23 THINGS - THING 8

SOCIAL CATALOGUING

You may or may not be aware that Heritage has a feature that allows readers to write reviews and share their recommendations from our collection. Although we have not activated this feature, it is this this social, two-way interaction that makes Heritage a Web 2.0 catalogue. There are many other social catalogues available on the web, from personal collections to open source union catalogues.

Each of these freely available catalogues allow you to:

• share your collections;
• express your views (reviews and recommendations);
• tag items (the social answer to classification); and 
• collaborate through networks (online bookclubs).

One of the more popular sites is Library Thing, with a collection which founder Tim Spalding boasted was "larger than the Library of Congress" (LITA 2008 Conference). Library Thing  has a handy widget that sits on your browser tool bar and allows you to import records from Amazon. I have set up a Library Thing account for the LRC and our humble two-book (so far) collection is displayed in a widget on the right hand side of this Blog for you to share.

Besides Library Thing, other popular social cataloguing sites include:

Good Reads - Claims to be the largest social catalogue with 570 million books. Create and share your "book shelves", organise your readings and have personalised recommendations sent to you based on your own readings and recommendations.

Shelfari - "Follow" people with similar tastes, create and share lists (best historical fiction by small presses; most popular thrillers, etc) and browse featured lists and most popular books. Owned by Amazon.

Other sites worth investigating include:

WorldCat - A union catalogue of over 2 billion books, DVDs, music CDs, journals and other items from thousands of academic and public libraries throughout the world. Find items closest to you based on location searches, add ratings and reviews or link to services such as "ask a librarian".

IMDb - A similar concept, but based on movies television series.  Search by titles, actors, characters, plots, etc. Build and share lists, rate and review movies and create watch-lists for upcoming releases. Another Amazon company.


The Challenge

Explore several social cataloguing sites mentioned here or find some additional ones. Begin your own bookshelf, share details with LRC colleagues and comment on their collections.

23 THINGS - THING 7

BOOKMARKING

There are dozens of bookmarking sites out there from the traditional, hierachical lists of links, to the more recent, visual mind-maps and magazine formats. They all do much the same thing; allow us to organise our thoughts and provide quick links to useful tools and our favourite websites. In some cases they offer much more, such as the ability to link documents or photos, add keywords (tagging) and, as with all Web2.0 tools, to share and comment on other people's collections. But why do some bookmarking sites appeal more than others?

Identifying your Working Style: Are you a Vertical or Horizontal Organiser?*

American philosopher, John Perry, identified two types of organisational thinking. Vertical organisers tend to to work on one task at a time, with an uncluttered surface and make good use of filing cabinets and (in a computer sense) hierarchical folders. Traditional bookmarking sites favour vertical thinking.

By contrast, horizontal organisers like all their projects spread out in front of them so everything is close to hand. The approach is used as a memory aid to keep track of project status, and as a prompt to carry out tasks. More modern bookmarking sites, such as PearlTrees, are better suited to horizontal organisers

* from: OUCS (2011) Reserach Information Managment: Organising Humanities Material. Oxford University Computing Service, Oxford.

Google's hierarchical approach with lists grouped by topic, compared
with the mind-mapping approach of  Pearltrees                       



Bookmarking Tools

There are hundreds of tools available. Some of the more popular ones include:

Google Bookmarks - Hierarchical. Allows grouping by topic using "labels". Sites can have multiple labels. The future of Google Bookmarks is uncertain.

Delicious - Hierarchical. Links can be grouped into themes called "stacks". Users can share individual links or entire stacks.

PearlTrees - Mind-mapping format. A browser extension or app lets you "pearl" (collect) the page you are visiting. Option to connect to your Twitter account.

Scoop.it - Magazine style based on topics. Users can collect articles, blogs, twitter lists, photos, videos, etc.

Pinterest - Magazine style. Create boards with compellling visuals based around topics of interest.

Evernote - Note-taking tool. Create or import text, documents, webpages (or webpage excerpts), photos or  voice memos. Notes can be sorted into folders, then tagged, annotated, edited, searched and exported as part of a notebook.

Other, more academic sites include: CiteUlike and ReadCube.

The Challenge

Explore some of these (or other) bookmarking sites. Consider what works best for your organisational thinking style. Join one (or more) of these and connect with other users. Blog about your experiences.

Vine: a new video smartphone & tablet app

I've recently downloaded Vine to my (shiny new!) Android phone. Vine is a free app that is owned by Twitter, and allows you to record short videos of six seconds or less. Here is the official writeup on the Twitter blog:

https://blog.twitter.com/2013/vine-new-way-share-video

What makes Vine fun to play with, in my opinion, is the way that videos are recorded. Basically, when you are in recording mode, Vine will only record video while your finger is touching the screen -- the minute you lift your finger, recording stops. This makes it an excellent tool for stop-motion animation (see above) though I also enjoy the one-shot videos that make efficient use of the six-second timeframe. In case I'm not explaining this well, here's a step-by-step explanation:

http://features.en.softonic.com/how-to-use-vine

I think this could be used to make some interesting library how-to videos. Please post your ideas in the comments section!

EDIT: I should mention that Vine is available on iPhones, iPads, and Android tablet computers.

Last post meant to be under "Staff Training"

Tried to post about Futurelearn in the nice, new, "Staff Training" section of this blog but it's put my post in the main section.  Sorry about that!   I've obviously still got a lot to learn!!!!

Futurelearn

Futurelearn - a UK based company launched by the Open University in December 2012 - looks interesting if you enjoy moocs (massive open online courses).

23 THINGS - THING 6

TWITTER

Each of the tools you will subscribe to in this  programme should been seen as complimentary and support you in a different way. Twitter is primarily a communications tool that can handle both synchronous (instant) and aysnchronous (delayed) messaging. Twitter can be used:

• To broadcast a plea for assistance or advice to your network
• To disseminate information or upcoming events
• To seek and process feedback on a specific topic
• Current awareness

Keep up to date with traffic incidents, major events or anything where real time information is essential.

As a current awareness tool, Twittter lets you follow, in real time, the highlights of a conference or workshop you have been unable to attend. Nowadays, most conferences will advertise a keyword, called a "hash tag" (#) or delegates will create their own (which may mean that a conference may have more than one tag).

Consider the trade off between information breadth and depth. The more followers you have, the faster information will flow, but  you may be overwhelmed by content. You may need to repeat or "retweet" (RT) requests that have been lost in the overload. 

TERMINOLOGY AND CONVENTIONS

Twitter Handle - your unique username. By creating an account, you will also receive a profile webpage in the format twitter.com/username, which you can use to promote yourself to people outside the twitter network.

@username - Use the @ symbol to search or follow people, eg @BPCLibrary20

Slang - Tweets are limited to 140 characters, including spaces. Therefore slang/short-hand notation is acceptable.

RT -  Retweet (forward) content by others or (repeat) your own content to promote content to the top of your feed.

#Hash tags - assign keywords (hash tags) to your tweets and search for topics of interest. Note that these are not unique and vocabulary is not controlled so a hash tag may return different meanings. When creating hash tags for your own topics, keep them brief - they count towards your 140 characters!

Privacy - Although Twitter is designed to encourage networking, you may wish to maintain a closed account. Go to account settings and select "protect my tweets" at the bottom of the page. You will then have the option to approve followers. In addition, your followers will not be able to RT (forward on) your comments.

If somebody chooses to follow you, explore their profile for similar interests and see if any interesting people or organisations follow or are followed by them. If their profile is relevant, consider following them back. In this way your network begins to expand.

If you notice a feed has not been updated for a while, it may not be worth following. Note, unlike some other social media, there ares no social mores attached to the act of "unfollowing" and people will not be offended if you delete them from your list.

TIP: Tweets are limited to 140 characters. (including spaces). If linking to a website, consider shortening any long URLs via tools such as Bit.ly.com, goo.gl or Tiny URL.

Google can also create a QR code for your link.

By creating an account, you will also receive a profile webpage in the format twitter.com/username, which you can use to promote yourself to people outside the twitter network.

The Challenge

Create (or resurrect) a Twitter account and Tweet your involvement in 23 Things (in 140 characters or less!)

Request and invite to follow the closed-group bpc library staff twitter account twitter.com/bpc-lib20

Blog about your experiences and recommend three Twitter feeds worth following.

Stuck for ideas about who to follow? Click here for some suggestions.

Additional Challenge

CONFERENCE ALERT: You noticed that the Info Lit Group's Annual Confence was held in Manchester on 13th May 2013. You were interested in the Conference, but were unable to attend. Review what happened through the Twitter updates. Discuss some of the outcomes on your blog.

Librarians are online chat facility?

As you probably already know, Bournemouth University library offer a Click to Chat option as a way of contacting the service.  I've found it very useful.  Am wondering if it's something that might be considered by the LRC to help students and college staff?