Flickr

I took a look around at some of the API's that are available for doing fun things with photos and I created some trading cards of Coulmbia U rowing highlights, mostly becuse that is what I have the most pictures of. You can view the cards here. I can see that if you take a lot of photos and want to be creative with them, there are many opportunities to do so. (Thing #7)

The Net Generation

I was reading an article in the March 2009 issue of American Libraries (Joseph Janes, "Make Way for the Net Generation") that discussed Don Tapscott's book, Growing Up Digital, and learned that people age 11-30 spend 25% less time watching television than their parents and 8 - 33 hours/week online. That translates into a full time job for some. According to the article, the NYT summarized Tapscott's eight norms for this group as follows: 1) they prize freedom; 2) they want to customize things; 3) they enjoy collaboration; 4) they scrutinize everything; 5) they insist on integrity in organizations; 6) they want to have fun even at school or work; 7) the speed of technology is normal; 8) they regard constant innovation as a fact of life.

As a profession we talk about and attempt to incorporate these norms into the way we work with each other and with the constituencies we serve - and some we have. That's a good thing because it means that when libraries are staffed mainly with members of the net generation, these norms, will in fact, be the norm. What comes next, I wonder. (Thing #8)

Back to the Beginning

Despite the fact that the "23 things" are described with ordinal numbers, I have found that the way down the web 2.0 road is not very linear. After surfing around the web for a while visiting Flickr groups and blogs, I decided to take the checklist approach to Learning Web 2.0. I have completed things 1 - 5 and in the midst of completing the Flickr activities. I set up an account and uploaded one picture-it looks a little familiar, no? I Have two contacts and joined a public group. As a librarian, I've enjoyed the discussions around "tags" from the information retrieval perspective. From the very general--wedding is in the largest type--to the almost nonesensical used by people to retrieve only their own images -- like the guy who posts a daily photo of the necktie he's wearing. (Thing #6)