The Liminal Librarian

I finally got on twitter last week — @lib_rachel if you want to follow my oh-so-exciting tweets. Yes, I’m slightly (OK, majorly) behind the curve. I do like it, as I was afraid I might — the reason I successfully avoided twitter for so long was not because I doubted its value, but because I feared getting involved in yet another online timesink. One of the things I wonder about our time online — on twitter, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on whatever social networks we choose to give our time to — what’s it taking away from? The time I spend blogging is time that in pre-Internet days I would have spent elsewhere; the time I spend on Facebook or Flickr or twitter — no matter how much I multitask — has its own opportunity cost. Not that social networks don’t have their own rewards, but I do think sometimes about the trade-offs.

Now I must go be conference Rachel, so I’ll leave you with that half formed thought and invitation to connect on twitter. And if you want to follow my totally-unrelated-to-anything-here bargain blog, follow @mashupmom — which basically just retweets the blog entries. So if you prefer twitter to RSS, enjoy!

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I’ve always had a soft spot for Montana. Less so at the moment, now that I’ve been reading on newlib and ReadWriteWeb and, oh, everywhere all morning about the city of Bozeman’s new application requirements — guess my long-term plan of working as a Montana librarian in retirement someday is going on the back burner . Not a joke:

Applying for a job with the City of Bozeman? You may be asked to provide more personal information than you expected.

That was the case for one person who applied for employment with the City. The anonymous viewer emailed the news station recently to express concern with a component of the city’s background check policy, which states that to be considered for a job applicants must provide log-in information and passwords for social network sites in which they participate. (emphasis mine)

What the? Login information? Passwords?? Really? I thought perhaps this was one of the news stories outlets tend to accidentally pick up from The Onion, but look at the background check form on the city’s own website:

Please list any and all, past and present, personal or business website or web pages, memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.
Website/Domain Username/Member Log-In Password (if applicable)

Whoa. (Not only that, they only give 2 lines for it — perhaps they don’t hire web designers or, I dunno, people who use the Internet in Bozeman.)

So, now let’s start taking bets on exactly how long it will take before public outrage makes them change the form. I say: Within the week. You? Update: I guess I was a week off !

I’ve been playing happily with FriendFeed for over a month now, and quite enjoy it — the ongoing stream of conversation and links there, combined with the pokery of Facebook, give me the feeling of coming home to the multiuser chat boards of the early 1990s. I also enjoy the serendipity; I keep a FriendFeed window open that I dip into from time to time during the day, and always see at least one or two links/comments worth further exploration (or simple amusement!).

One thing that nags at me, though, is the way in which using multiple sites fragments conversation. Someone might comment on my Facebook status on FriendFeed, for instance, but my Facebook friends won’t see that comment or be able to join in the conversation. Someone might comment on a blog post on Facebook, but readers over here will miss that discussion entirely. (Let alone, I haven’t even made it to twitter yet — and probably won’t, since I can’t afford another time suck!)

Over at Walt at Random, Steve Lawson comments on the usefulness of FriendFeed, saying in part:

You will see that some blog posts that got very few comment have actually sparked a discussion on FF. Also helpful for blogs like Caveat Lector that don’t have comments enabled.

I pull blog posts into both FriendFeed and Facebook, and notice that posts (and Flickr photos, for that matter) that garner no comments at “home” may get comments elsewhere. This is neat, but again leaves no record here and doesn’t inspire blog readers to join in the conversation.

Ironically enough, I recently saw a link to the following on FriendFeed (there’s that serendipity again…)

Dear Blog,

I feel like I have neglected you to hang out on Facebook and even sneak off with Twitter.  I am so busy these days communicating about what I am doing, thinking, eating, watching etc that I really have little time for a deeper relationship like ours.  Oh, blog.  You were my first love (if you forget my youthful romance with bulletin boards, chat, and texting).  Well, in any case you were my only serious commitment but that was before I met Facebook. You see, on Facebook people actually communicate back to me but almost no one ever posts on you my dear blog.

I’ve been trying to get back to my own Dear Blog, but admit that the ease of a 2-second status update on Facebook is generally a more seductive pull — and that friends (or “friends”) over there are likely to comment, where here it’s a more hit or miss proposition.

Where these thoughts are leading, I’m not yet sure. But, feel free to subscribe to me on FriendFeed, and I’ll likely return the favor — and comment here, there, and everywhere!

Have you all seen Mygazines.com yet?

Mygazines is your free place to browse, share, archive and customize unlimited magazine articles uploaded by you, the Mygazines community.

If you prefer print to video, you can now upload scans of your magazines here, rather than uploading stuff you’ve grabbed off the DVR to YouTube. They also incorporate some social networking features, and if you create a free account you have the ability to create your own “mygazines” of favorite articles, in addition to browsing articles and reading entire issues.

(It’s heinous slow at the moment; they have an “experiencing technical issues” note on the homepage. But fascinating, nonetheless.)