Twitter

Quantum (our invisible Library Cat) has set up a twitter account - with a little assistance from me. We tried yesterday afternoon and the network or perhaps the intertubes themselves were sluggish and it didn't seem to take but this morning everything went clickity clack.....well except I didn't remember our passwurd and had to get them to send me a chance to change it....which worked well.

Surprising number of cats on twitter.Perhaps as Rachel calls them - these "mini-blogs" just beg for playfulness.  We also decided to follow some library twitter accounts to see what sort of thing they tweet.

big discovery - you can say quite a bit with 140 characters.  Not the information Haiku struggle we were expecting.

Social Networking

I was encouraged to get a facebook account when I was on Strike.  I didn't find it too useful at the time and discovered - it is nay impossible to delete a facebook account afterwards. So I deleted everything I had uploaded - and posted a message that I had "left facebook"  but I still get the odd email from someone wanting to "friend" or advertise something even though it is several years since I logged into it.  I guess I disliked how it just added event advertising clutter to my inbox.

I looked at the demographics of  orkut and noticed there are not enough people in my age set using it to show up on the bar graph so perhaps it's a new trick few of us old dogs are learning.

OTOH I sometimes enjoy seeing the tweets that are embedded in some of the blogs I like to visit or news sites - they sort of remind me of that cute little "today's smile" joke box on the front page of the old globe and mail.  What I find really lame are the twitter sites that people of importance have set up because it is the trendy thing to do but don't bother maintaining - or only tweet such safe things that you might as well wait for their annual newsletter. They tweet formal announcementish things that I would expect to find somewhere on their blog or website like "events" or "press releases"

Twitter seems to work best in very specific communities of interest -  How could a library best use this form of communication?  Maybe immediate things like "our photo copier is out of order - the closest one that works is in the Blah Library."  or "will the person who spilled that latte all over the serials reading area table find somwhere else to study?" - okay maybe not that.  ;-)

Using Flicker

Well whatever was causing problems went away and I was able to upload and play around with flicker.  I think it is an invaluable tool for informing the world about invisible library cats - so that's something - when April  1st lands on a Friday it is safe to talk about these things.

George the Library Cat

At this link: "http://www.flickr.com/photos/christchurchcitylibraries/3394740380/"
you will find this lovely photo of a Library Cat: George who was cat in residence at Canterbury Public Library from 1963 to 1976 in the city of Christchurch.


Here is another photo of George that I really liked which appeared in the Christchurch Star Feb. 21 1975.



we don't have any photo's of the Natural Sciences Library Cat "Quantum" because she is invisible.

And an appropriate book

On Photography by the late Susan Sontag is a very thought provoking treatise on the uses of pictures. When I think how exponentially the number of photo images has increased since this book was written - it sort of boggles my mind.

flickr as a lurker

I have enjoyed finding things in flickr over the years - especially when relatives post photo streams of my great nieces and nephew - wonderful tool for sharing family photos around the globe. Especially for me since none of my family lives in Saskatchewan - or the prairies.

I have never been tempted to share many of my photo's before this exercise because - 1. I take really dull photos which only really appeal to me, 2. see 1. 3. Years ago when I took up photography (using a dark room and all the chemistry involved) it was such a complex process and every shot you took had a cost attached even if you bought bulk film (which was beyond my level of dedication) and processed it with a contact sheet instead of prints. (really this paragraph IS going somewhere) I had the rules instilled into me that were articulated in this assignment - ie you need permission to take pictures of people and to publish or post them. In fact we were also aware, us photography buffs at the time, that it was very rude to take pictures of people of certain ethnicity and we should be very sensitive to cultural attitudes towards cameras.

A few years ago ( OKAY about a decade ago ) one of my friends complained bitterly to me that she HATED how people with digital cameras at conferences felt they could just shoot random pictures of participants and audiences and post or publish them. Yet we all seem to do it. Only at the culturally sensitive events do they announce that you can request the photographer remove you from any pictures prior to posting or publishing them.

So I like taking pictures of animals and inanimate objects - no permission documentation required

Flickering access

So I am caught in a revolving door - I bravely filled in the option to set up my own flicker account to share a series of photo's showing evidence of alian life in the Natural Sciences Library. Cool I can use my google account to set up a flicker account. But everytime I try to sign in - it tells me that I have signed into Yahoo successfully. However the connection between my google account and my yahoo account has failed so please sign out and sign in again with the google account. Same message every time. (maybe I should be using the beta version of the April 1st GMAIL Motion or Google Docs Motion - (very cute - I like the pictures) I fear it will be gone April 2nd.)

Maybe the network is a little busy or something - I will try this again. Meanwhile I will try and see if I can find some more evidence of alien life here ;-)

UPDATE - we have contact!/