This week's reading that focused on the use of Facebook left some thoughts in my mind. Greg R. Notess, author of "Forget Not the Forums," caught my attention when he discussed the use of the forum "College Confidential" as a way to get the answers one is looking for regarding colleges. I think forums like this can be of great help when parents and young adults are trying to get a feel for potential schools that the young adult might or will attend. I remember back to when I was looking for colleges...I hand wrote notes requesting information about the college, I filled out my application in the neatest printed hand writing I was capable of, and I asked my teachers at school for help when writing my college essays. Boy have times changed! Parents and young adults can now surpass the formal, printed materials colleges and universities send out as a way to help their incoming or prospective students navigate their decision, and they can get the real low-down on forums designated for this topic. I wonder how colleges and universities react to forums like this? What about information that is inaccurate or that paints the school in maybe an unfair light?
In "Academic Libraries, Facebook and MySpace, and Student Outreach: A Survey of Student Opinion" by Ruth Sara Connell, the focus was on how students use or would use these social media sites in combination with the library. I found that the survey results make the participants seem kind of wishy-washy regarding what they wanted from their Facebook experience with the library. The researcher said there are questions that would need followup as a result of the survey, and these questions left me wondering. For example, one of the questions focused on students who would proactively friend the library but later said they would resent the library using social networks to send announcements...what exactly would the student expect from an organization like a school's library? Unless the library specifically outlined exactly the type of communication it would be sending out via its Facebook page, wouldn't one expect to get announcements from certain types of organizations?
danah boyd's article was most interesting to me not because of the subject matter (which I did find interesting) but for it being an example of what we are studying in this class. I loved how I could link to link to her blog to view or write a comment. I loved how I could link to sources she mentioned. And I loved how she discussed her role as a blogger as opposed to an academic writer in her response to the critiques of her essay. danah boyd really became a REAL person to me through her blog post and her response post. It is interesting for me to hear her explain to the readers how she sees herself as a writer within the different writing roles that she has. When boyd explained in the response to the critiques of her post, "When studying post-structuralism, I was utterly fascinated by the idea of the death of the author. The idea is that once a text is put out there, the author matters not because the author has no control over how that text is interpreted. The weird thing about blogging is that the author is pretty darn present. I'm here. No one seems to realize that but I am. In the last week, I read the thousands of Slashdot comments and blog entries addressing my essay. In most cases, I refrained from commenting though. Instead, I decided to take all of the issues and put them together in a response. This is that response. Of course, that doesn't mean that people will listen.. the author might not be dead but she might be powerless against people's preferred interpretations. And in the world of blogs, verbosity is akin to author suicide. Still, I haven't learned to be succinct." How funny it is that people forget that blogs are active, almost living things...the author is there and is a participant in the aftermath of the posting.
Just a sort of unrelated question...why doesn't danah boyd use capital letters in her name??
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