Social Networking

Last week as part of our Blue 2.0 assignment, I signed up for a MySpace account and invited a few relatives and co-workers to be my friends. At first I was thrown off when "Tom" appeared as one of my friends, and I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to delete him. I finally asked one of my student assistants for help and he said that Tom showed up everywhere and it wasn't something to worry about. I finally took the time to read Tom's page and discovered why he was there and how to delete him. What a waste of time! I'm not really into this social networking stuff, though it was interesting to see my son and my niece's pages. I added a few pictures and tried out the calendar. My account is myspace.com/mapsref, but I've put quite a few restrictions on it. Next I'll try out Facebook.

Podcasting

Recently I saw a Google Maps Mania post about the Google Maps Voice Recorder, so I decided to try it out as my podcasting assignment for Blue 2.0. The voice recorder allows you to record your voice and associate it with a marker on the map. There’s a demo site at The Google Maps Voice Recorder

Just search for your site on their Google map, place the pin, click the “Call in Audio” button and a phone number and PIN number pop up. Call the number and enter the PIN number. After a short audio advertisement you're prompted to record some audio about that map marker. I chose the King Library Addition as my place and recorded a brief description of the Geology Library/Map Collection. Click here to check it out. Just click on the marker to get the prompt to play the audio.

Libraries on YouTube

If you think you would like to work in a university library map collection, check out "Your Map Collection : A world of maps of the world" created by the staff at the University of Washington Libraries Map Collection. Though they begin with a rather dry explanation of the variety of materials you can find there, they then move on to a more humorous introduction to their staff and their duties – like purchasing maps from a “vendor” who sells maps out of the trunk of his car, supervising students assistants by using a spray bottle to keep them on task, answering the common directional question of “Where’s the bathroom?” and the joys of map filing. Though it’s a bit long (16:49) and in two parts, it’s a creative introduction to what working in a map collection is all about. I totally recommend it!

Flickr

My first Blue 2.0 assignment this week dealt with posting photos to an image hosting site. I've been playing around with Flickr and uploaded a few pictures from one of our visits to northern California, see My Flickr pics. It took me a while to get used to the format. I also tried adding one of the photos to a Google Map. I'm more familiar with Snapfish at http://www.snapfish.com/ I like Snapfish because my family can upload their photos, I can select pictures to add to my own online albums, then order pictures that I can then pick up and pay for at my local Walgreens.

As for library related uses of an image hosting site, perhaps someone could create an album/directory of library staff members or track the status of the King Library renovation in photos.

Putting air photos on the web

Today I experimented with a Google site called Picasa in an attempt to find a method for posting Lexington air photos on the web. The following link is to a 1937 air photo of Lexington, showing the UK campus, the Red Mile and south Lexington. Lexington 1937 I'm excited about the possibilities, though there are limits to the size of the files.