An article in USA today, Social, work lives collide on networking websites, starts with the story of Wadooah Wali who, after her marriage, changed her status on Facebook and MySpace to 'married' and posted some pictures of her new partner.
Congratulations and best wishes from family and friends poured in. Then there was a short comment ('nice pictures') from a little-known professional contact. Wali realised that her work and social circles had intersected and that privacy as we know it offline doesn't extend to online and social networking sites.
The article goes on to discuss how easy it is to befriend people, even comparative strangers, online, and how this 'friendship' can open up your personal information to a wider and wider audience. And these friends can add information to your pages - information that may be derogatory, uncomplimentary, or just not nice.
Now Facebook and MySpace plan to allow users to 'manage' their friends, separate them into different groups, and decide what and how much information these groups can see.
Or should we just become more open and transparent about what we share online if we feel the benefits outweigh the risks?
(Maybe you're wondering why Wali was concerned that a professional contact had seen her wedding news. Her partner is a woman, and she was apprehensive that knowledge of her sexual orientation might cause some work colleagues to react negatively towards her.)
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
Information behaviour of the researcher of the future
This ciber briefing paper, commissioned by JISC and The British Library, suggests that the term 'Google Generation' is a myth. The paper was based on a literature review plus some new primary data from a study of how people actually use the British Library and JISC websites.
The study investigated whether young people (the Google generation) are searching for and researching content in new ways, and if they are, whether this is likely to shape their future behaviour as mature researchers. Will these new ways be any different to the ways that current researchers and scholars work?
They found that typical information seeking behaviours are diverse, and include skimming, spending a lot of time online just navigating, browsing rather than in-depth reading of a document, lots of downloading a lot of content but not necessarily spending a lot of time reading that content, and relying on favoured brands such as Google.
Young people, the authors concluded, spend little time evaluating what they find, they have a poor understanding of their information needs, they use natural language rather than analysing their needs to identify relevant keywords, they don't necessarily understand how the internet is structured, and they may find library resources unintuitive to use - they prefer Google or Yahoo for their simplicity and familiarity.
Young people like the social networking aspect of the internet, but for socialising, not for study and work.
A number of assumptions about the Google generation are discussed and are found wanting in many cases, and often not unique to this generation - "In a real sense, we are all Google generation now".
The message for librarians and others is that we need to make our resources as easy to use as possible, and these resources should be better integrated with commercial search engines. More effort needs to be invested in ensuring that young people acquire appropriate levels of information and digital literacy skills at an early age.
The study investigated whether young people (the Google generation) are searching for and researching content in new ways, and if they are, whether this is likely to shape their future behaviour as mature researchers. Will these new ways be any different to the ways that current researchers and scholars work?
They found that typical information seeking behaviours are diverse, and include skimming, spending a lot of time online just navigating, browsing rather than in-depth reading of a document, lots of downloading a lot of content but not necessarily spending a lot of time reading that content, and relying on favoured brands such as Google.
Young people, the authors concluded, spend little time evaluating what they find, they have a poor understanding of their information needs, they use natural language rather than analysing their needs to identify relevant keywords, they don't necessarily understand how the internet is structured, and they may find library resources unintuitive to use - they prefer Google or Yahoo for their simplicity and familiarity.
Young people like the social networking aspect of the internet, but for socialising, not for study and work.
A number of assumptions about the Google generation are discussed and are found wanting in many cases, and often not unique to this generation - "In a real sense, we are all Google generation now".
The message for librarians and others is that we need to make our resources as easy to use as possible, and these resources should be better integrated with commercial search engines. More effort needs to be invested in ensuring that young people acquire appropriate levels of information and digital literacy skills at an early age.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
The 2007 Australian Federal Election on the Internet
This paper, by Edgar Crook, Senior Librarian Web Archiving Section, at the National Library of Australia, discusses the use of the Internet in the election, and outlines some of the challenges associated with archiving the associated internet sites.
The internet tools used included web sites (eg parties, newspapers), online videos, YouTube, FaceBook and MySpace.
There is also a comparison of how, and how effectively, the different parties used the internet.
The internet tools used included web sites (eg parties, newspapers), online videos, YouTube, FaceBook and MySpace.
There is also a comparison of how, and how effectively, the different parties used the internet.
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