the amount of time I spend on a computer in the library, regular updates would be little problem.

But I think the A for Active should cover ALL aspects of the way a school library runs, we should actively try to talk to all the faculties about what their assignments are and if they want to team teach, we should actively seek suggestions for acquisitions, we should actively ask students if they need any help. I think the best librarians are pro-active, and actually looking for ways to work with the greater school body, essential in a time when Teacher Librarians are at risk of being classed non-essential staff.

Well, this has turned into a depressing OLJ, State Policy, school Policy or budget seems to restrict alot of what I could do at my old library.

But If I could use Facebook, if only to set up a group page, and I think I could get permission from my Principal to do so, there are ways it could be used to my libraries benefit for students outside of school hours and for students who access FB on their mobiles.

With the emergence of social networking sites, came the concept of Library 2.0, where libraries and information agencies harness not just the Web 2.0 technologies but the underlying principles (or 4Cs) of Web 2.0 – collaboration, conversation, community and content creation (or co-creation)… (AND MAYBE CROWD SOURCING).

First, The Library Minutes

Starting with,
1) Tunes for Finals. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Df2d6jMXXg&list=PLCA6A813AA9C9A574&index=15&feature=plpp_video
2) the @ASU button (a search) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4Row35FdVA&list=PLCA6A813AA9C9A574&index=14&feature=plpp_video
3) Printing in the Library. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpAOBYGLQg8&list=PLCA6A813AA9C9A574&index=13&feature=plpp_video
4)Student book collecting contest http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpYjd7L8bFM&feature=relmfu
5)Protecting Yourself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Df2d6jMXXg&list=PLCA6A813AA9C9A574&index=15&feature=plpp_video

the Library minute is well used for two main purposes, keeping students up to date on the latest happenings or important issues, e.g. Protecting yourself video, and for informing students about the libraries services. In these cases their is a definite start of a conversation, and if students comment on the videos or start to subscribe to them on youtube, there is a formation of community and ongoing conversation. These videos could also encourage dialogue in First Life, leading to more collaboration and conversation.

These videos would be very useful for showing new areas of Libraries. I have worked at libraries where people had been using them for years, but still didn’t know about one of the features. These videos, rather than just saying on a list in a website that the resource exists, actually start to explain how it could be used.

Also Very useful for frequently asked questions, such as Printing, which took up the majority of Front Desk queries while I was on placement at the Hunter TAFE College.

They are amusing and in an easily digestible format that youtube users are used to so they would encourage people to watch them, I am not sure to what extent the videos would encourage collaboration though beyond starting conversations.

Second, Facebook.

The ASU presence on FB is regularly updated, and FB itself allows for the 4Cs. The information is up to date and there are some comments and a lot of LIKES. It would appear to allow for the 4Cs but none appear to have been fully exploited yet. More could be done, but since there is already a good ASK A LIBRARIAN feature on the web sight, and the youtube channel, more may not be needed, except maybe as a suggestion box for collaboration.

These are fairly standard uses for Facebook in University Libraries according to http://www.slideshare.net/seckerj/librarians-libraries-and-facebook-presentation Study by Dr Jane Secker.

Third, Twitter:

Twitter on the other hand seems to be more heavily used, both as an immediate bulletin service and as a means of communication, using the @ASULibraries tag. Some of the Questions seem to have been answered immediately, in terms of complaints and solutions this could be a form of collaboration.

Several of the recomendations from 20 Ways for Librarians to use Twitter, from the Library Journal. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6663770.html?nid=3302

Overall ASU appears to be using WEB2.0 extremely well, The twitter feed is busy and two way, the Youtube Channel has there is a community, feedback, and some of the Videos have views into the high thousands. With the exception of collaboration, these three tools, youtube, twitter and facebook, seem to be meeting the needs of the 4Cs. The collaboration could be covered in other of the tools, e.g. using Flickr for crowdsourcing. But I would be proud if a library I worked for had a service as good as the ilbrary minute, let alone the other service.

ASU LIBRARY MINUTE

ever blog Censored. Sometimes I wonder what the American Government thinks… Then I remember campaign contributions from companies. 

Anyway, here are the Objectives of INF506 that I have to meet for Ass.2

Lyn Hay ‎Wasan, Part 2A requires you to write a 750 word evaluative statement using three (3) of your OLJ as evidence of meeting the learning objectives of the subject. The learning objectives for INF506 are listed in the beginning of the INF506 Subject Outline. There is 5 of them, they are:

– demonstrate an understanding of social networking technologies;
– demonstrate an understanding of concepts, theory and practice of Library 2.0 and participatory library service;
– critically examine the features and functionality of various social networking tools to meet the information needs of users;
– evaluate social networking technologies and software to support informational and collaborative needs of workgroups, communities and organisations; and
– demonstrate an understanding of the social, cultural, educational, ethical, and technical management issues that exist in a socially networked world, and how information policy is developed and
implemented to support such issues.

So you use these a reference points in your evaluative statement, and use your 3 selected OLJ tasks to show how these have contributed to your learning across these 5 objectives.

Does that makes sense to you?

ANYWAY, Am taking a day off study coz my eyes hurt from too much puter time. 

Enjoy the day all… . 

My routine is messsed up, I came to library earlier than planned, My shirt is itchy, there is another person in the study watching farscape.. in short.. Whinge, whine and moan. I would rather be enjoying my holiday.

But seriously I do feel a little blah, and need to wake up.

A bit worried by the format. I was hoping to be able to use a Table/grid to show the positives and negatives of the web tools, but they are just a little too different for me to do that happily.

The Negatives for all of them is about the same. I.e. constant monitoring required, is it too public? distraction etc.

I can’t find the Dilbert.com comic I want, where he builds a web filter which a teenager circumvents in ten seconds. Damnit.

But I am downloading OpenOffice, because Apperently I don’t have MSN office on this laptop, oh well, I am doing the entire essay on Google Docs anyway and using Endnote ( now that I found how to change it to APA)… ANYWAY

back to the Grind.

Oh, I really want to include these two cartoons in my assignment

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/x-all-the-y

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-10-13/

and some links on

mainly I would rather be at the Sydney Festival.

Secondly, how do I reference an example of somethign I would do in a class? 

Thirdly, referencing in general, everything so far is from Education journals or Tech mags online, no actual books, I may have a book free bibliography.

Finally, the word count is bugging me, I feel like I am leaving some explanation out about each of the web tools I am doing because of the trying to keep it under 2500 words. 

Just hope a lot of what I am leaving out is assumed knowledge I guess. Back to critically evaluating myself. 

1) Facebook

2) Google+

3) The Google Suite ( Docs, Calendar, sites etc)

4) Audioboo

5) twitter.

The Criteria

a) ease of use                                                   e.g.  Is it intuitive, do I need a manual? 

b) Positive benefits & features                            e.g. Can it be edited by users

c) negatives.                                                     e.g. is privacy or distraction an issue?

d) Is it useful to school work?                              e.g. can it actually help?

This report is to be done in 4 parts and be 2500 words long.

1. an outline of the nature of your project;
2. the processes involved in completing your project;
3. a critical evaluation of your project; and
4. an appendix which includes support material, URLs to social networking sites, surveys, products, or any other material generated to complete your project.