Week 5 - Social Networking, MMORPGs, Second Life, and Flickr
People are social creatures. Up until this week, we have been talking about things that let people share and collaborate. This week, all the tools we will be discussing are truly social tools. They exist for entertainment and networking. Social networking includes sites like MySpace, Facebook, Ning, and countless others. MMORPGs stands for Massive Multi-Player Role Playing Games. The most popular and well known are World of Warcraft (WoW), EverQuest, and WebKinz. Webkinz is the hottest thing going for tweens. Second Life is not a game, though many place it is in that category. There are no quests; it is meant to be a reflection online of the real world. You can build buildings, buy clothes, visit friends, and attend lectures. Flickr is a photo sharing tool that allows you to join groups and assemble a group of contacts or friends.
Objectives This Week
At the end of this week, you should:
- understand what Flickr is and why it is different from traditional photo-sharing sites.
- understand how "community" is developed in Flickr.
- know how libraries are using Flickr to provide services and market services.
- understand what social networking sites are and how they are different from traditional online communities.
- understand the controversies surrounding social networking sites and actions some schools and libraries have taken against social networking sites.
- understand how Massively Multiplayer Online Worlds work and why they are so popular.
- understand why and how libraries are providing services in social networking sites and Massively Multiplayer Online Worlds.
Presentations
Flickr + Libraries - Steve Lawson, Humanities Librarian, Tutt Library, Colorado College and Michael Porter, WebJunction
Get a Second Life: Virtual Worlds and Interactive Media in Libraries - Kelly Czarnecki, Teen Librarian, ImaginOn, the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County and Matt Gullett, Technology Education Librarian, ImaginOn, the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County
Screencast: Mingle! Mingle! Or, How to Mix with Library Users in Myspace, Embrace Every Opportunity to Get Out the "Library Message" in New Ways and Not Spill Your Drink in the Process ( via streaming server - faster for those on slow connections | blip.tv file - you will need to click "Full-screen" and then click on the little play button in the full-screen window to watch) - Beth Evans, Reference Librarian, Brooklyn College Library
Activities
Because most of the networking sites are blocked, all the activities this week will be about Flickr. If you want to explore Second Lif, MySpace, Facebook, WoW, or any of the other tools discussed, please do so and share you opinions with the group. For those of you that want to try World of Warcraft (WoW), you can try it for free for 30 days.
- Sign up for a Flickr account.
- Join a group.
- Find a friend.
- Write a blog post about the usefulness of any of the tools we have talked about this week. Be sure to include a reasoned argument regardless of whether you found it to be useful or not.
Readings
Social Networking
Joanne Barrett. "Social Networking: A New Tech Tool and a New Security Concern for Teens and Schools." Multimedia and Internet in Schools.
David Epstein. "Cleaning Up Their Online Acts." Inside HigherEd.
Wade Roush. "The Moral Panic Over Social Networking Sites." MIT Technology Review.
Meredith Farkas. "Libraries in Social Networking Software." Information Wants To Be Free.
Danah Boyd. "Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace" American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Flickr
Michael Stephens. “Ten Ways to Use Flickr in Your Libraries: 15 minutes of Flickr.” Tame the Web.
Michael Stephens. “Flickr + Libraries = Scary, Scary, Scary to Some Folks.” ALA TechSource Blog.
MMORPGs and Second Life
Steven Levy. "Living a Virtual Life." posted at New Media Musings originally from Newsweek.
Constance Steinkuehler and Demitri Williams. "Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name:Online Games as "Third Places." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.
Tom Peters. "A Report on the First Year of Operation of the Alliance Second Life Library 2.0 Project also known as the Alliance Information Archipelego." (pdf)
Lori Bell, Tom Peters, and Kitty Pope. "Enjoying Your First Life? Why Not Add a Second? Developing Library Services in Second Life." Serious Game Source.
Constance Steinkuehler and Demitri Williams. "Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name:Online Games as "Third Places." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.
Examples
Social Networking
Denver Public Library - MySpace
Hennepin County Library - MySpace
Schaumburg Township District Library - MySpace
Second Life
Second Life Library 2.0 - Info Island Blog
Flickr
Libraries and Librarians Group
List of Libraries in Flickr from the Libraries and Librarians Group Discussion