The MS Library 2.0 Summit is back! We’ve re-imagined it as the MSU Libraries Emerging Technologies Summit, and we are already starting to get great submissions for the Steal-This-Idea sessions. We are so excited to have Jason Griffey as the keynote this year!

This conference started in 2007 with Michael Stephens introducing about 100 folks from eight states in the region to new technologies that were poised to change the library world. Along the way, some have–and some have disappeared–but the culture of learning that took hold after his visit has changed the MSU Libraries. We had cutting (bleeding?) edge presentations that have echoed in the library community since (mind you, this in was 2007):

A report from Southeastern Louisiana’s SMS virtual reference project (an early report from the pioneers of text messaging reference)
A workshop on the impact of social media, and Facebook in particular, for marketing in academic libraries
A panel on the challenges of institutionalizing 2.0 technologies in libraries

Enthusiastic about our work in the area and wanting more, we invited Sarah Houghton-Jan to come in 2008 to give us a big-picture for the state of 2.0 in the library world. Her timely keynote, Sustainable Web 2.0 Services for Small and Underfunded Libraries, came just as we were all beginning to feel the pinch of the economic downturn. Other sessions were perfectly timed for this Wild West period of 2.0 development in libraries, including:

Managing Identity in Social Networks / Information Overload
Using Google Analytics in Libraries
How Viral Marketing Can Help Your Library

Though we weren’t able to host the Summit in 2009, it has given us time to reflect on what we would like to know about (and talk about) at this point–in particular issues around assessment, sustainability and the future of social media in a post-2.0 environment. Now that we are using these tools, doing this outreach, in a culture of learning and growing, what’s next?

As we’ve done in the past, we’ll be podcasting and archiving the Summit, but nothing beats actually being a part of the discussion. If you’ve got something you want to talk about, consider submitting a proposal.

A month ago my best friend and roommate Kris started a blog and got onto Twitter. He is a procrastinating playwright, among other things (poet, cabaret artist, award-winning actor and director, teacher…), who is currently running away from a very fine play he has started called 10 Mile. He is a storyteller and general pontificator in the grandest Deep South tradition. Discovering a medium where it is permissable to not-edit and not-judge and not-worry about writing has been a watershed experience for him. He is committed to his blog with an energy and enthusiasm I have rarely seen, set free of the torment and conflict that accompanies other kinds of writing. And now he is linking to this blog on his site. Currently the link is titled “best librarian in the entire world (wide web),” and he is posting excerpts from my blog.

One of the things I struggle with is creating with and managing online identity, and subsequently privacy. I consider my online life to be largely a professional life, but as I said at CiL2009 on the Managing Identity on Social Networks panel, I believe it is not possible to truly separate the professional and personal. Generally my approach has been to use privacy settings and judicious boundaries to control my identity online. Perhaps it goes without saying that Kris has a vastly different idea of judicious.

So once again, I’m back at the drawing board. As his editor, I would never want to stifle his creativity. There isn’t really anything wrong at all with his blog or his right to mention me or our life in it. It’s just not what I expected. At the same time that Kris has come into his own online, my family has gained momentum on Facebook. I now have 18 people on my mother’s side alone on Facebook. That’s right. Eighteen people. It was one thing when my brother or sister-in-law made the occasional comment on my Facebook page. It’s an entirely different thing to have my mother, cousins, aunts and uncles omnipresent.

So I’m calling it a developmental challenge…and I’m testing out my theory that creating and managing identity online is a series of developmental challenges that are necessary for growth. I’m just not exactly certain what that involves.

One of the things I’ve learned is that there is a challenge to the real-life relationship that goes along with these online developments. I’ve had conversations with my mother about what I want people to see about me on my Facebook page. I helped calm her anxiety about the difference between her news feed and her Wall when unexpected things appeared. I even deleted a Wall comment from my aunt that I thought revealed too much information about my grandmother. Now we are all on a private family Facebook Group, where we can share pictures and stories without the world watching.

And Kris. The respect we have for each other in person extends to the online world. And why wouldn’t it? Protecting and nurturing his creativity is a mission I have taken on with joy and great relish. And he is inordinately proud of my work and would never ever want to embarrass me. So every day, just like with the rest of his work, he reads his blogs aloud to me when I get home. He looks for my reaction as his editor and his friend. But if he’s used my name or a story about me, he’s looking for something more. Really we are all working together to find our balance.

I’m having a hard time figuring out what this blog is for now. Or what the MS Library 2.0 Summit blog is for, or what I should put on Facebook, and how is my Twitter status different that my Facebook status (and it really is), and when or why I should log on to my Myspace account. This all comes up for me because my dear friend Thomas just shared this link with me, and I wanted to share it. But I wasn’t sure where to put it…hence my identity crisis. (Also, it is perfectly acceptable to give gifts, imho…and in Pattye’s).

10 Commandments of Facebook

The fact that I didn’t know where or with whom to share the above brings me back to my latest preoccupation…creating identity. Specifically how we create our identities in social networks. I suppose I’m having a bit of an identity crisis with this blog. So I’ve decided to examine what I’m doing and why I’m doing it there. Sort of an online navel-gazing activity. Where am I on the web and why. Who am I in these spaces? How are they different? So far, this is what I’ve come up with:

1) Personal MySpace: locked down, no identifying features, no new friends, some occasional confessional type poetry, sigh.

2) Work MySpace: pretty obscure, Library not supporting it, low priority, also getting slightly harrassed by strange person from a town 30 miles away

3) Facebook: work, family, friends, try to keep it decent and not weird, friends find it weird that I list in my interests Plant & Soil Science–but that’s my liaison dept at work (and my family does have a farm…). I have had to un-tag myself in pictures that were unbecoming, and I’ve become obsessed with all the privacy controls. Closest thing to really living my life online.

4) Twitter: true love? I follow people from Starkville randomly–I hunt them down using an RSS Feed from Twitter Search which looks for posts that include the word “Starkville” or “Mississippi State” (which people use frequently instead of MSU). I listen a lot, and I’m not really sure what to post. I only have a handful of “real” friends on Twitter. Mostly it’s an experiment for work…but I’m obsessed. Especially after Hurricane Gustav. This is the one I read even from my Blackberry…I feel like I have to keep up with what everyone is doing somehow. Like a never-ending TV sitcomitragedy.

5) FriendFeed: Mostly I stalk Steve Rubel. I read his entire Life Stream every day. But I actually read it in GoogleReader. I’ve also created FF “Rooms” for Agriculture feeds (not feed, lol) to add to the LibGuides we are developing. I’m sure I will find more to do with it, but I don’t really interact with it. I do have my life stream posted to this blog and on my Facebook page…so it’s aggregating my stuff for me.

6) GoogleReader: Holds my blogs, RSS feed goes into FriendFeed so I “broadcast” (if anyone was listening) what I think about the blogs I’m reading.

7) Delicious: Could not live without it. Could not switch to Chrome because I cannot live without it. The RSS also goes into my FriendFeed, as well as the items tagged “MSU” onto the MSU Libraries Fan Page. I rarely keep a tagged item private, and it’s a good record of what I do during the day.

Personal Flickr: Like Personal MySpace, totally hidden (I think). Largely because it consists of a repository of thousands of pictures of me and my best friends doing stupid things. Also some pictures of family unwrapping presents. And at least 500 pictures my 8 year old godson took of his shoes and the stairs and various food items when I went on a book tour with him and his mom. I have organized them as far as I had energy to do so, but I only have eight contacts. I rarely put anything up right now…no energy.

9) Work Flickr: Pictures of work stuff, my office, the campus, library-related trips or events, screen captures of my work blog, screen captures of my Facebook and Myspace privacy tutorials.

10) Work Blog: Slightly unstable (we’re working on it) Library 2.0 blog.

11) This Blog: Started out as a blog for my trip to India in August 2005, then about my move from Boston to Mississippi and small town life, then the community theater, then library 2.0-ish stuff, now…I’m not at all sure. Apparently things like this. Maybe.

I do almost nothing (except Twitter) from home.

That’s sort of it. Nothing else is particularly sticky right now.

Hmm…..

Today I feel overwhelmed by what I know and what I don’t know about this Library 2.0 business. So I am resurrecting my blog, which was largely a travelog of my trip to India in August 2005, in order to chronicle my confusion.

Also, I like pictures. I have a digital camera and my friends and I take lots of pictures. I’ve exhausted the entertainment value of myspace and flickr, so I’m going to post a new picture with each blog entry. It may or may not have anything to do with the entry.

I loathe narcissism, but I approve of vanity. — Diana Vreeland