Thing 22 Mobile Things

I certainly agree with the point made about using mobile counterparts because of convenience. When i used to blog news more frequently, i found more time to do it on the blogger app and via twitter. Just the other day i explained to my partner that i didn't bring my camera to the ballet because i wanted to put our picture up on Facebook as a way of saying we were there and damn it with the quality.

As i explained in a previous post about instagram, my phone although smart, is very silly about things such as being able to store messages and other things on the massive memory card instead of saving them to the limited phone storage meaning that sometimes my phone registers as having no space when i delete a ton of things. Therefore mobile app downloads dont really happen for me, but i will have a look at the google store and see whats on offer in the areas that might be useful; meetings, presentations, libraries.

That said, i'll used the app version of  Office suite, or at least the basic package, is rather useless outside of reading documents and pdf - it has no edit or create features that i could find. That said, there are mobile versions of apps that i've used that i've found very useful (email, facebook, blogger) albeit with limitations (no way at seeing junk emails, no way of editing checkins etc once posted, no minimise to move between the internet and blog post).

I'm sure the apps mentioned could be useful in the future, if you had the time to use them frequently. For example, one of the first things i thought of with Gum is that you could scan the barcode of books in the library and users would know you had it if they were looking at it in a bookstore. As i've said on previous occassions, with these things, its a matter of prioritizing what areas you need more modern imput and working continually on that.  Beacons also sound interesting but as with a lot of these types of things, patrons need to have to be tuned into the item in question - in this case bluetooth. Bluetooth is something i myself only turn on if i'm sending or receiving something from a friend or family member. But that's just me, so they definitely could be of use.

One app i already have that would serve some of the functions mentioned in previous posts about images is snapchat. It's popular enough for students to more than likely already have it and as i have it, its a quick and easy way to keep students interested in the going-on at the library. It's temporary nature has both pros and cons though.

The temporary nature of the photos may line up a bit with instagram's disabling of the 'save photo' function which i imagine may help with issues to do with labelling your images with creative commons as for the main part, images show up for a few seconds and cannot be saved. Obviously more sophisticated phones can screencap the snapchat, but on average even if they did it would not be a problem. Its also an app that you don't need to buy and there's no real issues of storage space as the pictures disappear. 

It does mean that your notifications and updates arent available for ever, so that picture you took of a new item or opening hours will dissappear and the information may go too quickly for patrons to read in time. Patrons who do not look at your snapchat every day may miss things. But i myself and many others do look at them every day, as these types of things become a bit addictive. As i said before, a lot of young people do use snapchat already so this might be a good way of updating your patrons about your library and could be beneficial is used correctly. 

If i were to consider this going forward i would use it for the following things; updating students on new titles, any temporary changes to the opening hours, added features to the already available electronic resources,  the library itself and its facilities. The temporary nature of the photos may be a selling point for encouraging patrons to appear in the images. It could also be a way of updating students on the current space available in the library, meaning that part-timers can check before they leave the house how busy the library is that day. Also libraries that have more events may find it a useful way of demonstrating the events that happened. It could be away of connecting the departments within the college by allowing each department to take over the snapchat for the day, talking about the types of things they do each day and introducing students to staff and services available. On that note, it might also be a way for the wider library-interested community to get a feel for what the librarian does.

The downside is that, like most social media, this is something that needs to worked on daily to keep snapchat users interested and its not always possible to find something to post about every day. But it is quick enough to take a picture and write a short amount of text so with a bit of creativity, it could work well.

Thing 18: Communicating through photographs

I love communicating through pictures. I'm the type of person who loves leaving a picture with no caption and having people guess whats going on. Or, embarrasingly, loves announcing a dramatic hair style change by not telling anybody about it beforehand and then posting a 'look at me' type picture. I used to not be so hipster and petty. I used to hate pictures of myself. But then, you see i got a taste of people caring where I went, what i wore and who i went with when hanging with some unashamedly camp fellows. It's eased off a bit in recent months, but for awhile (and snapchat is partially to blame) I got a lil bit obsessed with photographing everything i was eating, every place i was and every cute animal i saw. It just became habit. I think my phone not being able to handle the update to Snapchat saved my soul just a little bit.

But i've gone a bit off topic. I've used Flickr a bit, mainly in an observational way but i've never used Instgram (you don't want to know the un-pc alternative name i have for it, though this particular group that should be offended named it). I have however used pictures to communicate whats new in the library, primarily new books, and i added some pictures of the library to our own page after our previous librarian left because i felt it needed more colour. Therefore i can understand how Flikr might be useful to tell the library story - i have no problem with people saving pictures which i understand as the only benefit of Instagram except filters, though i'm willing to give both a go.

Flikr is something i can across, like most things, through fandom, where other fans had posted film set images or fan art. It also somewhere I used recently to look at pictures of a marathon i was very proud my sister took part in. I didn't know that it could search for creative commons pictures so i now realise one particular advantage of using it in our field, particularly with regard to reference questions we might get about copyright free images. It is also, as i've said in previous posts about images, a good way of sharing event pictures and its useful that a group of people can post the same place. Who would ever need more than a terrabyte of storage! At least not for quite awhile! Tagging and gathering images into topics is a good tool - though people may vary in their wording - so maybe only use our own Library field standards if possible? Then the interactive nature of the site allows users to add their own tags thus broadening the findability. I certainly agree that photographing fragile items is a good idea - much like leave no trace with nature, you can take a memory of the item for more to see without exposure to more people.

It's hard not to get sidetracked with all the groups and topics and albums and chatrooms (oh and the metadata!) but i finally got to the task at hand. I thought the NLI photostream was a good place to look for a photograph, particularly since i love old photos and they saw in their Flikr commons statement that none of the photos have copyright only attribution. I scanned it abit until i found the photo below. It reminded me of myself posing with a friend of mine - me awkward and my friend posing like a pro. It was only after i saved it i realised something crazy - the awkward guy has the same surname as me! Major General Ennis on the left. I kind of want to find out if we're related now, and the NLI is a good place to start.....

Instagram is something, ever by its name, that gives me the feeling of a hipster app trying to be cool and cultured by using something like anything ending in gram. It also throws up associations of selfies, ridic filters and apple products, but i have decided to approach everything with an open mind. But then i realised you need to download the mobile app for it to work. My phone doesnt have that kind of space, no matter how much i delete - will i be failed on not competing this task? Would that be fair as not everyone has a smart phone?

I guess i'll enquire and find out - returning to this task at a later date. I have enjoyed looking at New York Public library account - those book covers connecting with the people behind - never gets old.

I think instagram is a bit flashy for our library, though it might help connect with the younger undergrads and i've yet to really look at it. Flikr would work for us because there's lots of embedding features and you dont need an account to view the images. I think we could use it to regain that student updating service we lost with a more awkward Moodle website  - on the old website it was designed with a front page that was useful for posting information and updates as well as a more useable library page but with the new website there seems to be more restriction on who views what version of the front page and its harder to work out how to post things there. Also our institutions marketing team has taken over other roles as late so cant spend as much time updating about the instiution as a whole on the institution twitter.

A flikr account could be useful for posting images of new items in our collection, promoting services and displaying those posters i like making that we cant put on the  wall in the new building because of new paint etc.