Wow.
So, Twitter.
...
That's a whole lot of words coming at you, very fast. I'm not sure why SI 500 hasn't consisted entirely of talking about Twitter, because it's the epitome of information overload. I think the toughest thing for me to sort through right now is that I have a couple of friends from undergrad who are very entrenched in Twitter, updating several times each hour, all day long. I'm sure there's got to be some good way to sort people out and only see the stuff that's relevant. Maybe TweetDeck will be helpful? Using the #si643 hashtag 5 times this week was a challenge, since I don't really understand Twitter etiquette yet (Twittiquette?) and I don't want to accidentally screw things up by retweeting wrong or whatever. Oh, and the AALL followed me the first day I signed up, which is nice (and I'm sure they follow all of their members who follow them, so it's not a big deal) but it's kind of a lot of pressure, too. I feel like, if I say something, it had better be good enough for the AALL to read.
There are some good things, though. A whole lot of academic law libraries and academic law librarians tweet, so I'm following them. A couple of the librarians are pretty great, and I'm getting a little geek crush on them. Like the one who works at UIUC and does roller derby; I totally want to be her friend. AALL posts job openings, too. I'm hoping that the academic law libraries will as well, or maybe that someday I'll go to a job interview and someone will say, "Oh, I've read your tweets! They are so funny and insightful! You're hired!"
Or, you know, something like that.
As for last week's class, I really enjoyed hearing Paul Courant speak. I have to be honest, though; I don't feel any more certain about what embedded librarianship is or how it's applied in different contexts. The definitions of it vary so much from person to person that I think in order to have a meaningful discussion about it, you have to first set the parameters of the term; that would probably be a great seminar for a conference. And the more I use the phrase "embedded librarianship," the less I like it; it reminds me of ticks. They get embedded, too, if you go walking in the woods without your pants tucked into your boots. I'm sure it's one of those topics that's going to be trendy in librarianship, though, and I'll be glad I know what people are talking about when they discuss it.
Finally, I'm excited about the webinars; being able to choose which ones to attend will be nice, because it will let me nerd out about copyright some more. And we're talking about Creative Commons licensing, which I understand a little bit but will be able to learn a lot more about while we prepare the presentation.
Last thought: I'm sorry if I'm really inarticulate right now. Do you ever pick up the language and cadence of first-person narrators when you read a book, just temporarily? I didn't have the discipline to hold off on starting Feed until after finishing my homework, so I'm about 100 pages in and I think it's making me a bad writer today. It's very good so far, and thought-provoking (particularly in light of this week's 500 reading about ubiquitous computing) but the voice is kind of seeping into my brain and making it hard for me to form a sentence that doesn't use the word "like" or end in a question mark.
It's funny that you mentioned 500. I was thinking the same thing a couple of days ago, although I didn't mention 500 in my blog. But I feel like we could take up an entire 500 lecture having people argue about how much they love twitter, or how much they hate it. Before this week, I would have been on the "how much we hate it" side of the fence, but now, I feel like I might just sit in the middle and be Switzerland. :P
ReplyDeleteTwittiquette...love it! It should be added to the dictionary. I agree with you and Kim that Twitter really defines information overload. I am also curious why we aren't going to talk about it in 500. Is it too new? Most concepts we cover seem about 5 years or so older.
ReplyDeleteHahaha Feed is awesome, but yes the narrator's dialect is a little, like, oh, wow. :)
ReplyDeleteDefinitely an issue of information overload. All this week I've been saying things like "I read something about that, I think. I can't remember where, but it was something like blah, blah blah." (Which actually sounds a lot like something a character from Feed might say...)
Good point about needed an accepted definition for "embedded librarianship." It can mean so many different things, depending on the type of library, user population, etc. Maybe we even need a different definition for different types of libraries (i.e. embedded academic librarianship versus embedded school librarianship, and maybe even subdividing from there by subject area or grade level--ahh!) Or we could just get rid of the term all together, since ticks are gross. Thanks for making me laugh!
Sometimes after watching a British movie I start talking in a British accent completely not on purpose. It is embarrassing and I have no talent with accents.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was starting to follow people on Twitter I for some reason decided to follow Eli Neiburger. I had seen him on a panel at SI and he completely intimidated me and made me think public libraries were dying. Anyways, he started following me right away too and after that I was too scared to tweet. So I understand the whole tweeting pressure thing.