What To Look Out For In Tech In 2015
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-media-publishing-tools-news
Facebook Introduces New Tools for Media Publishers: These new Facebook media publishing tools allow you “to target posts, remove posts that are no longer relevant and identify popular links that you haven’t shared.”
Facebook Makes Improvements to Insights: These include improvements “to Domain Insights to show how pages and social plugins drive traffic to websites.”
Facebook Updates Search: Now it’s “easier to find the posts that have been shared with you.”
Facebook Brings Trending to Mobile: Now “making it easy for people to explore stories from different sources.”
Twitter Introduces Tailored Audiences From Mobile Apps: “A new way for advertisers to create targetable audience segments based on mobile app actions such as an install, purchase or sign-up.”
SlideShare Releases Analytics to all Users: As a SlideShare user, you can get “deeper insight into the effectiveness of your content through the release of SlideShare Analytics.”
Google Updates Hangouts App for Android: To “make it easier to express yourself, and have more fun along the way.”
YouTube Adds New Feature to Help When Choosing a Track: “You can search the YouTube Audio Library to determine how using a particular track in your video will affect it on YouTube; specifically if it will stay live on YouTube or if any restrictions apply.”
Tumblr Introduces New Explore Button: “It’s kind of like search, but for when you can’t think of anything.”
Google+ Supports a Number of Ways to Express Gender Identity: “Now, the gender field on your profile will contain four entries, ‘Male,’ ‘Female,’ ‘Decline to state’ and ‘Custom.’”
Facebook Revamps Slingshot: “A simpler, cleaner, more fun Slingshot.”
Foursquare Unveils the All-New Foursquare for Windows Desktop/Tablet: “It’s got an all-new look and feel to help lead you to places you’ll love.”
Here are some interesting studies to note:
The Top 14 Social Media Metrics Tracked by Marketers
40% of Facebook Accounts That Represent Fortune 100 Brands Are Unauthorized
PlayBuzz Tops Publishers on Facebook in Shares for November
Here’s a cool social media tool worth checking out:
Workflow: “Your personal automation tool, enabling you to drag and drop any combination of actions to create powerful workflows.”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141209145608-52594–everyone-is-replaceable-and-other-business-lies
Only fearful managers say “Everyone is replaceable.” Fearful managers say other hateful things, too, things like “I don’t pay you to think” and “That’s my decision, not yours.” Those fearful statements make it easy to tell which managers are deserving of your talents and which aren’t.
My note:
This line “Everyone is Replaceable” is ascribed to Stalin. In 1939, when he was sending his top officers to the Gulag, later not able to stop Hitler’s 1941 invasion.
When I heard the same expression from my former boss, I was thinking about Sting’s song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNt5iK8EuAU
I was pleased to read the article and I agree with the ideas laid out.
However, it was an eye opener to read also the comments. I realized that the “managers” (even if some of them claimed they are “leaders”) are very critical toward the ideas. I realized that throughout reading the article, I was identifying myself with an “employee,” not the “manager” view point.
It is sad to see how critical the “managers” where toward the article, how behind they are the times; since the technocrat management is passe and people now long for a “human” leadership (Friedman’s “The World is Flat.”)
I was also flabbergasted to read the comments of all these experienced administrators, who cannot see the forest, only the three. Is it cultural? Generational? Gender-based? Whatever it is, it certainly does not paint pleasant picture for the work environment around us, the employees.
http://content.easybib.com/tips-for-teaching-digital-information-literacy/#.VH4eeTHF_To
Digital & Information Literacy Lesson Highlights:
http://content.easybib.com/digital-literacy-and-web-literacy-whats-the-difference/
http://content.easybib.com/resources-for-teaching-digital-web-literacies
http://content.easybib.com/the-challenge-of-information-literacy-in-a-time-of-social-media-and-pervasive-information/
the challenge of social media with respect to information literacy is that networked individuals are continually bombarded with information. Thus, information literacy’s importance must make the leap from the academic world, where purposeful information search is the norm, to “real life,” where information continually competes for the audience.
http://content.easybib.com/infographic-information-literacy-issues
http://www.rochester.edu/pr/Review/V68N1/inrev15.html
How can academic libraries best help students sort through the growing thicket of online information? By Stanley Wilder
The premise of information literacy is that the supply of information has become overwhelming, and that students need a rigorous program of instruction in research or library-use skills, provided wholly or in part by librarians.
The idea behind information literacy is that our typical freshman is drowning in information, when in fact Google provides her with material she finds good enough, and does so instantaneously. Information literacy assumes that she accepts unquestioningly the information she finds on the Internet, when we know from research that she is a skeptic who filters her results to the best of her ability. Information literacy tells us that she cannot recognize when she needs information, nor can she find, analyze, or use it, when she demonstrably does all of those things perfectly well, albeit at a relatively unsophisticated level.
Simply put, information literacy perceives a problem that does not exist. Furthermore, it misses the real threat of the Internet altogether—which is that it is now sufficiently simple and powerful that students can graduate without ever using the library. That is unfortunate because, for all its strengths, the Internet cannot give students the high-quality scholarly information that is available only through subscription, license, or purchase.
As Roy Tennant noted in the January 1, 2001, Library Journal, “only librarians like to search; everyone else likes to find.” Any educational philosophy is doomed to failure if it views students as information seekers in need of information-seeking training.
Information literacy is also harmful because it encourages librarians to teach ways to deal with the complexity of information retrieval, rather than to try to reduce that complexity.
“The library is a place where readers come to write, and writers come to read.” Dow casts students not as information seekers, but as apprentices engaged in a continuous cycle of reading and writing.
Librarians should use their expertise to deepen students’ understanding of the disciplines they study. My note: ant that’s why LRS needs area specialists, not traditional librarians.
The library must also do a better job of reaching more students, more often. Librarians need to use their expertise to make the library’s online presence approach the simplicity and power of the Internet.
http://projectinfolit.org/
about early adults and their research habits
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/access/white-paper-social-media.pdf
#tfsocialmedia
Social media objectives:
- promotion
- collection management tool
- Outreach
- teaching and learning
Opportunities and challenges
- opportunity to build a sense of community between the library and its users
- the variability of skills across library staff for using social media effectively, striking the right tone between professional and personal, coordinating activities across the institution to avoid duplication
- maintaining visibility for the library brand and copyright issues relating to hosting library resources on social media sites
Policies and management:
- Librarians are divided on the benefits of introducing formalized social media policies and plans. About a third of libraries responding to the Taylor & Francis survey had a policy in place, but over 40% had no plans to introduce one
- Some believe that representing the library as a professional function with a
consistent tone is the priority, while others believe that a more human approach is important, with individual staff free to bring their own ideas and personalities to social media activities.
Effectiveness and assessment:
- difficult to prove return on effort and that the time required to do this was a major barrier to more comprehensive analysis of impact
- framework for evaluation, so it is likely that assessment against commonly agreed metrics will become an increasingly important part of social media activity within the library in the near future
Current Social Media Practices:
- In a study from the mid 2000s (Cantrell and Havens1 ), most library directors in the US when questioned about social media said they did not think that libraries had a role in social networking
- A more recent study from 2012 (Kai-Wah Chu and Du4) shows how use of social media by the library has now become mainstream. In this survey of libraries in Asia, North America and Europe, 71% were found to be using social media tools with a further 13% saying they planned to use them
Advantages of using social media
n Financially the costs of using social media are perceived to be low;
n It requires little training;
n It promotes library services and disseminates news quickly, delivering this information more directly to library users;
n It increases engagement and interactions with library users;
n It helps gather feedback to enhance user services;
n The promotion of library holdings via social media can help increase usage of content;
n It enhances communication both within the library and with other departments;
n It can be used for outreach activities through onward sharing, well beyond the institution itself, helping build connections and reputation more broadly
Social Media Objectives: graph on page 8 of the PDF document:
A To promote events
B To promote library services
C To promote resources/collections at the library
D To update on library refurbishments
E To promote new acquisitions
F To promote library guides, exhibition guides
G To connect with new students joining the university
H To engage with the academic community
I To connect with the wider community beyond the university e.g. the town in which the institution is based
J To connect with distance learners
K As a customer services tool- complaints, suggestions, enquiries, feedback
L To highlight subject specific information
M To connect with potential students
N As a teaching tool to promote information literacy, technology and writing tips (not library based)
O To promote courses
P As a research tool to locate official documents and studies
From UK-based focus group: “The library is a programme, not just a building.”
Channel preferences: Graph on page 10 of the PDF document
SOCIAL MEDIA USES Table on p 13 of the PDF document
Twitter n Distribute library news and information
n Provide customer service
n Build connections with researchers
n Build connections with other librarians and institutions
Facebook n Distribute library news and information
n More social and less formal than Twitter – share photographs and run competitions
n Arrange events including tracking RSVPs and sending event updates
n Engagement with students
Pinterest n Promote general library collections, digital and archive special collections and information literacy
n Set up of online repositories for students to pin researched references as part of
collaborative group work
n Display book titles to save time browsing and promote new titles
n Provide an arena for students and course leaders to pin reviewed and recommended reading
for a particular topic
n Develop communities with other online libraries
YouTube n Streaming film collections
n Instructional ‘how to’ videos teaching information literacy skills and how to use library
services and resources
There are also a number of other social media products that are being used by librarians that reflect regional
preferences and the need for the specific functions offered by niche applications.
Collection usage and discovery: Graph on p. 15
Teaching and learning
From US-based librarian interview: “The trend in education now is to create environments that foster collaborative learning. Faculty have ditched textbooks and course management systems in exchange for a Facebook page for their class, or a wiki, or a blog. These online environments are fun; students already know how to use them and are more motivated to comment, discuss and share in these environments than a dry CMS.”
Social media policies and management, p. 18
73% of respondents stating that they believed more roles dedicated to social media would appear in the library in the future.
Effectiveness of social media
From UK focus group: “We keep track of something particularly successful, then we redo the campaign 6 months later.”
From US focus group: “We have very few interactions with anyone on our Twitter feed.”
“Twitter is definitely the best platform, because we hashtag all of our posts with the keyword
of the publication, and so for the academic audience, once they click it’s going to pull up all
of the similar publications under that topic.
Promoting library social media channels
From UK focus group:
“We retweet each other to encourage new followers.” My note: Suggested by me regarding SCSU_Library for Twitter and Pinterest and SCSUTechinstruct but “considered” (in local lingo, slow death of the idea)
