Photo Competition: Deadline

Get clicking!

When I wrote the instructions for the 23 Things, I had no idea how people would be interacting with the tasks - and it's become clear that many of you are not able to jump straight into each Week's "Thing" at 9am on a Monday morning.

Of course that's absolutely fine - so I'm going to let the photo competition run until the end of Monday 22 April... hopefully that will give everyone plenty of time to put up a photo or two and (this is important!) post it in the 23 Things Southampton Flickr group, with the appropriate tag.

I know I haven't added any competition photos myself - I'll sort that out very soon... I've had a lot of work on, too :)

What You Need To Do

• Join Flickr
• Make "23 Things Soton" one of your contacts
• I'll then reciprocate, and invite you to the "23 Things Southampton" group
• You must then accept the invitation
• You can then add photos to the group - just remember to apply the relevant tag for the competition category you're entering

I apologise that there are quite a few steps - I'm afraid that's just how this process works.

Photography Competition

Take photo, win prize

If you read the instructions for the Flickr "thing" this week, you'll see that I'm running a photography competition. Well, thanks to my wonderful wife, I've now got the prizes sorted out.

From memory, there are three categories for you to submit photos to the competition, and each category winner will get a copy of their winning image in a 4" x 6" frame.

And the overall winner will get in addition the satisfaction of having been selected as the overall winner ;)

Celebration!

Let's face it, it's not always fun & games at work. I guess that's why they call it "work". But every now and then things work out just nicely - after years of struggling against barriers and "no entry" signs, you suddenly find that you're able to do what you've been wanting to do for so long. Those that you've felt have been holding you back, are all of a sudden giving you exactly the tools you need and want.

I'm sure it won't last - it can't, it just can't - so I'm making the most of it while I can. Oh, this feels soooooo good! And you know what? I can't even tell you what it is yet - you'll just have to be patient! So in the meantime, enjoy this wonderful little video...

Me? I'm heading into the weekend with a smile on my face, not worrying about whatever emails I get next week telling me I don't have quite the amount of freedom I think I have right now. But I don't care - that's for next week :)

Mendeley

References to manage? Get Mendeley!

I have to admit that even before we began, I'd already made up my mind about many of the Sot 23 Things resources. I am a geek - I've written blogs & recorded podcasts already; I joined Facebook in 2007 and Twitter in 2009; and most of the things we've looked at so far I'd already tried out, even if I hadn't done much with them. In fact, if it wasn't for the fact that I was asked to write instructions for a few of the "Things", I probably wouldn't have actually followed the Sot 23 Things programme.

But now I'm very glad I did. Because of Mendeley.

For sure, Mendeley fits into the category of "things I tried ages ago, but haven't looked at for ages" - so it's not that I hadn't heard about it. No, it's because revisiting this resource has come at a very opportune moment. In October I started an Open University degree in Computing & IT (I've long since harboured the desire to learn to program properly, I just haven't had the motivation to self-teach to the level I want to achieve).

The OU offers a couple of reference management options and, until now, I've been using RefWorks. It works reasonably well (but not as well as EndNote Web, for sure) - but in my last assignment I needed to three different citations from the same author and year... in Harvard (which I'm disappointed that we use - Vancouver is far superior, IMHO) you're supposed to reference them (Bloggs, 2013a), (Bloggs, 2013b) etc. And RefWorks couldn't handle it.

So I was starting to think that I'd need to invest in my own copy of EndNote - which was going to be over £70 if I waited until the autumn and the X7 version (the annual EndNote update cash cow is somewhat annoying). I had it in mind to investigate Mendeley - but whether I'd actually invest enough time and effort to do it justice, well that's debatable.

And then came Sot 23. I logged back into Mendeley and had a look around. Fair enough - it looked alright. I watched a few of the videos. Hmmm... it all seems to work quite nicely.

And then I discovered that I could download the OU Harvard style.

Suddenly, getting to grips with Mendeley took on a whole new level of importance. Call me shallow if you will, but now I had every reason to take this "Thing" rather seriously. And the more I investigated, the more I liked it. Here we go:

• The desktop application is pretty good. I can't say yet whether I think it's better than EndNote desktop or not - more investigation is required. But it's certainly very usable.
• The web application, on the other hand, is far better than EndNote Web. Much, much easier to use.
• At the moment, I think EndNote wins on the Word integration - the Mendeley equivalent of "Cite While You Write" doesn't have half the features that it's EndNote cousin. But I'll also acknowledge that EndNote CWYW has a number of bizarre "features" (i.e. bugs/design flaws) that Mendeley must be an improvement on.

And then you get to the...

Social Integration

...which is an area that EndNote hasn't even begun to explore.

In my mind, it's indicative of modern business/academic life. Big, old school organisations (like EndNote, like the University) just don't "get" social media. They don't understand how to use the new Web 2.0 tools, and don't think that sharing and integrating via the web is that important.

But organisations like Mendeley are built on Web 2.0 technology. They don't just use it - it's a fundamental part of why they exist. So Mendeley is more than just a platform for managing your references - you get to put up your own personal profile.

You can invite other members of your research group and you can share references and papers, and discuss them via Mendeley. So far, so standard.

But you can also join in with world-wide groups, discussing research topics of common interest. Let's say, for argument's sake, a group on "Open access and libraries". Now, all of a sudden, the social integration starts making a lot of sense - and you can see where Mendeley is doing very useful things that EndNote hasn't even considered.

So Mendeley received a very big "Thumbs Up" from me - I'll be investing more than a little time in this one for the next few years, I'm sure!

Delishless

Have you any idea what this is?

Ahh, the problem with names. You need to be memorable, you need to evoke the right feeling in your target audience. And (here's the rub) if you make any grandiose claims in your name, you'd better live up to them.

A few years back, Mitsubishi released the "Carisma", a car whose own charisma was notable only for its complete absence. Perhaps the idea was that the name would add a bit of personality to a design otherwise so bland it would make beans on toast look like a dinner party triumph.

If so, the ploy failed. It just served to highlight the ultra-blandness of this very average family car. Yes, you have to be careful with names. Which brings me to Delicious. A bookmarking service that allows you to keep your favourites online, accessible from any browser on internet-connected device. It's a great idea, and one I am all in favour of.

But sadly, my experience of using the service didn't excite my palate - in my view, this isn't a gourmet masterpiece - it's more like the half-arsed Come Dine With Me main course served up by the one with the big mouth and no talent for cooking.

What Is It? What Does It Do?

In all the other resources I've looked at for 23 Things, there's been a very clearly signposted set of pages and/or videos that told you what the service does, and got you started with using it. Just look at the introductory videos for Twitter for an excellent example of how to do this.

Delicious? Nothing. The help information is great if you already know what you're doing, and just want to be reminded of how to do it - but if you're a complete beginner, there's nothing that I could see that led you step-by-step through what to do.

Where Are My Links?

So I managed to drag the button onto my Chrome toolbar so that I could add a few bookmarks. I added a few links. I then went back and tried to visit a couple of pages that I'd bookmarked.

...

[Some time later]

...

It turns out that I need to click on the "Remember" menu. Which is odd, because that sounds like it's the place to go to get Delicious to remember a web page, not for me to visit a page I've bookmarked. In the Eurovision Labelling Contest, Delicious scores "nil points".

Editing Troubles

I went back to it this morning and added a few more bookmarks. I tried bookmarking the Uni's web Outlook site. This has a very simple base URL: www.outlook.soton.ac.uk - but if you go there you'll notice that your browser displays a far more complex URL, with lots of session information embedded in it.

No problem - I'll just bookmark it and then edit out the session info later.

Except that when I went to edit the bookmark in Delicious I could edit everything except the URL itself. Now maybe I could do some further searching for how to edit the URLs of Delicious bookmarks, and it could turn out that it can be done... but quite frankly, I can't be bothered.

Bring on Duncan Ballantyne:

"Delicious: Your help information isn't very helpful to newbies, editing links is more awkward and time consuming than in any browser - in short, you don't live up to your name. And that is why I'm out."

Facebook & Libraries

I find the explosion of social media into everyday life totally fascinating - and it's clear that individuals and organisations have a long way to go before we all get the hang of how to use this technology to its best advantage. I guess it's likely that by the time we've got it all figured out, the IT world will have long since moved on to something new and even more confusing!

Think for a moment how far we've come in such a short space of time.

If I summarise some information from this Web Designer Depot page, we get a timeline that looks something like this:

• 2002: Friendster launched
• 2003: Hi5 launched; LinkedIn launched; MySpace launched
• 2004: Facebook launched (initially to Harvard only, then expanded to include other schools/colleges)
• YouTube launched
• 2006: MySpace the biggest social network worldwide; Facebook opened up to everyone; Twitter launched
• 2007: iPhone launched
• 2008: Facebook the biggest social network worldwide

That's a lot of progress and change in the space of a decade - and when you look at the rise and fall of resources like MySpace and Friends Reunited, it becomes clear that nobody - not Facebook, not Twitter - can bank on maintaining their current market dominance without a lot of effort and development.

Now it didn't take too long for companies to get in on the social media act (well, not in comparison to the time it took them to wake up to the web in the first place) - and eventually even libraries got involved. And here's the big question: Why?

Off the top of my head, I can think of three reasons why a library would get on social media:

1. To make sure you "own" your own social media presence, rather than have someone else set it up for you (could be a member of staff... could even be a student)
2. To provide a means of contact for your users
3. To open up a new way of interacting with your users

1 Own Your Own Presence

Extremely important these days. The last thing you need is for an unofficial account to be created, and for people to think it's your official voice. You don't need to do much with your account - the mere fact that it's there is sufficient, with perhaps the odd post or two.

2. Provide a Means of Contact

If you wanted the bare minimum of social media presence, go for this option. You need only do the minimum input to your account - the main thing is to have it there so someone can contact you via Facebook or Twitter if they like.

3. Open a New Way of Interacting With Users

This is the option to go for if you're going to commit to getting properly involved. This option requires full engagement with your users, and with the social media platform. You need to be active, responsive, interesting - and most important you need to engage with your audience. It's simply not good enough to just post a few news stories in a one-way information exchange.

Where Do We Stand?

On Twitter, we've got 1 & 2 ticked - but that's absolutely as far as it goes. On Facebook, 1 & 2 are definitely ticked, and if I was being generous, I might give us half a tick for 3 (but that's being generous).

If we are happy to only achieve points 1 & 2, then job done - we can pat ourselves on the back and get on with other things. A bit like the old portable TV in the kitchen, our social media presence can sit in the corner gathering dust. It works after a fashion, but it's not our main TV, and when that really great programme comes on, we're not all going to head off to the kitchen and sit round the portable when we could be on the sofa in front of the 42" plasma.

But what if we did want to go for Point 3? Well, that would require a lot of work - and it would require us to fully embrace the change in approach that social media dictates. In brief:

• Post often
• Post about what we want our users to know
• But also post things that our users want to know
• Post about what's happening in the library - not just formal events, but day-to-day life
• Post about the public goings-on
• And also about what's happening behind the scenes - the stuff we're doing that our users wouldn't normally know about

And most important of all:

• Be human
• Don't be a bland, boring organisation
• Demonstrate that the library is run by ordinary people, for the benefit of all our users - develop a personality - if we're having a cake sale in the staff room to raise money for a charity, get that on Facebook

People want to engage with other, real people - not faceless organisations. If you want an organisational social media presence to generate worthwhile interactions with people, then it needs to be more like a real person, not a corporate nonentity.

23 Things Preparation Done!

I think that this morning I finally managed to finish preparing the last of the 23 Things tasks I was assigned. Yes, I'm afraid everyone has two more assignments from me - coming up in a couple of weeks' time we'll be looking at Flickr and Creative Commons.

I got the Flickr task sorted last week (though I've yet to work out what amazing prizes I'll be giving for the photography competition!) - and I thought I'd got the Creative Commons task sorted as well. But over the weekend I discovered a short YouTube video that includes an interview with one of the co-founders of Creative Commons, and I just had to add in a link to it.

I say "I discovered" - I mean it got mentioned in the OU assignment that I was putting together over the weekend. This year I started a Computing & IT degree with the OU - and although the first module has been rather basic, it nonetheless been very interesting, and a number of things we've looked at have come in handy for the 23 Things tasks I've written.

I'm not going to add a link to the video here - you'll have to wait until 3 March for that - but I particularly want to mention it because in addition to Creative Commons, it also looks at two other resources: The Creators Project and Kickstarter.

I hadn't heard of The Creators Project before - but it looks fascinating, and I think I'll have an explore of that in due course (I can see our WSA colleagues spending a bit of time on the site, if they've not discovered it already!).

I had heard of Kickstarter before - indeed, I've recently backed a Kickstarter project myself. This is a really interesting way of helping creative projects get funding, and I think it's a wonderful example of how the internet can really help people achieve things that they couldn't before - to the benefit of everyone involved.

In fact, I think it's so good I really want to start up a Kickstarter project of my own. If only there was something I could do that was worthy of becoming a project!

What it really brings home to me is that there are so many things out there on the internet that are deserving of our attention in the 23 Things programme, it's a shame that we can only look at a handful of them.