Social Media Challenge #2: Pinterest

Ok, I had huge reservations about Pinterest before I even really knew anything about it. All I had seen or heard about it was that it had lots of pictures of braids or crafty projects and that didn't really interest me at all.

I decided to not judge a book by its cover (which I totally do , by the way) and dive into Pinterest. 

The basic principle of Pinterest is that you follow boards made by other users. Those users have collected pins that can be taken from anywhere on the internet and categorized them into things like "books", "recipes", etc. You then build a personalized home page that organizes pins by the date they were added. The home page has similarities to Facebook in the sense that it amasses the things you like on one page. If you then wanted to take a closer look at a pin, you just click on it.

 As expected, most of the boards I follow are book/library related but there are a few surprises. A few examples are: books, Lord of the Rings, typography and lettering, tv and movies, recipes, etc.

I have to say this website is very well done. There is almost no learning curve so you   can navigate boards quick quickly. The layout is great and even if you might have a lot going on on your home page it feels very simplified. Their use of colour is sparse but when used really reinforces the brand. This might be the library tech in me but sometimes I wish the pins were organized less randomly, but I get that it's supposed to be like a pin board with things not exactly equal.

One thing that really bothered me was something I discovered while writing this post. I tried to make a list of the boards I was following and thought there would be a page that listed them. What I ended up finding was a page listing the people I was following instead. On your homepage each pin lists what board it came from, but obviously each user posts at different times/days and older pins would not be at the top of your home page. I got as much information as I could, but I could still be missing some of the board titles from my list.

My favourite board would have to be "books" because the user really goes out of their way to post a lot of material that is interesting and relevant. Some of the pins are a little silly (mostly the memes) but still interesting.

I can kind of see how libraries could use this in an interesting way. They could build boards for library programs, new books in their collections, library shelves around the world, etc. It would be interesting to see if this catches on, but I think for the moment Facebook still has the monopoly due to its sheer number of users.

I'm realizing that I have a lot of pre-conceived notions of what these social media platforms are actually like. I really need to take a step back and use them before judging. Also, to be a complete hypocrite, one of the boards I most often look at is actually pictures of braids.

Reciprocal library & archives tour : Regina Public Library (Prairie History Room)

I was surprised to find out a few weeks ago that some of the libraries/archives in Regina were organizing tours so that library staff could visit each others facilities and learn more about what collections we have. I thought it was a wonderful idea and signed myself up as soon as I could. Something that definitely needs to be worked on more is communication between different organizations so that we can not only have better service, get to know each other a litter better and in most cases try to avoid duplication of materials. 

The first tour I went on was at the Regina Public Library, specifically the Prairie History Room.

May P. Chan, the Prairie History Librarian, was our tour guide and brought us through a quick tour of the central library before going on to the Prairie History Room. We quickly browsed through the reference, business, law and government documents sections, and learned that although they might not have an extensive collection, it is general enough that patrons can go and start their research at the public library. When members of the public come into our library looking to do research they often mention they had been to the public library first and had been advised to come look at our material.

Next we were brought into the Prairie History Room, which was the focus of our tour. The location is small but contains a lot of information. It is not climate controlled and is also placed directly under public washrooms on the second floor, May said that this was one of her primary concerns. If there was ever a disaster (fire, water, etc.) we would lose a lot of valuable resources.

"The Prairie History Room is a specialized collection of non-circulating community history and genealogical materials focusing on the history and peoples of the Northern Great Plains (Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan) from pre-settlement times to present day. The room is located at the Central branch of the Regina Public Library." RPL website

Their primary focus is to collect as much information as possible about the prairies, mainly Saskatchewan. They have a microfilm/form/fiche collection of various journals and historical documents that the public can view with the help of staff, in fact as we were finishing our tour two people came in to view some of these documents. They have a small, but very interesting, yearbook collection that works by donation. May showed us a picture of Shirley Douglas (daughter of Tommy Douglas, mother of Kiefer Sutherland) from one of the yearbooks in the collection. May had prepared a few other things to show us, including the oldest book in the library, oldest book published in Saskatchewan, the illustrated was news (very cool!) and a book of war hero's clippings.

It was a great tour, and as I had never been inside of the prairie history room it was quite interesting to find out what they had there. May obviously loves her job and was very welcoming to the participants.

Social Media Challenge #1: Twitter

The first website I challenged myself to use last week is Twitter. Twitter lovers beware, I'm going to trash talk it for a few sentences.

Now, Twitter is my most scoffed at social media website. I have never liked the basic premise of it or how people seem to use it: to be whiny little babies. To me, it had always been a website used to be really egotistical about yourself, and let everyone constantly know what you're doing (I'm looking at you "I'm going to the bathroom" people). I created an account a few years ago, during what I call my "obsessed with FOB, MCR, PATD" phase to see what musicians were posting. If you don't know what those acronyms mean, then you probably weren't as obsessed with emo bands as I was in my teen years, pat yourself on the back. Even then, I still had a problem seeing the validity of this website.

Well, I officially take my statements back after only a week of using it on a regular basis. I still have some problems seeing how it can be useful personally, as I don't really like to post a tonne of random shit about my life. Alternatively, I can see it's use for networking (business), keeping up with people you admire (celebrities) or getting news in a speedy format.

I actually regularity check my Twitter feed now to keep myself updated on the people I follow. I use this handy feature Twitter added in 2009 called "lists" so that I don't overwhelm my self with information, as some of the people I follow tend to constantly update (I'm talking live tweeting of conferences and such). As of now I follow 60 people and have 8 lists: Actors/Actresses, Comedy, Fransaskois, Law, Libraries, Music, News and my private list called Friends.

For the moment what I find really interesting is my Law, Libraries and Music lists, as those are the people who seem to post the most often. I have three people in my Law list: two law librarians and one in legal instruction. My library list has Regina Public Library and Saskatoon Public Library who both utilize their Twitter in great ways. Finally, my music list has all those acronyms I mentioned earlier plus a few more recent Canadian ones.

Twitter is simple, easy-to-use, doesn't have a huge learning curve to it and is a quite enjoyable way of connecting with people. I still have things to discover as I really haven't explored that much into my interests or more into libraries, which I what I would really like to use Twitter for. If anyone is interested I'm @sroussellewis, not that I'm particularly witty or funny, but whatever.

Social media, libraries and future of print

I'm sure this topic that has been done to death, just another rambling post about social media and libraries right? Probably, as I am quite capable of rambling, but it is something I'd like to write about and explore.

I'm not in any way an expert on social media, nor do I work in a public library, but I do realize the importance of library staff being able to understand and use social media to their advantage. Even from a law library point of view, we have to keep up with the quickly changing trends. Lawyers may  sometimes be seen as the old fogeys who don't adapt, but from what I've seen they are already way ahead of most of us, technology wise.

Although many people don't see it this way, libraries and their staff are the managers of our information and have to constantly update their knowledge on information management. This includes being able to keep the public informed on new media because of our role as teachers to our patrons. 

The most common use of social media in libraries, that I've found, is the use of Facebook. It's basically a ubiquitous tool. If libraries want an online presence (other than their website) that can reach more people, they have to use it. Consider the fact that even though most people say they hate Facebook, they still use it on a daily basis. It's a free service that anyone can learn to use, relatively speaking.

We have to start thinking about information differently, it's no longer static information on a piece of paper in the library. Information is dynamic, flexible and should meet the user's needs. I have always been a little iffy on the future of print material, mainly in the sense that I used to think print would be around forever and always argued with people that said books would be dead soon. I think, for historical purposes, print will be around a while longer because we do need primary sources for research. On the other hand, fiction and textbooks could have a vastly greater impact if they were more online and available to a wider audience.

To backtrack, I said library staff should keep up with current trends in social media. Guy's, I have been a bad library technician. I use Facebook, if only to keep in contact with old friends, but I haven't kept up with other social media websites. In the next few weeks I am challenging myself to learn more about these websites and technologies, and will be posting my thoughts about them. Hopefully some of you will find it interesting.

It's been a while

Obviously, I have no real commitment to keeping this blog up since I haven't posted in about a year. I kept telling myself that at one point I would either come back or delete it completely. I have decided to go with the former.

There are so many things I would like to talk about, but I never wanted to deviate from the "a blog should be about one subject" philosophy and I quickly got bored of solely posting about one subject. I've decided to widen my vision for this blog. I'm not too sure yet what direction I'll be going with, but I have some vague plans for future posts. 

Something I'll be focusing on in the immediate future is what I call my "social media challenge", which is just an excuse for me to try out all the social networking sites I've scoffed at in the past. I figure that before I complain about something or discredit it, I should probably test it out.

We'll see how long I keep this "challenge" up, I'm a very good procrastinator.