My life: September 2014

Wednesday, 17 September 2014

Sharing Blog Posts

Sharing Blog Posts on Twitter Feed

Students must share a blog post to their Twitter feed create a post showing how they did that.

To share a blog post on my Twitter feed I used the following steps:

Opened/viewed "My life" blog http://serenalife123.blogspot.com.au/
Opened/viewed the post that i wanted to share "Celebrating Book Week 2014" dated 21 August 2014
Scrolled to the bottom of the post
Selected the "Share to Twitter" icon
A popup window opened displaying the relevant URL details and asked me to sign in to my Twitter account
I followed the prompts to sign in and this completed the process, the post was automatically displaying on my Twitter Feed.

Sharing Blog Posts on Facebook Feed

Students must share a blog post to their Facebook feed.

To do this task, I opened up my blog and selected the post that i wanted to share. I then scrolled down to the facebook share button at the bottom of the post and selected

Note: i did manage to acheive this task, however i am still working on the final submission of this as although i was able to share a post to my FB activity in my FB account, the activity feed will not display on my blogger, so i'm currently working on getting this right.....stay tuned!

Social Media and Copyright

Created works are subject by law to copyright and sharing content or material via social media is no exception to this rule.

As a general guide and simply put if you are the creator or author of the material including original comments, stories or information, images and video's then you own the copyright and you are free to use the material however you wish. Other people must ask your permission to use the material.

However if you are wanting to use or post material created by other people or organisations then you must seek permission from the creator before publishing it. Generally there are three exceptions to this and they are (University of Melbourne, 2012):

Copyright in the work has expired – generally 70 years after the death of the creator depending on the type of work and if or when it was published
You are using an insubstantial portion – you can quote a few lines or paragraphs of text from a book or journal article, but it is more difficult if you wish to use a portion of a film, image or song. For these, you need to consider how key, essential, important and distinct to the overall work, the portion you wish to use is. As this is qualitative, rather than quantitative, even a really short extract may be considered substantial if it is distinctive or a key part of the overall work. For example, a short scene in a movie that reveals a key plot point or a few bars from a song if they form a distinctive part of the melody will probably be deemed substantial
The copyright owner has given their permission or licensed the work - for example Creative Commons material.

There are also exceptions such as Twitter and Facebook where you can re-tweet or reuse material within those social media tools, but outside of that you need to seek permission from the creator (University of Melbourne, 2012).

Sharing or embedding links to a website is a great feature, but not always copyright-free and material is often made available without permission, so the University Of Melbourne (2012) suggest using the following steps in deciding if material is legitimate:

Link to websites that are reputable, legitimate and/or official. Take care with user generated sites, such as Youtube, as not all users understand copyright and ensure that the material they contribute is copyright compliant
Check that the content and the website have proper attributions and includes a copyright statement. The more detailed the copyright information, the more likely that the website is copyright compliant
Check the quality of the content. Poor quality sound and images may indicate that the material has been reproduced without permission
If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. Use your common sense and judgement, if you find a website with the latest Hollywood blockbuster available in full, chances are it’s not legal.

For further information regarding copyright and uploading material to social media follow the links below:

Online social networking: copyright
Complying with copyright when using social media

References

University of Melbourne. (November, 2012). Social media & copyright.
Retrieved September 17, 2014, from website: http://www.unimelb.edu.au/copyright/information/guides/socialmedialibrarystaff.pdf

Comments: Classmates Blog

As part of our assessment we must include at least one link in a blog post to the blog of another classmate where we have commented on that person's post.

Below is a link to Captain Kahan's blog, where i have made comment on the post titled "copyright on social media".

Captain Kahan's Blog : Comment

FromMelbin: Researchers & social media

Library Related Blog:

Students must include at least one post where they are sharing the content of a post on a library related blog using the share blog feature at the bottom of each post in blogger.

Please find this below!

FromMelbin: Researchers & social media: In early February I was asked to participate in a discussion on the use of social media by researchers for our 2013 Research Week . I was jo...

Tuesday, 16 September 2014

Social Media and Privacy

Privacy can be a major issue when it comes to using social media. Social networking is primarily about connecting, collaborating and sharing ourselves and abilities with each other or like minded people from around the world, but to do this we are often asked to reveal personal information about ourselves that perhaps others should not know.

In this age of social media and Web 2.0 technology comes an era of providing the world with information that leaves us exposed and vulnerable to privacy issues.

According to a 2011 Survey of Privacy and Security Issues in Social Networks paper (Washington University, 2011) among Spam, Malware, Physical threat and identity theft issues the major privacy related issues that Social Networking has created are related to User's Anonymity and User's Profile and Personal information.

The paper identifies that in most cases user's choose to use their real name and details in creating a profile and online presence leaving them exposed to to all of the above named threats. Social networking tools often ask you to provide personal information such as your name and sex, an e-mail address and recovery e-mail details, date of birth and location just to start up an account.

The majority then expect you to fill in a profile disclosing further information on your exact city/town location, school or work details, likes and dislikes, relationship status, even posting images etc and although these details alone seem quite harmless, when you take into consideration that social networking sites are open to the public unless you are savvy enough to set your account settings to private, this allows strangers to access vital information about you.

Not only are strangers able to take advantage of your details, but the social networking sites themselves are able to group, store and use this information for later use and a prime example of this, is when you see advertising on your Facebook page promoting products geared toward your age or sex.

Yet some of those people who use Anonymity are sometimes seen or identified as a threat to young people and or can pose more of a risk to those user's who choose to disclose personal information.

So should a person participate in social media using full disclosure or not? or is the potential price some of us pay for putting ourselves out there too high? Have a look at a couple of the listed links below about social media and privacy issues to make up your own mind.

There is no doubting that social media is beneficial, fun and a wonderful way to connect with each other so perhaps the key to using it well is to be sensible, understand and read up on terms, conditions, account settings and how to use certain tools before considering using the product, don't just dive straight in to it.

Social Media and Privacy information:

Anonymity, Privacy and Security
Cyber Smart
Internet Communications and Privacy Rights

References

Washington University St Louis. (November, 2011). A Survey of Privacy and Security Issues in Social Networks. Retrieved September 13, 2014,

from website: http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/cse571-11/ftp/social.pdf

Monday, 15 September 2014

Social Media Etiquette

How we choose to interact online is as important as we interact face to face. Let's not forget, we are creating an impression and presence for the rest of the world to see us and whether we are representing a business or being our self it is important to know and use acceptable social skills.

Believe it or not! There are general rules and etiquette expectations used in cyberspace and it's referred to as Netiquette.

Netiquette is a set of rules for behaving properly online and include but are not limited to some of the rules listed below (Net Etiquette, 2011):

Treat people as you would like to be treated
Remember that you are interacting with real people and their feelings so it is important not to say anything offensive or that you would not say in person
Be ethical and adhere to the same standards of behavior online that you would in real life
Breaking the law is bad Netiquette so do your best to act within the laws of society and cyberspace
Know where you are in cyberspace because Netiquette varies from domain to domain and what may be acceptable in one, may not be in another, so spend some time observing the domain before participating
Be pleasant and polite
Know what you are talking about and make sense
Don't use offensive language or be confrontational for the sake of confrontation
Share your knowledge, especially if you are an expert
Respect other people's privacy
Be forgiving of other people's mistakes and keep in mind that having good manners yourself doesn't give you licence to correct everyone else

Here is a link to a website that is a useful resource regarding Netiquette rules:

The Core Rules of Netiquette

Whilst the following link is a useful Australian Government resource that addresses the Internet basics including Netiquette Internet basics.

References

Net Etiquette. (2011). The Core Rules of Netiquette. Retrieved September 14, 2014,

from website: http://www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html

Sunday, 14 September 2014

YouTube Assessment

I hope you enjoyed the Dewey Decimal YouTube clip that i posted earlier!

Now I am going to address the assessment criteria below and that means that i will post a link to a library related YouTube channel and embed a video from that channel into this post below.

National Library of Australia Channel : The following is a video clip about whether or not you are able to borrow items from the National Library of Australia.

YouTube Fun!

Ok so i know as part of our assessment that we need to do a post with a link related to a YouTube library channel, but before i post my serious assessment stuff up, i could not resist sharing my favourite YouTube video by a guy who decided to do the Dewey Rap.....I always watch it with joy and think about how much i think the children at school need to be exposed to it.....Anyway check it out, enjoy and let me know what you think!

Libraries that use social media tools

Social media tools are useful for sharing, collaborating and connecting people with each other, businesses, advertising, events and creating awareness of information for all sorts of purposes. Libraries are using a variety of social media tools in many different ways.

An example of this is The State Library of Victoria, who uses Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube in order to encourage people to connect with their website, services, showcase events and photo galleries, to learn about collections, read blogs, RSS feeds, link to other useful information and more. Flickr is my favorite social networking tool used on the State Library of Victoria site because it allows people to connect directly to 2,073 photos from the State Library of Victoria's own collection Flickr.

Noticeably the Victoria University is another example of a library that uses social media. Like the State Library they are also using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, but I also noticed LinkedIn which is a useful tool for publicly posting professional information about individuals or organisations. The following link VU YouTube is a great example of how YouTube can be used in a library. Not only do VU publish video adverts, but it also allows the university to disclose, offer and promote information about the University, the Open Day, discussions, information on studying, blogs, subscriptions, copyright, favorite links to other channels and more.

It appears that all different types of libraries are turning to social media to encourage a connection and to engage with members of the community. As with the above State and VU Academic Libraries, local libraries like the Melbourne City Library are choosing to use social media. Again the most popular and widely used social media tools being used are Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube in order to connect services and get information out there. Twitter is great tool used by the Melbourne Library Service because the Library itself is an extremely community based organisations that supports all sorts of programs and offers large amounts of service. We all know that Twitter is an extremely public tool and that what is posted is meant to be seen, so i believe it is a great tool for the Melbourne Library Service to choose in order to connect and engage with the community. They use Twitter for promoting what is happening in the library, talking about upcoming events, programs, books sales, discussions and more.

Three social media library tools i have connected to are listed below:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofvictoria_collections/
http://www.youtube.com/user/VictoriaUniversity
https://twitter.com/melblibrary

Wednesday, 10 September 2014

My School Library : Overview

A bit about the school I work at!

I may or may not have mentioned in an earlier post that I work in a School Library as a Library Assistant. To give you some perspective on my working environment, I will tell you a little about my school and our Resource Centre (the new fancy name that school libraries tend to be called these days because they are no longer just about books).

Our school is a 8 year old Catholic School in the Northern Suburbs of Melbourne. We have over 1750 co-educational students aged from Prep to year 12. It is a shared single campus library for all students and with only 2 Full-time, 1 Part-time and 1 Head of Library on staff for the Resource Centre we often find ourselves challenged in varying ways.

Of course our Budget is modest to say the least and of course that still doesn't lower the expectation on the Resource Centre to deliver exceptional service. We aim to enable the College community and it's needs as well as providing a positive experience for all.

Our Resource Centre is very large! It was built in 2010 under the Rudd Government education scheme and includes 8 open spaces, 2 class rooms and 2 community rooms adjoining the back of the library.