Facebook

Not much work required from me for this Thing, as I've been a member of Facebook for about three and half years now. I've found it perfect for staying in touch with people and sharing photos, but the novelty of not-quite-spying on primary school classmates (after all, they know what they're making public!) and looking at blurry and vaguely embarrassing photos of my friends has long since worn off. Gone are the days when I could spend hours facebook-stalking, finding more groups to join, and link-hopping until I found myself reading conversations between perfect strangers. Interestingly, a YouGov survey I took last week asked me if I am getting bored with social networking sites, which suggests that I'm not alone.

As for libraries on Facebook, that's a difficult one. I've been a member of the 'Duke Humfrey Appreciation Society' and 'The Bodleian's Upper Reading Room is Hallowed Ground' groups for years, but never expected or wanted any interaction with these groups. Moreover, it was clear that these were fan groups (from the days before pages), created by readers independent of the libraries themselves, and I would feel disturbed if the libraries did try to do something to entice me in. I've seen several pages created by libraries to represent themselves, and whilst they have fans, in the same way that I joined the two above to show appreciation, I've love to know how many people actually want/take something from these pages other than a sense of connection with others, and the joy of giving something the equivalent of a thumb's up.

The Queen's College has what I consider to be a terrifying page, with accessions lists, links to SOLO, Jstor, COPAC and lots more, but whilst it has nearly 2000 fans, I wonder how often these functions are used. I have to say it would never occur to me to go to Facebook to look up a book, and, when I was a student, if I'd come across one of the search widgets whilst on facebook, I doubt I'd have used it. I may be looking at Facebook for work now, but back in the day, if I was on Facebook then I was Putting Off Work, and wouldn't want to be made to feel any guiltier than I already did by being confronted with the very thing I was avoiding.

Book Tech Support

Well, this was a Thing I was already very familiar with. I can't say I've ever used it for work purposes (not quite the same as not using it at work, but never mind), and having looked at the uninspiring material on Youtube Edu, I'm not sure I will.

I did find a very amusing video called All Souls College - if you want to see 9 minutes of someone videoing parts of the college, zooming shakily in to one tower, then out, then back in again at the other, and similarly at the reredos, then enjoy! I especially like the opening scene where the camera zooms for ages...at Exeter College!

Still, my time wasn't wholly wasted as I found two of my favourite book-related clips:



and from the brilliant Mitchell and Webb - this is hilarious, but only if you've ever caught yourself doing it. Otherwise, it goes straight over people's heads. Personally, I think flank-patting should be introduced university wide to speed up book retrieval...

(if you do have a look, apologies in advance for the earthquake survivor gag, which obviously isn't appropriate at the moment)

Codcasting?

I've subscribed to a few podcasts, but haven't had chance to actually listen to any of them yet. From the BBC, I went for Front Row highlights, as a programme I always mean to listen to, but never do, and In Our Time. This is a favourite of mine, especially as this week's programme is on an Early Modern topic. This felt somewhat artificial, though, as I already subscribe to the email which lets me know when a new programme is released anyway. I couldn't immediately find anything of interest on podcast.com or Podcast Alley, but might have a closer look another time.

Still, the University lecture podcasts were good for a giggle. Before I actually went there, I thought 'I bet all the English lit ones are by Stuart Lee', and I was pretty much correct! In fact, I remember him telling us he was recording them for podcasts way back when I was doing my Old English Mods paper in 04-05, and although they've been re-recorded htis year, I'm sure they're basically the same so if I have the urge to revisit the Battle of Maldon or Dream of the Rood, I'll have the bizarre experience of listening to myself listening to a lecture...

One of the only two non-Old English items is a series by my own Masters supervisor on early modern drama - she was one of the best lecturers I heard, and they're on early modern drama, so I'll try to listen to them soon. Still, these are complete series, and aren't going to be updated, so it seems a bit pointless to actually subscribe to them - I know they're there now, and that's enough!

I can see that the Bod has done some Bodcasts, but I'm not sure that the Cod will be producing any in the near future!

Not too tasty

I'm pretty sceptical about the usefulness of Delicious for me. I've added several of my favourite websites, and added the History Faculty to my network. However, I have a lot of static bookmarks on Mozilla that I use on my laptop, and I've arranged it so my most frequently used ones begin with unique letters, so Hotmail is the only H, and Googlemail the only G, etc. This means there's a big time/hassle difference between going Alt+B+[letter] and having the page instantly load, and going to Delicious, signing in, finding the pages I want and opening them in new windows, as I usually want several at once.

I suppose there might be occasions when I'm at an unfamiliar computer and would want them, but a quick google search would do the job just as well, as I only have a small number of sites I use all the time. I'm not actively looking for new sites to visit, so whilst I might mine the HFL page for some ideas, I don't habitually need to find more 'delicious' websites to sample all the time.

As for library pages, I don't think Delicious has (or will) become well-known enough for it to be worthwhile. I've been asking quite a lot of people, mainly students, and no one I know outside of library work has heard of it, or of social bookmarking. I'd be very interested to hear about students who are using it, and do know all about it, though, so if anyone has had a different experience, please do drop me a comment!

I couldn't resist...

Magdalen
Originally uploaded by Fiona_at_New

...messing with Magdalen. As my college (New) has a friendly rivalry with Magdelen (something to do with rowing, the King of Sweden, and New just being a generally superior college...), I couldn't resist playing with this picture - not sure how this superpower would help me at work, however!

Oxford in the snow

Oxford in the snow
Originally uploaded by Fiona_at_New

This was going to go in the previous post - I cropped it, sharpened it, and added a border, but as I said, I was pretty happy with it beforehand!

Tactical Error

Krakow
Originally uploaded by Fiona_at_New

The small selection of pictures I uploaded to flickr were ones I was really pleased with - I'm vain enough not to want to publish blurry attempts to get my friends all in one picture, and all those night shots that didn't quite work out (there are enough of those on Facebook, anyway!).

That meant, though, that when it came to editing on Picnik, there wasn't very much I wanted to do to my favourite photos!

Still, I changed one of the ones I showed below to sepia, as you can see.

I usually pride myself on being able to work out how to do computery thing just by trying things out, or, if all else fails, reading the instructions. I can't, however, work out how to
a) drop photos from flickr directly into my blog
b) put more than one photos into a blog post, as I'm doing this directly from flickr.
c) save the photos on flickr which I edited via Picnik, back onto my computer.

Any suggestions? Perhaps I'm just expecting things which aren't possible, but I'm getting very frustrated!