Extra thing, Week 9: Common creativity

I'm skipping podcasting for the moment (I'm cooking up a little something though, hopefully it'll be worth the wait!), so for the time being there will be a few more pretty pictures and a bit of serious discussion, as I tackle Creative Commons licensing.  

Share and share alike...
Image by  Richard Masoner / Cyclelicious

The whole idea of a creative commons license, brought about by a non-profit organisation founded in 2001, is a spectacularly good one. As individuals we can bring a lot of different skills to the collective (now usually web-based) table - for example, you might be a whiz with words but poor with pictures, so you might find it difficult to beautify your product, be it a blog or a book, and get it noticed. What's more, a lot of us don't have the money or the inclination to fork out for royalties and access to copyrighted material. Luckily, the more artistically-challenged of us now have a vast array of striking images at our fingertips, thanks to some talented people with an open, giving personality. Such as the cyclist photographer who snapped this sign, which I think wouldn't go amiss in Cambridge! (On the subject of images though, I inserted both of these using imagecodr - a cracking idea but the formatting seems to go haywire if I want to centre or move the image around...any suggestions?)

Of course, pictures are only the tip of the iceberg. The Creative Commons infrastructure is used by some huge names, such as Al Jazeera TV, rock band Nine Inch Nails and famously, the Public Library of Science (PLoS) group of journals. I can understand that some artists/creators would want to jealously guard their work, as it is their livelihood, but Nine Inch Nails proved that you can share content and still make money, as they simply legislated for what their fans were probably doing anyway, and in so doing won a lot of respect from music fans everywhere, which bore fruit when their next tour was a massive sellout.

A little more sharing
Image by by  Duncan~ 

Of course, that is but one example. A more pertinent one for libraries is the set-up at PLoS. I went to one of the Arcadia seminars in the winter about open source publishing (see "Reengineering the scholarly journal" here), some of which was laudable (sharing databases of results and disseminating vital scientific research as quickly as possible) and other aspects of which were a bit worrying (cutting out the human element of the review system and publishing articles before they've been vetted at all). However the creative commons license deals with and facilitates the rapid dissemination of results and research, which is crucial in our community, where new diseases and issues can spread across the world within weeks and need to be targeted as quickly as possible. So socially it's great, but even better, it doesn't harm the authors of the content; they don't generally receive much (if anything) for writing the article at all, but transmission of their name and reputation worldwide is critical, as academic salaries often depend on that oh-so-difficult-to-define phenomenon, "wider impact".

All in all, I think we can agree that the CC idea is A Good Thing for content-makers and content-users of all shapes and sizes.

Thing 16: Flickr'ing in and out of focus

A suitably reflective AND classical image,
from Flickr. Who could ask for more?
Photo by nerissa's ring

Yes, yet again, I'm using reflection week to catch up on all the Things that just keep coming...but at least this promises to be a very pretty post, peppered with the pickings from this week's tool: Flickr.

The idea of Flickr is an excellent one, and to have access to the work of so many enthusiastic artists, both amateur and professional, in one place is a boon for would-be library marketers and bloggers alike.

Practically, however, I have to admit that I didn't find Flickr immediately easy to use. I find it cumbersome to have to go onto advanced search to find CC images, when another little drop-down box next to a simple search box would be so easy. In fact, something like that appears when you initially click on "search", allowing you to limit your search to "The Commons", which turns out not to be anything to do with Creative Commons, as far as I can tell (The Commons is very limited and has very little modern material in it...I'm still yet to discover what it actually is!)

Best. Bookend. Ever. Photo by Enokson

In any case, the lovely Annie helped me via Twitter, and I've been liberally splattering Flickr images on my blog since. I also like the way that some people use Flickr as a kind of photo blog, particularly some librarians such as Enokson, whose cheerful and incredibly creative library displays have probably inspired many a school (or even academic) librarian. The advantages of using Flickr rather than a photo blog are that you can set clear restrictions and stipulations on your creations, and that you can organise the photos into "sets" and "collections" in a more coherent manner. Admittedly you could tag images in a photo blog, but the way in which Flickr more closely resembles a photo album feels somehow more professional.

I shall leave you, not with any kind of reflection by myself whatsoever, but with something far more eloquent; a scene taken in the city of Nagasaki by my very talented, Japan-loving, Assam-drinking friend, Moe.

An eye-catching reflection in Nagasaki.
Image (reproduced with permission) by Zebra Love 79

Thing 15: LinkedIn, HookedUp, ReeledIn...?

So now to a network that I hadn't even heard of prior to Cam23 2.0: LinkedIn. I hope I may be forgiven such ignorance on the basis that my traineeship is my first real excursion into the professional world, but to be honest, I only joined to be able to view the profile of someone who presented at our trainee visit to Cambridge University Press, and without Cam23, I probably wouldn't have signed up at all.

I've heard from many angles, not least the eponymous Phil Bradley and my lurking visits to the CPD23 programme, that your online presence is crucial. I think this also holds true in my career-field-to-be, academia, although there are more specific networks like academia.edu which may be more appropriate. Either way, LinkedIn is a good place to start, and making THIS Rebecca Woods (as opposed to thousands of others that share my name*) more visible in a professional light can't be a bad thing.

I found the profile easy enough to set up, and I like the simple, CV-esque layout. Despite this traditional feel though, I also like the ability to show a little bit of personality, either through a photo (still haven't got round to finding a suitable one, I think the mortarboard is a little old now!) or through a short tag-line, which I have made use of. I've come up with a few connections already, though some of them were accidentally added from my Gmail accounts list! And I haven't really had the cojones to "connect with" people I have less face-to-face contact with, with the result that the connections are the same ones that I cultivate on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc. etc. Not really the point, of course, but I'm still a fledgling link in the LinkedIn system!

So, that's all well and good. I am represented online! And this is where the apathy sets in... Apparently you can post messages to connected people, just like on every other social network. Apparently you can set statuses, just like...but the silent, screaming question is: why? Why, when there are so many other outlets, for both personal and professional use, would you use what is, in effect, a glorified CV publishing process? Of course, other business people out there may not have your contact details, but as you are urged not to connect with people you don't know, the suggestion is that you might at least have a Twitter contact for anyone that's likely to add you.

However, let's not get down on LinkedIn for having ambitions a little above its capabilities, and let's review the positives. It could be useful for viewing recent publications by contacts in similar fields, for example, or to look at how other careers have progressed, and of course there is always the possibility that a potential employer could fall upon your CV like the proverbial pot of gold. For me personally, however, I don't think that LinkedIn has quite the right audience and options for the ways in which I may want to advertise myself to the workplace in the future.

*Just for fun: this is my favourite fellow R. Woods - I wish I could do what she does!

Thing 14: My life according to Facebook

Don't worry, I'm not going to give you my life story in all its fairly undramatic, pretty middle-class lack of glory. However, if you wanted to get a pretty good impression of its ups and downs over the last 5 years, you could do worse than just clicking on my Facebook profile.

This is not because I'm the kind of person who writes statuses about mealtimes and constantly updates her "places" - I avoid both. However, my primary (and exclusively personal) reasons for using Facebook are:

Green at Eighteen, the oldest photo
of me on Facebook. And that's
all you're getting.

1. To keep in touch with friends who don't live nearby, especially since my year abroad. This results in quite a few "catch-up" discussions. And
2. To pinch photos from people who are far more organised/talented/prolific with their cameras than I. The quality of photos downloaded from Facebook is perfectly passable and they print well, and it means that I don't have to chase people around with a USB key. However, it does result in an obscene amount of photos that I'm tagged in (I'm currently hovering just under 2,100, of which my year abroad accounts for about 1,000 and photos taken by me at about 10).

Both of which functions are excellently performed by the social media behemoth in blue. Yes, there are privacy concerns, but the vast majority of the information on Facebook could easily be found by a relatively techy 12 year old in a number of other places on the web anyway, and I'm very much of the opinion that "If you don't want to share it, don't publish it". So I don't. I would also never use Facebook for professional purposes, just like I wouldn't use text to communicate with colleagues or bring all my holiday snaps into the office.

Notwithstanding this, Facebook does seem to be a pretty good way of communicating information to library users. We've had a page at Classics since the last Cam23 programme and it is quite well followed, so we use it to pass on opening hours, loan information and new books. All this information is published elsewhere and it's not an interactive tool, but that's not really the point - it's just another way to flag up information without any effort from the user. Which is not to say we're lazy about it - our recently updated images were well received (and greatly entertaining to produce as well), so we still have to work to keep the interest up!

My circles are looking a little empty at the moment...

The question which I (and many other people) are now asking is: what is the future of Facebook with the advent of Google+ ? As far as I can tell, they have more or less the same aim and purpose, but Google+ is trying to address some longstanding common complaints about Facebook (such as the clunky layout, which I think Google+ does very well) and to reach an EVEN larger audience...ah ha, stumbling block. The markets which Facebook seems to miss out on are the under 15s and the 30-45 years age group, ie. well established professionals, who had left university by the time Facebook became mainstream. I've already mentioned how Facebook fits firmly into my personal domain and it would seem that many Cam23Thingers agree, so why should Google+ succeed where Facebook has failed? Here's one take on Google+'s success so far, from the point of view of using it in education. They don't yet seem convinced, and I must say, neither am I, despite the attractive layout and potential for "hangouts"...but I reckon we still have to give it time to find its legs, no matter how slick and techy it is. After all, it's still miles behind Facebook in terms of membership, so it will be difficult to judge its efficacy until it becomes more popular.

Thing 13: LibraryThing (with a diversionary comment on Narcissism, if you'll forgive my self-indulgence...)

Thing 13 was one that I awaited with sceptical anticipation. I am, admittedly, a little bit of a geek and I do have a fairly extensive book collection, so I thought that LibraryThing might be a fun toy to play with.

Ugly, ugly, ugly. And there's a tag named "Zeitgeist". Ick.

How wrong I was. Anyone who reads this blog from time to time may think that I'm on a downward slide into pessimism, so negative have recent comments been, but LibraryThing really is plumbing new depths. The interface is confusing, ugly and incoherent; the records it offers are poor and usually not the actual book you have in hand (it's very USA-centric, using Amazon.com (!) as a default catalogue, and the Library of Congress catalogue takes ages to load anyway) and I frankly cannot see any use for it in a personal context whatsoever - I'll just go to my shelves to see what I have! It's not even much use to the most devoted but hard-up bibliophile, as you can only add 200 books before you're harassed for money. I quite like the fact that you can get early-release copies of books in return for writing a review, but most of these are in e-book format (I'm yet to bow to Kindle pressure) and, according to previous 23Thingers, it's easy to become black-balled if you fail to write even one review, which seems a little harsh! And, as a last whinge, I'm slightly freaked out by the fact that it knew I was in Cambridge, when all I'd given them was my gmail address. Is this based on the IP address? Not happy, about that, either way.

I hoped that I might be able to make use of it for the library, but the layout was still foxing me and I could not find a way to embed it in a useful place for our users. You can add it to your blog as a widget, but as the library does not yet have a blog and I seriously doubt that our readers would go to an external site just to see new purchases, it's a little pointless on the organisational level as well.

Rant over, but suffice to say I will not bothering with LibraryThing any more. But if you will now permit me a little wander off into the wider world of social media. The Telegraph published an article two days ago (i.e., two days into the England-wide rioting) about the increasing narcissism found amongst young people, which the author ascribed to overuse of social media. The negative effects of social media use include vain, aggressive and anti social behaviour, along with bouts of anxiety, depression and other psychological disorders. A negative effect on academic performance was also claimed by the psychologists in America who ran this study.

Image from beastoftraal.com

Obviously, it's difficult to say how widespread these supposed negative effects are, because the range and diversity of people who use social media is massive, and different platforms are used in a number of different ways. However, the biggest issue with these findings is that, as far as I can see, cause and effect have been muddled up a bit here - I would suggest that social networks have proliferated BECAUSE OF an increased sense of selfworth in our society, rather than creating vanity as a new phenomenon.

Since the advent of Pop Art and Warhol's idea of 15 minutes of fame, we have been bombarded from all angles with the message that if your name isn't known out there, then you don't exist. In a society where ever more groups in society feel disaffected, disconnected and apathetic, people depend upon their online identities and the subsequent feedback to feel as if they matter. If the only way to gain acceptance and worth is online through the interest of strangers, is it any wonder that we're anxious if no-one has "liked" our activity in the last 24 hours, or has commented on our latest tweet or blog post? I'm sure that even the most confident people still feel a little less confident if their contribution to the internet goes unnoticed.

Moreover, the importance and the power of social media has never been in clearer focus than in the aftermath (I hope I'm not too premature in saying that) of four nights of riots and public disorder across England. Blackberry Messenger and other networks were used to mobilise crowds of rioters. Youths across the country took the opportunity to voice their opinions via BBC reporters' microphones, an opportunity which came about purely because of the disaster they had caused. A lack of social cohesion has been blamed for causing the disaffection of thousands; this use of social media shows that we are ever social creatures, but that online networks are replacing the physical ones which have sadly been neglected for too long.

(Physical) Post-its pleading for peace in Peckham
Photo from BBC News

I believe that there is absolutely a place for social networks and social media, but only within the context of an otherwise healthy and balanced life, which includes regular face-to-face contact with family, friends and co-workers. After all, Twitter in particular was instrumental in mobilising wave upon wave of so-called "Riot Wombles" in London, Manchester, Birmingham and so on. The discourse now is mostly about spending cuts and how these have exacerbated ill-feeling and isolation; that is not in doubt, though the solution will be extremely difficult to work out. But politicians, and more than ever, parents have a responsibility to instil a sense of community, mutual respect and collective worth in young people, which seems to be so sadly lacking.

Thing 12: Delicious and my Picky Palate

After last week's happy experience with Evernote, I was wondering what bookmarking tools might be able to add to my increasingly enhanced web-browsing experience.

I'm terrible for finding interesting links and images, emailing them to myself and then losing them in the slew of renewal requests, important stuff about periodicals and myriad other emails that come to my cam.ac.uk account. So a bookmarking service is precisely what I need, right?

Yup, this is as far as I got. And I have no motivation to
[dii]go any further.

I decided to go a little off-piste and try diigo first, because I vaguely remember hearing something positive about it at the second Teachmeet in March (more about Teachmeets can be found here and here). This was a monumental failure, as the "diigolet" button on the browser toolbar seems to do precisely nothing, and is also fairly aesthetically offensive in comparison with the Lightshot feather and the Evernote elephant. I also could not work out how to even add a first bookmark on the main site, which kept trying to get me to watch a tutorial. If I can't work it out for myself or browse through decent FAQs in my own time, I'm not interested.

A very well-organized, information-rich layout (in my
humble opinion)

So diigo diiwent. Delicious was next up, apparently revived and rebooted after the fairly indifferent reception it received in last year's Cam23 Things programme (comments here and here illustrate the "it's OK but...meh" attitude that seemed to prevail). This was somewhat more successful from the off - I installed the add-on (though I'm still not quite sure why it necessitates three icons on the browser) and added my first bookmark without too much pain. The 'tag' icon add-on is swift and effective, and I like the web-based homepage, which provides a lot of information in a clear, digestible way. However, I dislike the fact that you can't just drag things around to make links appear, and that tags can only consist of one word. And they're really difficult to get rid of in the case of typos!

Delicious, frankly, has left me a little unsatisfied and still waiting for the next course. It seems quite useful, but I'm not sure that it captivates me enough to make regular use of it. It seems good for sharing huge lists of links en masse, as the excellent cpd23 programme has shown to good effect. I can also see its application in libraries for reading lists and the like, though for Classics in particular, so little of our material is online that it seems a little redundant there too.

To really sum up how I feel, I'm going to rely on the ever-insightful Library Wanderer to do the talking for me. A year ago, she expressed largely the same feelings, noting that she'd probably switch the most important stuff over to Evernote, which is what I'd be tempted to do too...I prefer the tag system and the way it can include attachments. The biggest factor is, that Delicious does what it does well. But Evernote does it just as well, with a lot of other features (see here for an extended take on this with beautiful accompanying pictures...)

Cake. Mm.
Photo by Dimitri N

The Delicious cupcake is trumped by the towering Evernote pineapple upside-down cake, with glacé cherries to boot.

Now I need to go and find cake...

Thing 11: Who is that girl I see / Staring straight back at me?

A girl who knew all about reflection
Photo from fanpop.com

...As Mulan said. Now, I'm not saying that the effect of Cam23 2.0 on my life is as great as the changes she had to make, but it has been a formative experience work-wise, and has made me evaluate more closely the ways in which I work and the changes I may have to make before October.

Most of the Things in the programme have not been new to me, but through exploring them more closely I have come to use them in slightly different, and hopefully more efficient, ways. As an example, I was always aware of Google calendar and had used it at work from September, but now it has completely replaced my paper diary and has made things simpler in (an aspect of) my life outside of work, too.

Of the new Things, there are a couple which really have filled a gap: taking screenshots may not be a crucial part of my working life but Lightshot makes it infinitely easier; Netvibes and RSS feeds combined have allowed me to keep in touch with much more information from a wider sourcepool; and I think that my sporadic and disorganised bookmarking habits will gradually be replaced by a much better-looking and effective platform in Evernote.

Other Things have had less of an impact: Pushnote is definitely being consigned to Room 101, and whilst Twitter is growing on me (and produced a very amusing conversation yesterday about Koine Greek and mooses' upper echelons), I'm struggling to see how it will be truly useful once I leave the Cambridge library mafia (sad days ahead).

After being stuck in a bit of a bubble, I'm finally breaking out again
Photo from Wikipedia

And so to the wider application of the Things and the programme generally. I have realised that my organisational skills will be key in order to succeed (and stay sane) on my Masters course next year, and that it is OK to write things down in order to remember them! I have also learnt that, in order to get the most out of web 2.0 technologies, you have to be prepared to put in and keep putting in, even if you occasionally feel like you're shouting into the wind. Which leads me on to the thing (with a small 't') that I have most enjoyed: having the motivation and the material to get me writing again, not only because I needed to get back into the habit for academic reasons, but for the pure enjoyment of manipulating language, the self-imposed discipline of proofreading and revision, as well as becoming more aware of other people's styles and how writing needs to be adapted for different new media.

Thing 10: Nota Bene, or else please, don't bother noting at all...

Thing 10 is the first time I have ever used online note-making/file organisation tools, for want of a snappier way of referring to them. As I about two weeks behind, I have tried to keep my observations as unbiased as possible (even though I couldn't help reading Gareth's hilarious reflections here)...

Pushnote. Before I even signed up I wasn't sure of how much use it would be to me. Luckily this was cleared up for me quite soon: it is of absolutely no use whatsoever.

Who are your notes for? And why would anyone want
to read them? Photo by styro

The main problem is that it seems to have cause and effect round the wrong way. As Aidan notes, it is self-defeating from the off if you view people's comments on sites you visit, as the site itself is there to be viewed and explored, and can probably speak for itself far more eloquently than most Pushnote users. As an example, the comment "a wholly remarkable site" on the BBC homepage constitutes nothing more than wholly remarkable hyperbole. Furthermore, the stream of {un}consciousness from 'friends' commenting on any old site is not as effective a way of sharing links as, say, Twitter or Facebook. This is probably exacerbated by the fact that my stream consists almost solely of Stephen Fry who, love him as I do, seems to get a little bit overexcited and just mark everything as 5-starred. I find that his link suggestions on Twitter have far more impact, not least because they're at one remove from the site, and therefore must have taken a little more consideration. (Having said that, one of my favourite Pushnote comments was on twitter.com, and read "this one [site] is good if you have capacity for digital noise". Exacte.) In fact, there are so many things that I could say about the pointlessness of Pushnote that it's pointless to even keep going.

So, if you haven't already guessed, I won't be using Pushnote again. It adds absolutely nothing to my use of the internet. Would Evernote fare any better?

From the off, the premise seems to make a lot more sense. I interpreted it as a kind of mixture of a bookmarking site and a kind of scrapbook for photos and bits of text - essentially what I've been using Google Docs for, as I mentioned here. It looks more professional than Pushnote and is clearly better developed in terms of the FAQ pages and suggestions for ways to link it in with other products (plus, like many others, I love the little elephant logo)! There is some new lingo to deal with - the slogan "remember everything" grates, and it took me a little while to realise that 'folders' are now called 'notebooks'. There are also some little issues which slow you up, for example the fact that there is no way to cancel or abort a new note if you decide it's going nowhere, and the fact that it doesn't copy across the complicated layout of some websites very well. It takes a little bit longer to familiarise yourself with than Pushnote, but then again it's a far more sophisticated programme (sorry, couldn't help it!) One of the features that I particularly like is the facility to email things to your account through a special email address (which is alterable if it starts receiving spam), though the fact that you have to enter locations by latitude and longitude smacks of a bit of self-aggrandizing nerdery.

Sometimes the old ways are the best ways...but Evernote
shows promise. Photo by .Bala

In summary, it's not perfect by any means, but I think that it could develop into a useful tool for me. It could even come in handy for my postgraduate studies next year, as it seems a more friendly and flexible way of dealing with links at the beginning than just ramming them straight into a bibliographic program.

Extra Thing 3: Library widgeting and Thing 9: Drowning under Documentation? Google's lifebelt

As my mammoth catch-up mission continues, this week I'm tackling another two Google applications; one directly, and one indirectly.

My exciting 30th August:
Return library book.
Water plants.
What a rock'n'roll lifestyle.

And as we all like a good beat-about-the-bush, let's start with the indirect one. We have had the library widget on our Classics library page since the last Cam23Things, and it was an incredibly useful tip during the days of buggy Newton. I hadn't realised, however, that you could link your account to your calendar of choice - in my case, the ubiquitous G-word one. It's dependent on the way Google indexes information, so it can be quite slow and, as Lyn pointed out, it's not ideal for our undergrads as our loans are only 2 days whereas, by my reckoning, it took the best part of a working day for Google to update and display my new loan on my calendar. However, it could be useful for our tirelessly-hardworking and techsavvy grads, or our increasingly dippy academics (you know, the kind who forget their kids' names but could reel off line after life of the Odyssey. In ancient Greek.)

A nice, tangible representation of the capability of Google Docs
And it's German :)
Photo by EDO lounge

The other Google application on this post's menu is Google Doc(ument)s. Again, I have used this tool a few times, finding it useful in group work situations during my final year at University, when we had to complete one of the more bizarre tasks of my degree, a group Syntax essay. We saved a considerable amount of time and inbox space by using Google Docs to email round drafts etc., even if we still decided to come together in physical space to finalise things like formatting, which Google Docs is less happy with. I have also used it as a kind of online jotter pad, creating documents to store quotes, poems or links which I want to use later. I hope, however, that some of the bookmarking tools in this week's Thing will largely supplant that.

Google Docs has also been useful from a library perspective; our Google spreadsheet is useful for collecting book requests, and our 'Ask a librarian' form has attracted questions from all over the place, even internationally. I can see how it would be useful for small-scale, embedded surveys, and the information is easy to manipulate from the resulting document.

On a less techy note, I spent my entire weekend (and, thanks to my lovely boss and an empty library, half of Friday) at the Cambridge Folk Festival. A fantastic, eclectic mix of people in the stunning Cambridge sunshine. I recommend Feufollet, Peatbog Faeries, and Ange's superb headwear...