Midwinter musings

Yeah, I know this is a month late, but here's my Midwinter wrap-up.

Friday: OCLC Symposium - "Who's Watching Your Space?"

I have seven (7) pages of notes from this program. It is one I'll still be trying to process six months from now. The streaming video is now available on the OCLC website if you're interested in watching. Honestly, if you're interested in social networking, particularly theory, it is well worth your time. Something Howard Rheingold said that stands out for me in my notes (especially after reading this Tribune article*) is digital natives need to learn citizenship, both within the digital world and outside of it.

The intermission videos showing people's answers to questions on how to describe social networking, privacy, security, communication, and life without social networking were very intriguing. If nothing else, watch the streaming video for those.

danah boyd's insights into social networking and the role it plays in people's, especially young people's lives, gave me some food for thought on how we serve kids, teens and young adults. How do we as a digital population create privacy in a world without walls? I live a great deal of my life online. I try to create a buffer/privacy zone in some of those areas, but I know that area would easily be eradicated by a persistent individual. In the scandals of teens and MySpace over the last few years, we can see the truth of the statement that the binary concepts of public and private have blurred. It is much easier now, than in the past, to make available information on the public web that would have only seen the light of day on pain of death.

Marc Smith from Microsoft rounded out the trio of presenters. His work with mobile social software (or MoSoSo as he called it) is a bit scary, but makes total sense. One of the first things he talked about was that footprints are aggregatable and and analyzable. Considering the statistic he later quoted, that if you own a mobile device, you will likely leave behind three terabytes (yes, 3,000,000,000,000 bytes) of information, why not try to collate and interpret that information?

I'll finish with a quote from either Marc or Michael: "The need for information guides is ever greater." Above that in my notes I wrote: libraries do not equal librarians. These are concepts we will *need* to keep in mind when communicating with the public and legislators on why we are vital to an information literate society.

For Saturday and Sunday, read the archives.

Monday: NMRT Executive Board meeting

We had two guests at the board meeting, the candidates for ALA President-elect. I would say both seem qualified, but I think Jim Rettig was a bit more prepared than Nancy Davenport to talk about his platform and how it related to members and potential members of NMRT. I highly recommend you check out their websites for more information, and if you have specific questions to contact them.

What did I ultimately get out of the conference? A lot. Even something I in no way expected or planned for: a committee appointment within RUSA CODES. That happened because I showed up at one of the committee meetings and contributed to the discussion. The chair remembered me and recommended me as someone to approach for further involvement. This is why I heartily recommend going to conferences if you can. The connections you make at conferences will put you in contact with opportunities.

*If you don't have a Chicago Tribune registration, check out Bugmenot's offerings.

Some mini-updates

1. I've moved into my new apartment and started my new job. However, I'm still on the lookout for the notebook with all of my notes from Midwinter in it. As I'm not quite done unpacking I have hope that it will show up.


2. I noticed today that younglibrarian.net was being forwarded to the old Geocities site. I apologize for this and it should be fixed within the next 24 hours. It looks like when the domain name expired earlier this year, it reset to the original settings when I renewed.


3. Thanks to Blogger forcing me over to the new version, I now have an additional e-mail address you can contact me at. The contact form on the site will send you to young_librarian at yahoo.com, but you can now also use younglibrarian at gmail.com. If you have New Members Round Table or other ALA related questions, please use nmrtkatie at gmail.com.

Look for some thoughts on Midwinter and professional involvement next week. How in-depth will depend on if I can find that notebook.