Report: Part A

Evaluative Report Part A

Whole undertaking INF506 I have constructed and maintained an online learning journal utilized a Blog, completed a Facebook case study at the Sydney University libraries and used delicious to join an online learning community while constructing a small personal library of tagged bookmarks. In the following Report I will closely examine my learning experiences with each of these social media.

Delicious and Diigo

I found both delicious and Diigo to be engaging applications that have great potential to support my learning activities in a networked information environment. I set up accounts for both. I found Diigo to be the most enjoyable to use of the two. I was able to download a useful and convenient tool-bar for bookmarking, archiving and sharing material directly from the web. It also has a number of engaging screen casts for delivering online tutorials for novice users like me. However Delicious is by far the larger of the two social bookmarking applications. The learning communities and online libraries of tagged material they have created that are also on Delicious.

Both applications facilitate the arrangement of material drawn from the web into personal and community libraries with their own specific folksonomys or tagging practices. To my mind this seems to be a most convenient and efficient method of organizing a modest collection of resources from the web into searchable library of resources for small online learning communities. I think formal taxonomies are better suited to the larger institutional and social context. I constructed a small library and played around with the tagging resources in both applications. The tagging suggestions given were useful. These facilitated some uniformity and discipline in individual tagging practices.

Libraries have started to investigate the potential for integrating client tagging of documents into their catalogues in order to allow learning communities to construct their own resource sharing modalities, vocabularies and cultures. In this way information agencies can experiment with hybrid catalogues which support both formal taxonomies and user/community generated folksonomies.

Facebook

Facebook like many other social media sites, now attract some of the highest number of users on the web including yours truly. I have had an account for a number of years now and regularly use it to network with friends. However I rarely use it for professional purposes. So like many others in the information profession I was skeptical of its usefulness as an online learning tool. Out of interest I undertook a case study into Facebook at the University of Sydney libraries for INF506. I also joined the INF506 Facebook group.

The INF506 Facebook group certainly proved to be a very useful tool for keeping me informed of course related news and events. Even if I was on Facebook for other purposes, I was able to keep abreast of course developments without having to open another window and log into the CSU website and subject portal. The informal social nature of the site also seems to facilitate a relatively relaxed and open avenue of communication between the more active group members. I certainly saw the potential of this to reduce barriers to information sharing and by implication aid group learning. However it was the course news/events that where regularly posted on the wall that I followed reasonably regularly on the groups Facebook page.

The utilization of Facebook as a tool for institutional outreach has certainly been recognized by information professionals and academic libraries alike. Go to where the clients are and actively take advantage of an existing cost effective marketing platform for your institutions services. The university of Sydney libraries have set a page for this very purpose. The page has performed to expectations and the goals expected of it even if these expectations and goals were not very high. With respect to applications that support socially networked learning communities I have found that Wikis or social Book marking applications have a greater potential for bringing people and documents together in dynamic and interesting ways.

Blogger

During the course of undertaking INF506 I maintained an online learning journal using a personal blog. The advantage of the Blogger application is it is both freely available and easy to use and can be learnt in a relatively brief period of time. This application presented me with few barriers for publishing content on the web. Documents could easily be checked and edited or multimedia elements added where appropriate into Blog posts. The blog also supports Tagging folksonomies so visitors to the blog can search for posts via relevant tags. However the success of Blogs like any other publishing enterprise depends on attracting and retaining readers which will depend on the quality of the content and also effective syndication. Needless to say I did not succeed in attracting any readers.

Libraries and librarians now frequently use Blogs to communicate with the general public on a range of topics and issues. The former commonly use blogs to market news, events or collections to the broader public. However setting up effective syndication is very important for getting and retaining an audience of readers. Allowing users to easily set up RSS feeds have become both very popular and common as a result. Librarians on the other hand frequently use blogs to network within the broader community of information professionals. Reading the blogs of knowledgeable information professionals remains a great learning tool for those just entering the information profession as well as source of useful links and professional information.