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 go to myspace to “visit” my friends, people I see sometimes on a daily basis anyway (this blog has lots of quotes–I don’t know why). It is “going visiting” in the small-town Mississippi Sunday-afternoon sense, but done as digital, public performance art. And at some point I crossed over from ironic observer to impassioned denizen.

danah boyd has just blogged about the recently released Pew Internet & American Life Project study on “youth” behavior on the Internet, and how we (yes, I know, I’m 34) are not creating new social networks online, but rather modeling existing networks of relationships. Defining actual “in real life” social networks, projecting them into places like myspace and facebook.

So–what does it mean for libraries? And for Library 2.0 research? And for trying to get the library and librarians into those spaces? How on earth can we become compelling enough to become part of the social network they are modeling online?

I think it may be that our bricks and mortar space is still relevant–that we are still relevant as flesh and blood librarians. Even if everyone is moving their intellectual or information gathering selves into this live web, it may be that we still matter behind our Ready Reference Desk. We just have to figure how to make them want us. But why would they? Why do we want them to want us?

I think they should want us because we have incredibly cool tools and information that will help them do what they want to do. That’s it.

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