Social Networking

An Essay of the LISNews Summer Series

Library of Congress iTunes. Blog. Twitter. YouTube. iTunes. Yeah, we speak Web 2.0.

You nation’s Library has millions of stories to tell, so we’re trying to tell them as many places and to as many people as possible–whether on our own website or elsewhere. And now you can add another biggie to the list: iTunes U.

For those who don’t know, iTunes U is an area of the iTunes Store offering free education audio and video content from many of the world’s top universities and other institutions. (The iTunes application is needed to access iTunes U, and is a free download from www.apple.com/itunes.)

The Library’s iTunes U page launched today with a great deal of content, with much more to come. (Link opens in iTunes.) A nice bonus, for those in the know, is that the content is downloadable and even includes materials such as PDFs.

So as long as people keep finding new ways to get information, we’re going to keep finding ways to get it to you!

From Library Journal: It's coming up soon, and those attending the American Library Association's (ALA) annual conference in Chicago in less than two weeks will have a new service to help them navigate their way around—Text a Librarian.

ALA has partnered with Mosio to maximize the conference experience by offering mobile information through a service called “Text an ALA Ambassador.” And with an estimated 25,000 librarians and information professionals expected to show up, there are bound to be lots of questions about the conference's many seminars, committee meetings, educational programs, exhibitor locations, the registration process—yes, and even fun things to do in the windy city.

Attendees to the July 9–15 conference at the McCormick Place Convention Center can text questions from their mobile phones and receive an answer from one of 250 volunteer ALA Ambassadors who will use Mosio's Text a Librarian technology to respond quickly.

From Social Signal, a sign of the times (thanks to David Lee King for the suggestion).

The University of Wisconsin System School Library Education Consortium has been awarded almost $1 million to help school librarians become better versed in technology and social media such as Twitter.

The United States Institute of Museum and Library Services Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program will award $989,495 that will be used to train 50 new school library specialists for Wisconsin’s rural and high-need urban public schools. This was the only grant awarded in Wisconsin. More from Bizjournals/Milwaukee.

I wonder if Laura tweets?

Today is...Tuesday, June 16. But it's also Bloomsday, the day James Joyce's Ulysses is celebrated around the world.

The au courant method of celebrating might be following in the footsteps of James Joyce's Ulysses hero Leopold Bloom on the blogosphere and Twitterverse, according to The Guardian UK...

"Over on Twitter, they're urging us to eat 'ghastly things for breakfast'. I'm not sure I can be tempted to start the day with 'the inner organs of beasts and fowls ... thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes', but I could easily be persuaded into a pint later on.

The twittering classes – 'the twattering of bards in the twitterlitter'? – are trying to get the #bloomsday tag into Twitter's trending topics; smatterings of quotes – 'the heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit'; 'Stately plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed' – are intermingling with plans for the day and pledges to actually read the book."

From Poynter Online:

When reporting on the unfolding story of the election in Iran (and it's possible irregularities), Twitter can be a useful tool for getting real-time context about what's happening and what people are thinking and saying.

As journalist Amy Gahran has written before, hashtags (short alphanumeric "labels" prefaced by "#") are a key tool for following any topic, breaking or otherwise, on Twitter.

The leading hashtag to follow appears to be #IranElection. But far more people are talking about this issue than reliably using the hashtag, so it's also useful to search Twitter for these keywords: Ahmadinejad, Mousavi, (or Moussavi), Iran, and Tehran. (Hashtags and keywords are not case-sensitive.)

That's one hashtag plus at least four keywords (more if you consider alternate spellings). Quite a bit to keep your eye on. Plus if you use a column-based Twitter tool such as Tweetdeck, Seesmic Desktop or Monitter, you only have a limited number of columns to work with. (Each column displays the results of only one search query.)

Homeless advocate Eric Sheptock uses technology to get his message out. Though he's homeless himself, he keeps a blog, a Facebook page and a Twitter account. Sheptock, who lives in Washington, D.C., says he wants to educate the public about what he and many others like him are up against.

He spends a lot of time in the city's public libraries, where he gets free access to a computer. There he can check his e-mail account and write his blog — called On the Clock with Eric Sheptock — which has so far attracted hundreds of readers. He recently wrote about his concern that the homeless shelter he now lives in is in danger of closing.

Full story at NPR

Is everything on twitter 100% accurate? Far from it. And can a journalist chronicle a court case 140 characters at a time?

Lawyers Weekly (Canada) asks us to judge for ourselves. Follow trials in Ottawa and London, ON where judges in both cases are letting journalists stream events from the courtroom to the Internet via Twitter. Here are two cases to follow: In Ottawa, the bribery trial of Mayor Larry O’Brien and in London ON, the Bandidos trial.

Many lawyers aren’t yet sure what to think. “This is evolving rapidly,” says Toronto-based Daryl Cruz, partner and leader of th litigation practice group at McCarthy Tétrault LLP. “Six months ago, we probably wouldn’t have had this conversation because it wouldn’t have crossed anybody’s mind.”

Says law librarian Connie Crosby: "It (twitter) doesn’t give a lot of room for clarifying context and giving facts" principal of Toronto-based Crosby Group Consulting. She adds that tweets can be taken out of context, as happened when somebody mistakenly attributed an inflammatory tweet about Tamil protesters to Toronto Mayor David Miller when, in fact, the comment was merely addressed to Miller. She tells us that news organizations like The Wall Street Journal are now sending their reporters guides that cover Twitter as a medium for reporting.

Twitter’s co-founders, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, kicked off this year’s D: All Things Digital conference, run by The Wall Street Journal.

Twitter founders said they did not want to sell the company and saw themselves running it five years from now. “We’re building Twitter and building an innovative company,” Mr. Stone said. “We are 100 percent into Twitter.” Mr. Williams, Twitter’s chief executive, said he was modeling the firm after Microsoft and Apple and was willing to navigate tough times to build a long-term business.

The pair endorsed a few options, like giving companies and heavy users enhanced features for a fee. This could include charging them to get introductions to new followers. The founders also suggested that for a fee they would embrace the challenge of trying to authenticate a company or person’s identity (...as in "is 'Dunkin' Donuts' the Dunkin' Donuts"?).

From Brave New World:

"Who said that the technology and digital revolution was only for the young? When Ivy Bean heard that a 97-year-old French woman was the oldest member of Facebook she decided to join. She soon attracted 5,000 friends and has 17,775 people waiting to be her friend. Unless you know someone older, Ivy from Bradford is now the oldest Facebook member at 103 years old and has now joined Twitter and already has 9500 followers!"

Since Brave New World ran the story, Ivy's gained some readers: I'm @IvyBean104's 14,510th follower on Twitter. Her accounts will be great ones to show when teaching adults about Twitter and Facebook.

Some sample tweets from Ivy:

"hello all spending the morning reading wont be able to use lap top much today other residents are using it be in touch later

i am so happy i have got all these followers its really good

had a very nice lunch going to watch a film this afternoon i think we are watching the sound of music

me and my friend mabel are going to have a game of connect 4

Deal or no deal in 4hrs

@adam_lambert good luck"

Do you feel the need to belong to a twibe? This one's for librarians.

Nobody can say that the Plainfield IL Public Library isn't perfectly up to date.

For the last six months, you've been able to IM a librarian, and now you can also text a librarian. It's is the first library in the state to offer a Text-a-Librarian service, according to Michelle Roubal, the library's head of reference and reader services. More from Suburban Chicago News.

Looking for library/librarian tweeters? Oregon State University MLIS student Lindy Brown has a list here, and would appreciate your amending it as necessary.

Caught Twittering or on Facebook at work? It'll make you a better employee, according to an Australian study that shows surfing the Internet (in moderation) during office hours increases productivity.

The University of Melbourne study showed that people who use the Internet for personal reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive that those who do not. Report from Wired...

Google's top designer Doug Bowman quit the company to join Twitter. Mostly, Doug didn't like how much Google depends on data to make design decisions.

His basic complaint: "When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions." This is a portion of his blog post, find it at stop design.