Top Ten Links Week 8

February 28, 2010 · Posted in Links, Read This · View Comments

My personally selected top 10 from the links I shared on Twitter from 2/19/2010 thru 2/25/2010

1. RT @VenessaMiemis: 16 free ebooks about social media via @fredzimny. Just look at this list of titles and authors :

Building a Social Media Team, Amber Naslund,
ContentCory Doctorow
Customer Service, The Art of Listening and Engagement Through Social Media, Brian Solis
Fish Where the Fish Are – Mapping Social Media to the Buying Cycle, Chris Brogan
Getting a Foothold in Social Media, Amber Naslund
Let’s Talk: Social Media for Small Business, John Jantsch
New Media and the Air Force, United States Air Force Public Affairs Agency
Social Media and Network Starting Points, Chris Brogan
Social Media Time Management, Amber Naslund
Social Media Tips: Sharing lessons learned to help your business grow, Jeff Hayzlett
The Art of Community, Jono Bacon
The Essential Guide to Social Media, Brian Solis
The New Rules of Viral Marketing, David Meerman Scott
The Simple Web: A Philosophy for Getting What You Want, Skellie
The Social Media Starter Kit, Amber Naslund
What is Social Media?, Antony Mayfield

2. RT @VenessaMiemis: new post – reimagining human/social capital & how to spark innovation - Tapping the Network to Facilitate Innovation – How can the power and scope of social networks, combined with a human capital inventory, be used to facilitate shared creation and innovation?

3. RT @FluffTheBunny: Unlink your feeds – A Manifesto – as someone who is driving slightly (or slightlier) crazy by friends who dump their tweets into Facebook I can’t agree more!

4. Incredibly proud to be involved in the new Libraries & Transliteracy blog with @Tombrarian & @buffyjhamilton – oh come on, you didn’t think I could leave a mention of this out did you? I’m SO excited about this project!

5. RT @rww: On Facebook, You’re Really You - “Psychologists found that “faking it” online is tougher than previously imagined.”

6. No One Knows What the F*** They’re Doing and Feeling Like a Fraud – great read! via @griffey – I don’t know about you but I feel like this all the time, I’m just waiting for someone to notice I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve discussed it with friends and some people have called it the impostor syndrome (don’t look at wikipedia’s definition its too

7. RT @zephoria: UX Magazine (@uxmag) has published my “Streams of Content, Limited Attention“ today: Hope you enjoy! – An important read from danah boyd on information flow and “four challenges, points where technological hope and reality collide.”

8. Why are you apologizing? – Like all of Seth Godin’s posts this one is short but gets the point across. Don’t apologize for something you’re doing. Either don’t do it, or do it and don’t apologize.

9. How Social Is Too Social? – not everything is better with friends.

10. Empowering Parents & Protecting Children in an Evolving Media Landscape – Another important read from danah boyd et al “The FCC published a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) on the important topic of empowering parents and protecting youth in an era of an evolving media landscape. John Palfrey, Urs Gasser, and I took the opportunity to respond to the NOI on behalf of the Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative at the Berkman Center. What we wrote should not surprise any of you who are following our work, but our research-grounded response may be of great value for those of you who are interested in this topic. For this reason – and because we all believe in transparency – we have decided to publicly share the document that we crafted.”

Tags: <attention span, children, Facebook, fraud, free ebooks, impostor syndrome, information overload, Innovation, Libraries, parents, Social Media, socializing, Transliteracy>

Video from Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy

February 23, 2010 · Posted in Transliteracy, Video · View Comments

Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.

In October 2009 the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy released its report. The report itself is over 100 pages and worth reading. It is available to download as a pdf or to read online. If you just want the bottom line, you can see just the recommendations it makes or the ones that especially pertain to libraries.

Tags: <communities, democracy, digital literacy, information literacy, information needs, knight commission, Transliteracy, Video>

New Project – Libraries and Transliteracy Blog

February 22, 2010 · Posted in Transliteracy · View Comments

CC image courtesy of Meredith Harris on flickr

CC image used courtesy of Meredith Harris on flickr

I am excited to announce the kick-off of a new project, the Libraries and Transliteracies blog! The blog is a group effort from me, Buffy Hamilton and Tom Ipri. Due to the amount of interest in transliteracy and the role libraries play, we have created one place to share information and resources. The blog will contain information, resources and links to other new literacies related content from all three authors.

I will still be posting about transliteracy here, but you will find more transltiteracy related content more often on the Libraries and Transliteracies blog. So add the feed to your feedreader.

How this came about (if you’re interested in that sort of thing). Due to the amount of interest in transliteracy and the role libraries play in 21st century literacies, I wanted one place to share information and resources. I decided this blog was not the best venue as I wanted everything pertaining to transliteracy to be easy to find and adding to the current page doesn’t help others keep track of new information. I also I did not want all of the information to come from me, this is an important issue to ALL libraries. This led to the idea of a new blog, with additional authors, but even more importantly, authors from a variety of library types. Having worked with both Buffy, a high school librarian and Tom an academic librarian, before and knowing their interest in transliteracy, they were obvious choices and I am so grateful they said yes.

If you are not familiar with Butffy and Tom, here’s a little about them. The short version – They are both awesome!

The long version:

Buffy Hamilton–Buffy is the lead librarian at Creekview High School in Canton, Georgia. She is passionate about creating library experiences for her students that will encourage them to be lifelong learners and advocating for the power of the library in her community. She collaborates extensively with the teachers and students in her school to create learning experiences to foster students’ information fluency and digital citizenship, the cultural capital students need to fully participate in today’s society. Buffy shares and teaches through her work as a keynote speaker, workshop consultant, adjunct trainer, and guest speaker. Her professional interests include applications of Web 2.0 tools in library programs and instruction, participatory librarianship, an inquiry stance on traditional and new literacies, social scholarship, libraries as sponsors of multiple literacies, social media, and connectivism. She writes at http://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com .

Tom Ipri – Tom is currently the Head of Media and Computer Services at Lied Library at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In this position, he directs the future of the libraries’ media collections and services and leads the development of the media design studio, the learning commons, and the strategic evolution of media services within the University Libraries. Tom has published in Computers in Libraries, Lore: An E-Journal for Teachers of Writing, and Information Technology and Libraries. He has presented at Computers in Libraries and Internet Librarian, as well as presented at a variety of workshops. He also reviews films for Educational Media Reviews Online. He writes at http://tombrarian.net

Tags: <21st century literacies, academic libraries, Digital Divide, digital literacy, Libraries, library, medial literacy, new literacies, public libraries, school libraries, Transliteracy>

Librarians Play a Vital Role in 21st Century Literacies

February 16, 2010 · Posted in Digital Divide, Transliteracy · View Comments

We know it, but no one else seems to.

Many organizations are looking at the definition of literacy and expanding it to include the knowledge and skills it takes to be an active participant in today’s society. What baffles me as I read through reports and recommendations from so many organizations is the lack of mention of libraries and librarians. There are a few such as this one from the Report from the Knight Commission:

Recommendation 7: Fund and support public libraries and other community institutions as centers of digital and media training, especially for adults.

or this one in a white paper from the MacAuthor Foundation

If anything, these traditional skills assume even greater importance as students venture beyond collections that have been screened by librarians and into the more open space of the web. Some of these skills have traditionally been taught by librarians who, in the modern era, are reconceptualizing their role less as curators of bounded collection and more as information facilitators who can help users find what they need, online or off, and can cultivate good strategies for searching material.

These are the only two I have found. Why are libraries missing?

The only place most people can receive instruction on these new literacies is at a library. There is no one else. While some students may be fortunate enough to be exposed in at school, either through teachers or the library, most are not. Adults have nowhere to turn but the public library. While I applaud all of these organizations for their efforts and reports and recommendations, I am dismayed at the lack of recommendations for funding and support for libraries. It is all well and good to write a report and a recommendation but what about real world application?

We (library people) know we are the ones providing this training. We know there is no one else. I have to ask – What are we doing wrong that no one else seems to know this? How do we communicate our role?