socialibrarian

socialibrarian is moving home

dan — Mon, 10 May 2010 16:31:25 +0000

Hi everyone. Checking up on my stats today, it looks like I have succeeded in generating a modest amount of interest in my writing on this blog, and I am very grateful for the support that I have received throughout my library school experience.

I ain’t quitting, so don’t get your hopes up. But I am moving the blog over to my main domain page at http://danielhooker.com/. This is purely because I want to streamline my ability to update my resume and contact information in the same place as my blog posts. So: please update your bookmarks if you’re interested. Here’s what you need to know:

Homepage: http://danielhooker.com/
Blog posts: http://danielhooker.com/blog/
RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/danhooker

This blog is just going to stay as-is for as long as it doesn’t get hacked, to avoid linkrot on my older posts. If, however, you know you have linked to the socialibrarian and are feeling proactive, all the posts can now also be found on the new site.

As a taste of what’s to come, I blogged there yesterday as an inaugural post of sorts. So there it is, and I hope you continue reading the things I write.

Thanks and see you around the bend.

Dan

Library of Congress and the social media archive

dan — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:01:39 +0000

By now everyone is up to their ears with tweets about the Library of Congress’s annoucement that they will archive every Tweet. Here are my initial concerns and lauds.

Cost. Library Journal has already questioned this. How much storage space is this going to require? How will it be sustainable? And how often are they planning on doing updates to the data stream? Will they begin collecting Tweets in real time? Monthly? Yearly?
Content and archival quality. What about all those shortened bit.ly links? Or the old ones from services that have shut down, like Twurl? Or the really old ones that might be full URLs but that have rotted away? We can’t expect this to be perfect, but is LOC planning on trying to capture anything external to what the tweets may refer to? I got this idea from @dancohen. He suggests that LOC may need to take snapshots of the linked websites, and I think that sounds almost essential in a way albeit messy and difficult.
Searchability. This could either be the greatest thing to happen to Twitter search, or a huge disappointment. Will LOC make their database of Tweets searchable? Right now, Twitter search is good for about two weeks. Library of Congress has a huge opportunity to blast that wide open, and we can only hope that they are able (infrastructure and $$$-wise) to do so.
Privacy. A commenter was posted on the LJ blog about this issue. Is there a privacy problem here? Yes, our tweets are public, but is it somehow unethical even if it may not be a violation of copyright to republish Tweets in what could become public archive? Don’t ask me for an answer. Because I’ll say “no, it isn’t.”
Metadata. How will the data about the tweets and their authors be captured and stored? Furthermore, Twitter is about to let us start adding annotations and other metadata to tweets in our stream. Will this sort of marginalia be lost?

All in all I have a feeling that this project is going to set a tone for social media archiving practice. One of the most talked about services being archived by one of the world’s largest libraries. If they truly think this is important (and I am tempted to agree), I think there is an excellent opportunity here to demonstrate that importance publicly. Essentially, I think the LOC is about the create the standard and best practices for social media archiving with this project, for better or for worse. If it is not implemented well in the beginning, it has the potential to set the bar too low (in both the technical and the public eye) for future endeavours seeking to capture online content.

In any case, this is a very exciting development to round off my library education. Two more days!

UPDATED Apr 15:

ReadWriteWeb has some more good questions. Among them: “Will the archive include friend/follower connection data? Will it be usable for commercial purposes? Will there be a Web interface for searching it, and will that change the face of Twitter search for good? Is there any way that the much larger archive of Facebook data could be submitted to the same body for analysis of the same kind?” The answer to some of these is already known: no commercial use, there will [sounds like] be little web interface for searching–instead they will present a curated set for public use, while the entire archive will remain for serious research only.
To address the problem of search, Google Replay was announced yesterday as well. This is Google’s attempt to capture what SearchEngineBLog calls a “vox populi” view of historical events. You can essentially search Google’s index of tweets easily for a specific date or range and keywords to get a sense of what was said about topics such as health care reform. With Twitter handling a reported 19-billion searches a month on their junky index, it’s about time we got another option. Google Replay, just like in their real-tme results display, resolves those shortened links, but I don’t know whether or not the full URL is saved within the index or if it is resolved on the fly. My guess is the latter.

What I want and have always wanted was a way to search for specific tweets by specific users. Sometimes I can recall a fuzzy thing like, “I know @somebody tweeted something about “Topic A” like a month ago.” With Google Replay, we’re getting closer, but it’s not perfect, yet. It does effectively use Twitter handles as a search term, for example: “iphone @danhooker” brings up some tweets (but not all) that I have sent or that were RTd by me. I hope it will get better. Google has that habit, so I fully expect–and pray–this will be a workable option for meaningful Twitter search in the future.

“Too many issues to count”: Signifying friendship on Facebook

dan — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 16:00:33 +0000

One of my final projects in library school is almost complete. The term paper I have written for a course entitled “New Media for Children and Young Adults” is just about finished and we have to give an informal presentation on our papers Thursday morning.

My paper is on the topic of that popular Facebook meme where kids were tagging their friends as various cartoon characters or celebrities (”The ugly one,” “The pretty one,” etc.). If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, I included several examples.

Anyway, I thought I would share my slides in case anyone out there is interested in semiotics, social networking and youth. Or maybe you’re just bored. Either way, enjoy.

Too many issues to count: Signifying friendship on Facebook

View more presentations from Daniel Hooker.

What is Twitter up to?

dan — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 21:50:11 +0000

Twitter has just made a number of pretty big announcements in the past two days. First, they announced a potential “huge” overhaul of their web UI. Then yesterday, they release Twitter for Blackberry AND they announced that they have acquired Atebits, the little company that makes Tweetie, a popular Mac and iPhone Twitter client and are going to turn it into Twitter for iPhone.

What does this all mean? I don’t see the business model here yet, but they are clearly working on something. Twitter for iPhone (aka Tweetie) is moving from a $2.99 app to become free, so they are not monetizing the app purchase so far. One thing that Tweetie for Mac and other clients have done is put ads in the stream in order to get a little bit of revenue that way. Is that something Twitter is hiding up their sleeve? We don’t know now, and until we do, I guess all we can do is be happy. (Or dismayed at the proliferation of mobile phone “apps” instead of standards-based mobile web sites). The attitude of one Twitter funder is expressed this way:

Much of the early work on the Twitter Platform has been filling holes in the Twitter product. It is the kind of work General Computer was doing in Cambridge in the early 80s. Some of the most popular third party services on Twitter are like that. Mobile clients come to mind. Photo sharing services come to mind. URL shorteners come to mind. Search comes to mind. Twitter really should have had all of that when it launched or it should have built those services right into the Twitter experience.

With the launch of Twitter for iPhone and Blackberry it seems that some of those services are getting built in as we speak. One thing that dismays me a little bit is that there are no rumours about Twitter Search being improved, or the indexing and archiving processes getting any better. Maybe this is the librarian in me rearing its ugly head (or the subject of another blog post), but we need an effective and non-maddening way to get to old tweets. I guess I’ll just hang my hat on that one, and go back to clicking that “more” button.

iPad link roundup: what you want, when you want it

dan — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 17:19:05 +0000

It’s been a busy week of iPad related nonsense news. I feel overwhelmed so maybe I’m not the only one. Here’s a round up of links on early iPad reviews and issues that I have found either interesting or relevant to librarians over the past week. Warning, this is a mess in many senses of the word. Keep checking back because I’ll make it better and add more as my day/week/life rolls on:

iPad “Issues”

in Healthcare

NBC: Doctor uses iPad to assist in surgery
John Moore [Chilmark Reserach]: iPad in healthcare, a game changer?
Larry Nathanson [KevinMD]: iPad in the ER, hands-on physician review
Nicholas Genes [EP Monthly]: How the iPad can change emergency medicine
iMedicalApps: iPad app store needs to mature
ScienceRoll: Apple iPad in healthcare, Pros and Cons
mobihealthnews: iPad/healthcare round-up
HealthLeadersMedia: Many docs buying iPad, effect on healthcare still in question
Search Priniciple Blog: iPad arrives for doctors
blog.bioethics.net: iNeed the iPad
MagnoMED: iPad EMR
EHR and EMR: iPad EHR or not
Children’s Hospital Boston: Researchers embark of $15M project for a iPhone-like health IT platform

Future of eBooks (aka Kindle-Killer)

Mac|Life: A look at 10 iPad Reading Apps
Digital Reader: Wiley launches e-reader comparison site
Mike Cane’s iPad Test: iTunes modifies ePub files
Mike Cane’s iPad Test: The ePub eBooks metadata mess
FontFeed: What the iPad is missing (no, it’s not a camera)
Booksquare: Obligatory post on impressions, reading and wrist strength
paidcontent.org: Spooked by iPad, ePubs custodians promise changes
Columbia Journalism Review: Backwards steps by WSJ and NYT for iPad

Reviews

Blogger reviews

John Gruber [Daring Fireball]: The iPad
Jason Snell [Macworld]: iPad Review
Ars Technica: Ars reviews the iPad
Engadget: Apple iPad review
TidBits: Why the iPad is a blank slate and why that is important
Dave Winer: Is the iPad a game changer?
Paul Thurrott: iPad first impressions

Pre-launch (big-wig reviews)

David Pogue [New York Times]: iPad from two angles
Walt Mossberg [WSJ]: iPad a laptop killer? Pretty Close
Tim Gideon [PCMag]: iPad review
Andy Ihnatako [Chicago Sun Times]: iPad is pure innovation, one of the best computers ever
Ed Baig [USA Today]: It’s a winner

iPad Hardware

CPU/Processor/RAM

BusinessWeek: iPad components may cost $260
iFixit: iPad teardown
Geek.com: CPU showdown: iPad vs. iPhone 3GS

Operating system/Multitasking

Robert Love: Why the iPad and iPhone don’t support multitasking
Andy Ihnatako: iPad and multitasking

JooJoo Tablet

If you haven’t heard, there’s another tablet PC on the market, and this one has multitasking and Flash Video. Too bad it stinks.

Engadget: Fusion Garage JooJoo Review

CliniPEARLS: Mobile guidelines from the BC Health Ministry

dan — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 16:30:55 +0000

A partnership between the British Columbia Health Ministry, the British Columbia Medical Association and the UBC eHealth Strategy office has produced a mobile clinical guidelines app, CliniPEARLS.

CliniPEARLS does one thing and does it pretty well: it provides clinicians with mobile access to the BC Guidelines and Protocols Committee (GPAC) guidelines. According to the home page, BC Cancer Agency guidelines are under development for addition as well. So though there is a relatively short list of guidelines available through the app right now, it is quite new (Blackberry version released 12/2009; iPhone, 3/2010) and more are on the way.

The app separates guidelines into their clinical specialties, and also presents an alphabetical list of guidelines for browsing. The structure an individual guideline is separated into many hierarchical pages (see screenshots below). This structure makes for more clicks (or pokes) than may be ideal, but it preserves the specificity of each topic page, and prevents a mobile user from getting lost in a long skinny page of text. One potential problem here is that the text, particularly the links, on these pages is quite small. This might not be a problem for the scrolling hand of a Blackberry, but requires deft aim with a thumb or index finger on an iPhone (which I used to test this out).

The search function has an intuitive interface, and will likely become more useful as the list of available guidelines grows. Additionally, you can bookmark frequently referenced guidelines and pages for quick access. A unique feature is that you can filter any of the guidelines “on” or “off,” which allows you to tailor the list of guidelines to your interest or specialty. Again as of now, filtering the list may not be necessary, but as more guidelines are added into the CliniPEARLS database, this feature will likely prove to be an excellent bit of foresight.

As the mobile marketplace continues to flood with medical applications from all variety of vendors, pharmaceutical companies and other (not-)for-profit entities, CliniPEARLS is a great example of how to enable clinicians to access localized and government-approved clinical information at the point-of-care.

CliniPEARLS is available for Blackberry, iPhone/iPod Touch, Palm and Windows Mobile. Instructions for signing up (an account is required to obtain the latest guideline updates) are available here.

Other People’s Privacy

dan — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:23:31 +0000

There was not a bigger, more contagious crossover radio smash in the autumn of 1991 than Naughty by Nature’s “O.P.P.” – Allmusic

Coupled with the rise of social media in everybody’s faces these days has been the rise of the loaded term Privacy. We expect Privacy online, Privacy is a basic human right, Privacy why we’re angry about Google Buzz, Facebook Beacon was a breach of our Privacy, the list goes on, right? danah boyd broke all of this down for everyone lucky (or crazy) enough to attend the South by Southwest Interactive conference this past week.

There is an excellent summary at ReadWriteWeb. One of the most salient talking points undoubtedly tweeted repeatedly throughout the afternoon was this: “Just because something is publicly accessible doesn’t mean that people want it to be publicized.” Privacy Concern in social media generally stems from this idea. We want the ability to share things publicly through social media, but don’t necessarily want everyone in the world looking at it. Alternatively, we want to participate in social media, but don’t fully understand the implications of our involvement (”I didn’t know they meant everyone could see it”). It is also an understandable position to take, even if it may be a little naive. It is hard to specify in advance a list people you want to have access to something you post. But if you don’t (or can’t or won’t) do that, then it has to be public.

This tension also invades discussions of online health and social media. This is even more difficult than just learning how to use Facebook effectively, especially given a perceived increased in pressure or desire to share more and more of ourselves with an online community. There’s a nice article written last week at The Future Well about this topic. In it, Dr. Jay Parkinson writes:

Privacy means many different things to everyone. Most importantly, health privacy is more about control than secrecy. We want to be in control of who sees our health issues. We don’t want health insurance companies or employers to discriminate against us. But we want help and advice from friends and strangers struggling with the same health problems– sometimes we want this anonymously and for others we want full disclosure.

I think that Privacy on the web these days, in any sphere, is more about control than secrecy, and Dr. Parkinson shares this sentiment with boyd. He goes on to say that the value we gain by claiming our content online and sharing in (health) experiences with others “far outweighs the consequences of remaining secretive.” I hope that more people come to this understanding, and sooner rather than later. There is nothing that irks me more these days than an anonymous blogger (and we all know what happens to THEM) or someone who blocks their Twitter feed.

When I see those things, I always think, “What are they trying to hide?” We should all start demanding (and utilizing) our control and owning our content; that, or you need a really good answer to that question.

UPDATE: There is a Pew Internet Study about to be released on this very topic that I just came across this afternoon: “the center found that most people said they cared greatly about online privacy but they didn’t do much about it. When asked if a user plugged in their own name into a search engine to see what public information is available on them, the numbers dramatically dropped.” Unfortunately, the data was collected before Facebook revamped their privacy options recently, and also before the launch of Google Buzz. Too bad.

Eric Topol and Wireless Medicine

dan — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:01:00 +0000

Yesterday I came across a TEDMED talk from early February, by Eric Topol, a cardiologist and director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute. And you know how those TED videos are: once you start, you can’t stop.

The video caught my eye for a few reasons:

Wireless health is linked to, but not the same as, mobile health. When we talk about ‘mHealth’, it may have to do more with developing countries and delivering services via mobile phones, than it does with transmitting vital signs and other “physiological metrics,” as Topol calls them, to an iPhone. (For more on the varying shades of m, e, and other ‘healths’, see this excellent blog post).
It exposed me to two excellent magazine issues that have dealt with the rapid development and exposure of many different types of people to mobile and wireless technology, for health but also for banking and even agriculture. The first is the Wired Issue from July 2009, which is free and covers many of the health tracking technologies; and the other is the September 26, 2009, issue of the Economist which covers developing countries and emerging markets for mobiles (not free, but you can get a 14 day trial in short order). There are several articles in both those issues that are excellent food for your mobile thought.
Also, I really want that alarm clock/sleep monitor. I bet I’m a good dreamer, too.

Another excellent TEDMED video was the first one they released from David Blaine, the monotone magician. I know he is a little out there, but he has a great story on trying to set the world record for holding your breath. And now we wait for David Pogue, I guess.

Preparing for life’s work

dan — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:28:38 +0000

“To be of any value an education should prepare for life’s work.”

“Don’t trust your memory. Make notes. Write down your observations.”

The last year has been a formative one as I approach the end of library school, and though I am by no means a fan of introspective self-indulgent blogging (see the death throes of LiveJournal), I think it is necessary to reflect on just two things that happened to my year that will inform the shape of this blog over the next few months.

The first is the completion of my directed research project, in which I crafted a large paper on social media use in the academic library. Prior to the completion of that paper that was the realm in which I was most focused. Academic libraries, I thought, were the realm of my interest, and that I could continue my investigation past finishing that report. But what I found instead was that my interests focused further, and I felt freed from trying to wrangle such a broad and complex environment. I now find myself moving past the broader academic culture (or even, perhaps, “libraries” in their most general conception) and its adoption of social media, into a realm of web culture that I view as more pressing, less well-defined, and that requires more reflective practice than it currently receives.

This brings me to my involvement with health librarianship. If you have paid close attention to the things I have been putting on Twitter lately, more and more of them have been health related. A budding interest of mine since my first days of library school and the CIHC (and some not so subtle prodding by librarian mentors) have drawn me toward the field at an alarming rate. I had the pleasure of presenting at the Canadian Health Libraries Association conference last June; I started a second job at the UBC Library in Vancouver General hospital in September; I published a paper for health librarians with Dean Giustini and Allan Cho; and by sheer luck I was able to hear one of my favorite tweeps, Dr. Kent Bottles, speak in Minneapolis (my home town) at a health care and social media event during my practicum. I help to maintain some of the fantastic resources at Dean Giustini’s HLWIKI Canada. One day soon, an interview with me on interprofessional health practice and my work at CIHC Library should be put up on our blog.

Rule one of blogging is to define an audience and speak to them. I feel a little like I am shifting or disrupting that audience as I write this, having defined mine as a larger community of librarians interested in web technology generally. But I am one of the only students at my library school who maintains (if irregularly) a professionally-oriented blog (correct me if I’m wrong here, SLAISers), and certainly one of few who have taken an active interest in health libraries. More Osler: “It is always better to do a thing wrong the first time.” If you’re bored you can just quit me, but my hope is that you won’t. I don’t feel I’ve done wrong here, but feel I have to change slightly in order to engage critically with my more focused interests. My hope is that it leads to greater frequency of posting and, ultimately, adds value to the field in some way.

A Long December (lessons in web service)

dan — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:27:20 +0000

This blog post has been in the works for quite a while, I must say. It has been too long, though I made it my excuse that I was recharging my batteries having finished what was simultaneously the most productive and most exhausting semester of my career in higher education. Instead of boring you with a laundry list, I want to detail my 2-week practicum experience that quite broadening for my education thus far. Two weeks of public library work for an aspiring health/academic librarian was quite a feat. The point of this post, then, is to reposition myself digitally as I prepare to finish my degree and move out into the wild world of librarianship.

First, I experienced the distinct pleasure of being hosted by Meg Canada at Hennepin County Library for two weeks as part of a practicum placement. Ostensibly there to learn the ins and outs of a healthy social media presence maintained across a large public library system, I was actually allowed much more than a glimpse into their web services department, and subsequently the heartbeat of library services in Hennepin County. We did do social media, and connected with folks on Twitter and Facebook on behalf of the library, responding to blog comments as well. I had had it in my head that this was the type of thing I would like to be involved in with my work as a librarian, and was not surprised when I enjoyed this aspect of the work quite a bit.

Several librarians took some time to share stories and problems with me as I worked through my two weeks there, and the most salient take away that I gained in speaking to the other librarians (in charge of various aspects of the library’s website, like KidLinks, TeenLinks, IM reference or Bookspace) was being able to put together the pieces of the web service pie, as it were. I have spent a lot of time reading, writing and theorizing about what library service on the web, and incorporating social media can look like. It was quite a refreshing change of pace to be involved with actually carrying it out.

And in what was perhaps the most eye-opening experience, we were able to visit the Adult Corrections Facility in Plymouth, MN to conduct a “Read to Me” program with inmates. Talk about doing something. I think Read to Me is a fairly popular idea, teaching parents the importance of reading to their children, often then introducing them to library resources and services in the process. In a corrections context, the inmates would sign up for three one-hour sessions, and during the third session, they can choose a picture book, record themselves reading it, take a picture with the book and then send it all along home to their child all on the library’s dime. I will spare you all the gushing, but suffice it to say that it was certainly the most broadening work experience I’ve had, and also the most rewarding.

Other things of note: if you didn’t already slog through my directed study on social media in the academic library, I would of course suggest that you do so. It’s long, so just read the parts you like. Also, please visit danielhooker.com to see my portfolio and resume, since I just spent an afternoon updating it. There are some subtle differences. If you mention one of them to me, you’ll get a prize. Just kidding.