Facebook at ECU

In the last few months the social networking site, Facebook, has taken off in Australia and currently there are over one million Australians on Facebook.

Those of us who watch The Chaser heard about Kevin Rudd’s 5,000 Facebook friends. Well actually it's not quite that many, as he's reached the friend limit. The clip is on YouTube

Here at ECU there are now approximately 2,400 users on Facebook.

So who are they?

As expected most of them are students, but now quite a number of ECU Facebook users are academic staff. Mind you, most of the academics who are on there, are not really active users, from what I can see.

What are they doing?

There's an active social ECU student subgroup for current & past students. And student events are posted there such as the ECU Final Fling 2007 @ Leederville Hotel tonight.

We are librarians

Last week we had a celebration at Mt Lawley and Don Blue and is band entertained us with some great music. Don wrote some words, and we all joined in to sing along to this popular tune, (which for copyright reasons we can't name!) :

We Are Librarians

We come from the dreamtime we’re a very dreamy bunch

We dream of acquisitions and we dream about our lunch

We dream of cataloguing and interlibrary loans

We ream we’ve fixed the printer, and no bloody mobile phones

(Chorus)

941 (941) is British History

Semantics are found at 412

We’re Dewy eyed and Dewey classified

I am you are we are librarians

We leave on the phone diversion – so it’s very quiet today

Sometimes we wish the clients would simply go away

It’s great to be the guardians of all there is to know

It’s just a shame we must have students – but hey we need the dough

We got faeces on our theses, someone’s wee’d on a machine

(over there’s new graffiti but I don’t know what it means)

it’s great to be a librarian – what would you rather be

When someone’s had a picnic in TQ823

(Chorus)

We have e books – e journals and of course there’s e reserve

But will we have e reference folk to help with the big words?

There’s really nothing like it – answering questions face to face –

Like “where’s the loo?”, what time is it? And “I’ve lost my thumb drive case”

(Chorus)

Words by Don Blue

Privacy and Web 2.0

There an interesting audio and comment from Ben Elton on the ABC website
His latest novel Blind Faith imagines a world where "privacy has disappeared, where public nakedness is not only acceptable but expected".
Ben has particular concerns over the so-called 'web 2.0' applications like YouTube, Facebook and MySpace. "It's a sort of doodling and gossip all combined".

Having become a sort of Facebook addict myself is recent weeks, I can see where he's coming from. Initially I was loathe to put in all my personal details in there. But now I wonder who owns Facebook and what are they doing with all our private information?

ALIA Top End Symposium papers online

The ALIA website now has some of the Top End Symposium papers online. Our paper on Learning 2.0 is there:

Evolving and Changing with Workplace E-Learning: 23 ways your staff can grow.
Julia Gross and Lyn Leslie, Edith Cowan University

They plan to add the podcasts too at some stage. Other papers are

What is Library 2.0 and do we need it?
Sue Chilman, Manager City Library, Darwin City Council Libraries

The e-volving profession: key findings from the nexus census of library and information professionals
Dr Gillian Hallam, Associate Professor School of Information Systems QUT

Information Literacy - Online Tutorials
Liz Short, Taminmin Community Library Ruth Sheridan, Palmerston High School

Ten Good Reasons for Finishing Learning 2.0

We are getting close to the Grande Finale and I know some of you are struggling to find the time and to stay on target.

So I thought up Ten Good Reasons for Finishing Learning 2.0.




1. You will learn to speak like a geek and throw in words like "wiki", "blog" into everyday conversation


2. You will amaze your kids at how up to date you are


3. You will be given permission to watch YouTube in WORK time


4. You will make new friends, discover new social networks and see how creative some of you colleagues are


5. You will amaze yourself at how addictive the web 2.0 technologies can be


6. You will be rewarded with a cute doggie Web2.0 certificate...yeah!!


7. With your new found skills you may just get that dream job ... (sad for us ...)


8. Using your new skills you will be able to provide great help to our students and be in touch with their approach to study


9. You will be able to influence the future library online presence


10. You will expand you mind in the lifelong learning journey

Bobtails love bananas

He looks fierce, but give him a piece of banana and we have him eating out of our hand....well almost

Blogging and mainstream media

Blogging is hot news in the mainstream media. Newspapers are in a "dammed if you do and damned if you don’t" situation. Upstart citizen journalists can cut into newspaper profit margins, but if newspapers wish to reach the Web 2.0 generation their journalists need to have their own blogs, and many do.

The Australian boasts about 18 blogs and individual blogger popularity can be seen by how many comments each blog has attracted.

Steve Almond, writing in the Oct/Nov07 Walkley Magazine has an article Attack of the Instapundits “Blogs are cheap and easy. They’re like those cable TV shows with all the talking heads shouting at one another. All you need is the means to broadcast and an opinionator”.

More on blogging: on November 8th ABC Radio National Media Report has a special panel discussion on the power of blogging. Among the speakers will be Hugh Martin from APN online Australia, and Pippa Leary, General Manager of Media at Fairfax Digital. You can download the audio, or read the transcript the next day.

In many ways the threats faced by mainstream media are similar to libraries. We need to also embrace the technologies of the digital generation, or risk becoming irrelevant.

Podcamp Perth 07

Podcamp Perth 07 was Oct 27-28 2007 and a resounding success. Thanks heaps to the organisers.

It’s Thursday already and am still trying to get off my butt and write something. If I wait long enough there won’t be anything more to say. It’s all there on the Perth Podcamp Wiki and related blogs already.

For those who don't know, PodCamp Perth is a newmedia community UnConference that helps connect people interested in blogging, podcasting, social media and networks, video on the net, and newmedia together to learn, share, and grow their newmedia skills.

Simone's Blog post has many of the links

Kathryn Greenhill's Blog Fodder was well done and fodder for thought.

Stilgherrian’s presentation Social Media and the 2007 Australian Federal Election gave some insights into politicians and how they use of Web 2.0. How will this change the nature of our democracy?

If the Net Gen are getting their political input from Rove and The Chaser, and from satirical YouTube rather than Howard’s YouTube what does that mean and where is this headed? So I went in search of some satirical YouTube myself and found this hilarious video which has had 37,000 viewings.