LinkedIn: Another SNS

For about a week now I have been following the LinkedIn social networking site and noting how it applies to libraries. LinkedIn, which was briefly mentioned during class, is a social networking tool designed for librarians, and other related professions, to network themselves and to stay abreast of their colleagues work. As far as the site’s usefulness to libraries, I would say other than recruiting professionals; the site is geared more towards librarians. Although, LinkedIn can be very attractive site for a library looking for a skilled professional since the site allows the user to post their works and interests.

Linked has various features that allows a person to showcase his or hers work. The SNS asks for specific details about the persons schooling and place of work, such as the name of the school, place of the school, year of graduation, and degree. The same questions are asked about person’s current employment; the name of the company, place, title, and duties are all asked. It also allows a person to post their past employment history, any specialty’s they have, blogs, groups or websites the person follow, along with various other items. LinkedIn also includes special features that allows postings of SlideShare and Google presentations, polls, blogs, and a Reading List by Amazon just to name a few. Basically, you are posting (or advertising) your resume and interest online for potential employers.

Obviously LinkedIn was not created with privacy in mind. About the only items the site does not post about a person is their personal address. Of course, one can list false information, but as I have learned, there is no point in joining this network if you are going to list false information. The whole point of the site is for networking yourself and searching for jobs.

I admit, I had troubles accepting how public this information is until I started thinking about our profession and our overall use of the web. If we look back on our education and daily professional lives, we will see that often the information posted on LinkedIn has already been shared to the public. While attending Pratt, I have frequently been required to follow library related blogs. A few common features the blogs included were information on the bloggers background: their current employer, their title, their interest, and other blogs they follow; basically, all the information being listed on LinkedIn. The same thing is true about guest speakers and lecturers, they almost always note their background, interest, title, and at times, their educational background is also noted. I guess what I am trying to get at, is that while LinkedIn is a social network with very little protection of privacy, it just reflects the atmosphere we live in today.

Lesson Plan

I always find this first stage of choosing a topic the most difficult (other than presenting of course). I am still undecided what direction I would like to take for my final project. I have never done a lesson plan before so I should be grouped with someone who has experience. My general interest is in public libraries. I would like to do a lesson plan aimed at adults or young adults. Listed below are a few ideas I have come up with so far. I am open to ideas if anyone has any.

• I am currently interning at Brooklyn Public Library in their Education and Job information Center (EJIC). Since I have been there, I have had the opportunity of observing some of their outreach programs. One of the programs involves teaching teens how to prepare for a job. It focuses on resume preparation, presenting themselves, and how to use the resources at the library in their job search. PowerPoint is the main method of instruction. I think it would be neat to bring some sort of media into the instruction but I have no idea of how to do it.

• I have also been playing with the idea of a creating a lesson plan on evaluating websites. With how widely used the web is for research, I think it is important we teach people how to evaluate these websites.

• Another idea I had was to teach some sort of oral history. I was thinking the lesson plan could involve teens creating a YouTube video about their lives. Not sure exactly how this would work either, but thought it might be kind of fun.

This is all I got so far.

Random Thoughts

For this week's blog I thought i would discuss some random thoughts that I have been having regarding Flickr, Facebook, and other social networking websites.

I was having a conversation with some coworkers the other day about joining a particular group on Facebook. We were discussing why each of us decided not to join the group, which basically amounted to all of us deciding that it would not be in our best professional interest. During this conversation, one of my coworkers stated she did not have a Facebook profile and had no intention of setting one up. She said, she had a Friendster account when it came out, then set up a MySpace page after everyone told her she had to check it out, and is now being told she has to set up a Facebook profile. As she put it, "no way, not again." But this got me thinking about how fast technology changes and how we are always playing catch up. As we join and quit (or more appropriately discontinue using until forgotten about) these social networking websites, what happens to the information we save, transfer, and share. When we join these websites, we post pictures, blogs, videos, we share personal and professional information. Coming from an archivist and a librarian's point of view, how do we insure vital information created through blog postings, image sharing, and so on, is being preserved (or properly disposed of). Will we later discover information, that at the time of its creation was deemed either unimportant or was forgotten about, that turns out to be historically important. It may seem unimportant, but you never know when a blog posting might be the beginning of the next big invention. You just never know. So how do we properly organize, save, retrieve, and delete the vast and uncontrolled amount information being created over the web? How do we control the web while keeping it free and open?