Welcome to Week 4

Last week was really amazing. It was so thrilling to see all of the great ideas you all had about implementing wiki in your settings. I hope you all have a chance to read each others' blog posts and learn from the insights of your peers.

Proposal Reminder! I just wanted to remind everyone that your proposal is due on March 12th, which is a week from tomorrow. The reason we are making it due before the end f the course is that we want each of you to comment on the proposals of your peers. As you've noticed with all the blogging, it's the conversation that can spark so many good ideas. The instructions for completing the proposal can be found here. You can either post your proposal to the blog or to the wiki and then just provide a link to it on this page. I really can't wait to see what you all come up with!

So Week 4 is all about Social Networking, MMOGs and Virtual Worlds, and Flickr. It's all about going where our patrons are and using the tools they use to provide library services.

Online social networking has received growing attention from the media over the past few years. It is a phenomenon that has taken the younger generations by storm and has left many older adults wondering what the appeal is. Sites like MySpace and Facebook have surpassed all other online communities in popularity, although they are almost entirely populated by people under 30. At many high schools and colleges, every student has a profile on at least one of the sites. In many cases, social networking sites are where young library patrons spend time online, and it makes sense that we understand the implications of this and how we can provide related services. In an effort to provide outreach beyond the walls of the library, librarians can capitalize on these new community sites by building presence and providing services in the online spaces where their patrons congregate.

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) are role playing games played online with other individuals around the world. Most MMOGs are in the fantasy genre although shooter games, sims, and science fiction games have also been developed. Typically, players enter a shared virtual world, and work to develop their character’s attributes. Examples include Lineage, The Sims, Second Life and World of Warcraft. These games frequently have no set end-point; the point of the game is to evolve the characters and the world that they inhabit. Some of these "games" don't even involve quests or specific goals; like social networking software, they are spaces to build identity and socialize with others and may be better characterized as Massively Multiplayer Online Virtual Worlds. In early 2006, the Alliance Library System in Illinois spearheaded a project to build a library within the massively multiplayer online virtual world, Second Life. Director of Innovation, Lori Bell, working with OPAL and a group of dedicated librarian volunteers, purchased an island (with real money), built a library and began to provide services to the residents of Second Life. It is a fascinating project that explores how we may provide services virtually in 3D online worlds in the future.

Flickr is the most well-known of photo sharing Web site and makes it very easy to upload and share photos. The site’s popularity is the result of its incredible ease of use. Flickr makes it easy to sign up for an account, upload photos – both from a computer and a mobile device – and then make those photos available to people online. Users can make individual photos public, limit access only to friends and family, or make the photos completely private. Photos can also be organized into topical sets, where they can be viewed as a grouping of photos or as a slideshow. Flickr users can add additional context to their photos by tagging them. Tags are user created metadata about the picture. If a user assigns the tag “dog” to all of the photos of her pet, clicking on the tag will bring up all of the photos of her dog, no matter when they were taken. Others can also add context to your photos by adding tags or commenting on them. Flickr users can also post their photos to groups within Flickr. Many groups exist for people like car enthusiasts, gardeners, cat owners, and individuals who live near each other.

For many Flickr users, the site becomes more like an online community than a simple photo sharing site. While most people come to Flickr to share photos with their friends and family, many begin looking at other people’s photos. Maybe they’re photos of a place they’ve visited or an activity they enjoy. If someone is a golden retriever enthusiast, they can easily find pictures of the dogs, either by searching the tags people assign to their pictures or finding a golden retriever group. If a member likes someone else’s photos, they can be added as a contact or as a friend. This makes it easier to find the person’s pictures later on. It also builds a community of people who may not know each other in the physical world, but enjoy sharing photos together because of some shared attribute or interest. Flickr is another example of a space where libraries can build presence in the spaces their patrons use -- using it to market services and build community.

How can we provide services in the social worlds our patrons inhabit? Where is the line between involvement and intrusion? The presentations this week will be exploring all of these exciting issues and you will get some experience inside these social worlds yourself!

On Tuesday, you will have two opportunities to chat with presenters. At 1:00 pm ET, you will be able to chat with Beth Evans, creator of the screencast Mingle! Mingle! Or, How to Mix with Library Users in Myspace, Embrace Every Opportunity to Get Out the "Library Message" in New Ways and Not Spill Your Drink in the Process. I am a huge fan of the MySpace page she has created for the Brooklyn College Library. At 5:00 pm ET, Matthew Stuckings will be available to talk about all of the amazing things he and his colleagues at the National Library of Australia are doing with social software. Matthew is the creator of the podcast Taking Part: Social Software Initiatives at the National Library of Australia.

That same evening at 7:00 pm ET, we will be offering our first live Webcast of the week in OPAL. This one features the always entertaining Michael Porter and Steve Lawson presenting on Flickr and how libraries can make the most of it.

On Wednesday at 11:00 am ET, you will be able to chat with Lauren Pressley, creator of the podcast, Flickr as a Training Tool. This is a really unique and innovative use of Flickr.

On Thursday at 2:00 pm ET, we will have our second Webcast of the week. This one will feature Kelly Czarnecki and Matt Gullett of the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County discussing MMOGs and most specifically the virtual world Second Life and the Second Life Library 2.0 project. I find what they are doing in Second Life really fascinating and I'm curious about how we might use 3D immersive online worlds in the future to provide instruction and reference services to patrons.