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Who’s Watching YOUR Space? January 22, 2007

Posted by Laura Pearle in : ALA MW2007 , 1 comment so far

This symposium was sponsored by OCLC, and it’s probable that the video feed will be available on their site - when it is, we’ll let you know.

Michael Stephen moderated and asked the audience to participate by texting and/or IM’ing him. It’s unclear how many did do just that, but between that and the cool voting tool, we were definitely part of the conversation.

Michael started by talking about the “culture of participation” we live in: we (adults, communities, etc.) cannot control what’s going on on-line. It’s simply growing and changing too fast. This is a new form of social organization, and our mantra should be “Experience. Play. Discovery”.

As Howard Rheingold reminded us, the internet has changed the authority of the text. It used to be the publisher (and editor) that controlled it, now we, as readers, must ask questions about what we find on-line. The reality is, however, that the institute (be it schools, libraries, publishing, whatever) doesn’t change as quickly as this on-line thing is. However, moral choices can be taught (Howard made it clear that he believes that it is up to parents and churches to teach the morality; schools and teachers should only teach the “how to choose/evaluate” part.) Parents need to talk to their kids about what they’re finding/doing on-line: do not just leave it up to the schools. He also spoke about the Public Voice, the linkage between media and participation.

Students learn by clicking around, learning by doing rather than reading the manual. They then teach others, or they take on the role of “doer”. We, as adults, need to help them make the moral choice so that they learn to engage with issues about which they care (in other words, teach them to participate in a democracy). One example given was the student protests organized by cell phone.

Where on-line media comes in is in the role of allowing students to play with their self-expression, and self-exploration. It may also help revitalize public/civic life by allowing more participation.

He ended by inviting us to go to http://www.socialtext.net/medialiteracy.

Next up was danah boyd (yes, without the capital letters). One of the things ms. boyd mentioned was that kids use Google for everything: they’ll type in MySpace rather than typing the URL into a browser!

She talked about how kids view on-line communities: they want a free space to socialize in an unstructured environment. Within this space, expression is validated (or not) by strangers - this is how they learn their social norms and cues. MySpace, for example, allows them to build a social network (which can be a niche network), knowing that all “conversations” are witnessed socially (much like a face-to-face interaction). Thus, they are held accountable for their “talk” and can gain - or lose - status as a result. What do they like about all this? It’s persistent, searchable, replicable and there’s an invisible audience; all this is new and very different that what we grew up with.

The big question: how do we teach them how to be good members of society if we keep segregating them?

Marc Smith was the last speaker. He commented that we tend to focus on the failures of social order rather than the successes (much like we do on the few airline crashes, rather than the millions of successful flights). He then said that Time magazine got it wrong. It’s not “you” that was the Person of the Year, it was “y’all” or “youse” - in other words, the collective “us”.

The main thrust of his talk was on MoSoSo (Mobile Social Software). Most of us already have it in our pockets: our cell. This can be used to explicitly or implicitly annotate our lives; the data is collectible, aggregatable, and identifiable. He suggested several Big Thinkers about this societal change:

The question is, do we want to by only viewed, or do we want to observe ourselves? Reality check: the three terrabyte footprints we leave will not fade.

Marc also said that the age of the desktop is over - the world is now mobile. So, what’s in this new world? Some of the projects mentioned were:

He ended by saying that amateurization is all over (just look at what digital cameras have done for photography) - we need to figure out how to get to higher ground. Mistaking recency for relevancy is a sign ADD. We need to be more thoughtful about all this.

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ALA MW 2007 Council

Posted by idrasek in : ALA MW2007 , add a comment

Council ALA/ APA

It is very confusing but the meeting that I just attended, in council as an at-large-councilor, was not a Council Meeting, it was an APA meeting.

This is a non-non-profit arm of ALA that advocates for library workers. The discussion and vote was on a minimum salary for professional librarians. Voted and passed was a resolution that the ALA/ APA supports and advocates for the minimum salary of 40,000 a year for professional librarians

Lisa

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“I would whore myself for a totebag”

Posted by Laura Pearle in : ALA MW2007 , 1 comment so far

Yes, someone actually said that at Midwinter.

One of the nicer perks of coming to these conferences: the exhibits. Of course, there are the OPAC/ILS guys and other techie people trying to sell you their new product. And many of us flock to those booths to learn what’s new with those programs (remember when everyone suddenly had a GUI interface? or web browsers became the norm?), or to see and evaluate the newest databases. There are always the arts people selling t-shirts and other “library gear”. Almost every booth has a give-away pen or post-it note pad or other tschoke with their logo on it.

And (for some, this is the best part) there are many publishers “pushing” their upcoming catalog by giving away free copies (aka “Advance Reader Copies) for us to get all excited about.

This brings up the excitement one has over the tote bag issue. At registration, you usually get a tote bag. Many booths have them, in a variety of flavors: there are ones that are durable, with pockets and areas in which to keep things; there are ones that are simply large and therefor perfect for the ARCs you’re collecting; there are ones that are collectibles in and of themselves (these you learn about when people say “did you go to [vendor] and see their bag?” or “you have to get a bag from [vendor]”).

I know whereof my colleague speaks. A good tote bag is really one that I’ll take home, that I’ll bring with me to other conferences (local, for example) and that I’ll pack for the next conference because I’m not sure I’ll see another one that serves the same needs as well as this one does. And, of course, one I don’t really mind carrying around as an advertisement for the company/product. All others get tossed or given to my staff and students.

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