After reading the articles by Peter Fernandez, I was left surprised by some of what I learned. In "Online Social Networking Sites and Privacy: Revisiting Ethical Considerations for a New Generation of Technology," I encountered the term "Illusion of Privacy" for the first time. Previous to this class, I knew that there were issues with privacy when using sites like Facebook; however, I thought the issues had to do with people simply seeing what you posted. I didn't realize that data mining existed. I didn't realize that if a librarian was chatting with a patron, that the patron's confidentiality was being compromised because the conversation could be culled by organizations looking for information as a way to advertise, for example. I was also surprised by Facebook's own data that revealed that 25% of their users cannot find the security settings. Wouldn't Facebook want to improve this so that their users could find this more easily? Reading this made me wonder about the ethical workings of a social network on behalf of the network's creators/executives.
Next, in "Privacy and Generation Y," I was shocked when I read about Facebook's attempt to change their Terms of Service--specifically when they tried to say that ALL content posted (information, photos, videos, etc.) would be owned by Facebook. I was happy to read that this didn't fly with its users, and as a result, the Terms of Service reverted back to what it was. I know that this isn't a totally new idea...I once sent in a video of my dog--rather funny--to America's Funniest Home Videos. With this, I had to sign over rights to the video stating that I could not use the video for any other commercial purposes (or something along those lines). To me, that was no big deal. It was just one video, one time. I can't imagine the same thing happening with Facebook. The difference to me is the way people use Facebook, and how often they use it. It certainly is not a one time thing like sending in one video with hopes that I would win $10,000!
Finally, in "Balancing Outreach and Privacy in Facebook: Five Guiding Decisions Points," Decision #2--Patrons as Co-Developers stood out. The more I read about Facebook, the more I realize what an enormous undertaking it is to manage a Facebook page for an organization. How can a librarian manage this in addition to his/her regular duties? The librarian would need to spend a pretty big amount of time monitoring the site. I would be worried about false postings that might put the library in a bad light or postings that might use bad language. I would worry that the site might appear to be less professional if things like this happened. How much control would the librarian have in fixing bad postings? Would managing a Facebook page for the library be a bigger headache than it's worth?
In addition, reading the posting about ebooks on Library Law Blog was a good lead in to watching the presentation "Free Culture: The Future of Creativity, Collaboration and Knowledge." I tweeted about Free Culture, so check them out @jgongoleski, and I did use the #LSC597 hashtag! Yeah me! I started watching the video "RiP! A Remix Manifesto," which Elizabeth Stark mentioned in her presentation. So far, it's very interesting. Take a look if you are curious.
Survived this week, and still on top of my insane workload. Hope you all are doing well! Enjoy!
As future librarians, the comments you make about time constraints and the level of control with a library Facebook page is worthy of consideration.
ReplyDeleteHopefully,before "jumping in" to these new social media tools the professionals did some research and networking with others to be aware of the issues and the institution of some sort of policy..
Good luck with your work..Loraine