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…..

The Tech Fair last week was lots of work, but very rewarding! They were expecting 150-200 people, and 380 showed up over the two day fair. They had lots of tech demos (and quite a Wii contest going at one point, I understand) and booths with adaptive technologies, self-checkout machines, and as many gadgets as you can imagine. I talked to TONS of folks, and my part was a mixture of formal presentations and informal discussions, depending on who attended each session (I was scheduled for five sessions each day). Everyone was very engaged and eager to know more about Web 2.0 applications for Libraries–and particularly about what we’ve been doing here at MSU. Most of the attendees were from public libraries or community colleges across the state, from Jackson County on the Gulf Coast to First Regional up in Hernando (near Memphis).

I learned a lot from several libraries who are doing very interesting things. For example, the Lamar County Libraries (particularly Lumberton and Sumrall) are heavily invested in Flickr–and they were very excited about hearing more. The teenagers in their summer reading programs have been particularly thrilled to see pictures of themselves on the web. They’ve also put up Flickr badges on their library web pages. AND they’ve got a MySpace account for the county library system.

I posted pictures of the sessions on Facebook during the Fair, and the one above is of the half of my Flickr workshop comfortable with having their pic online! I couldn’t have done any of it without Pattye Archer and our in-house Instructional Media Center who helped me put the booth and (seven!) handouts together in record time. I don’t know how I would have done this without them. I also put together a handout on libraryh3lp with help (!) from Pam Sessoms and Ellen Hampton. Pam has posted it on the libraryh3lp wiki and blogged about it on the libraryh3lp blog!

You can read more about the MLC Tech Fair on their blog. It turned out that the Fair was open to the public, and 10+ people from Mississippi Public Broadcasting Online attended. They were very interested in what we’ve been doing with emerging technologies, and they’ve got quite a 2.0 program growing at MPBOnline! They are using Facebook and YouTube to promote MPB, as well as Twitter (a microblog) where they “found” me originally.

A very successful event!

I’m speaking at the Mississippi Library Commission’s Tech Fair on July 16th and 17th. They’ve got a great blog going (which I’m supposed to be contributing to–and I’m working on it…). It’s an unusal setup for me. I’m doing five 20-minute presentations throughout Day One, all on different topics regarding applying 2.0 technologies in Libraries. I’m focusing on the ones we have applied at MSU–20 minutes just isn’t that much time! So Facebook, Flickr, Podcasting, YouTube and a general one on RSS feeds (we’ve got one for our new books).

Anyway, just a quick update!

Amanda

Well, along the lines of both my conference topic of managing your identity in social networks, and revealing the contents of my 2.0 sandbox, here are my initial thoughts on FriendFeed. So the way it works–you can set up an account for yourself by putting all your personal RSS feeds in it. I’ve put all of my work-related RSS streams in it–from Google Reader, this blog, another blog, Twitter, Flickr, LibraryThing, etc. And after I’d done it, I liked the idea of being able to see everything I was doing. But, as with most things, I didn’t really get it right away…

Until I read Steve Rubel’s blog today, I didn’t realize that you could subscribe to other people’s “lifestreams”… Instead of reading Steve Rubel’s blog, he suggested that we just subscribe to his FriendFeed. Wow. You can subscribe to someone’s FriendFeed and follow everything they are doing on the web–their twitter, their blog, their del.icio.us bookmarks, items they’ve shared on Google Reader, articles they “digg”, books they add to LibraryThing, YouTube videos they upload or comment on, etc. Of course, it would have to be someone pretty interesting to want to know all of that about them. Like maybe your best friend. Or Steve Rubel, who is certain that FriendFeed will “Change Journalism, PR and Marketing.” Over the next several days he’s going to discuss his ideas about how FriendFeed offers an alternative way to get information from a trusted source–potentially replacing traditional news venues, etc.

You can also create “rooms” where folks of like interest share info about specific topics. A great one (especially for this blog!) is the FriendFeed Newsroom, where I discovered a way to get FriendFeed on your mobile device at FF-to-Go. (I’ve finally gotten a smartphone–though not the new iPhone 3G, which I may be regretting…)

So, I’ve got a FriendFeed, and you can follow it.

I’m not promising anything earth-shattering…I’m just playing in my sandbox for now. Looking for library applications…maybe a creating an “imaginary friend” feed for a subject librarian???

originally posted June 11, 2008.

I’m in the middle of the party season and completely done with it. The theater had two parties over the weekend, and if I never see another glass of Andre ‘champagne,’ it will be too soon. We did spend a lovely evening on Sunday with Verna Ramsey, a local theater patron and octogenarian. I really have a thing for Delta women in their eighties. She went to Mississippi State College for Women (now MUW) with one of my cousins. Absolutley and completely and devastatingly charming.

I have had a comment on the blog–I’ve been neglecting my gmail account and missed it entirely–along with an email from my best friend from high school in Little Rock and another from my best friend from Boston wishing me a happy birthday. I’m going to recommit myself to gmail–it’s just that the American Library Association has it, and I am deluged with nonsensical emails from them. Librarians love a listserv and they love to send email. I get enough from the librarians on my bloglines account. Lord love ‘em. Me. Etc.

Speaking of blogs, aggregators, etc., I’ve been playing around with Flock. It’s a browser that works seemlessly with Flickr and blogs, etc. I’ve got an easy plug-in on my links menu now that lets me blog any webpage page easily. And I can drag and drop pix from my Flickr toolbar into a blog easily. And by playing around with it, in part I mean turning my friend Thomas (Instructional Media guru) onto it. Thomas is the sort of person that can attract a zefrank humanbaton to Starkville, Mississippi on his way across the country. See Luke (aka humanbaton) and Kris having fun downtown:

Thomas is somehow able to go farther with the technologies I find…he’s actually figured out how to get around in Second Life, when I’ve barely gotten dressed. [Yes, I know I said I'd sworn it off forever, but people keep planning press conferences and training sessions there--I'm just afraid of being left out, I guess. Ha!] We’re having a Flock tutorial today to catch me up on what he’s learned (I hope).

Today’s our last day in the office until January 3rd, but I’m going to be working through the break, of course. I’ve got two research projects going, but neither have to do with Library 2.0, alas. I’ve got to publish, however, and I’ve got co-authors for both of these. And they both have to do with using JCR ratings. One in Agronomy and one in Education. Hopefully the synergy will keep me going. I’m planning to blog it after I get back from Christmas travels on the 27th. First Jackson for Dad’s family, then Little Rock to visit with my mom. Lots of time with beautiful nephew Hank, brother Mitchell and sister Liberty… (she’s taking the pictures…)

Happy holidays and cheer wherever you are….