Driftwood

This is the one I was dreading, the social networking site. I see it as not so much a time-waster, but as a hungry ravager of time, a ruthless agent of procrastination and a depressing symbol of how we now socialise more virtually than we do literally. I am on facebook in spite of myself, and only because I ashamedly gave into peer pressure in the same way I gave in and got a mobile phone, a MySpace page and then a facebook page. Interestingly, Word just recognised MySpace and corrected the capitalisation, but it doesn’t like facebook and wants to separate it into two words... That said there are some nice touches such as setting the language to English (pirate) to make it less boring. If you haven’t done already, try it, it’s awesome; your profile becomes your cap’n’s log, your wall becomes your plank, events become grog fests, news becomes booty and friends become mateys and hearties. There are also some cool ideas such as when you decline someone’s friend request it sends them to the depths, searching is scouring and you don't delete you throw it overboard.

I started on MySpace, and I’m going to regret owning up to this, through a rumour that they were making a sequel/prequel/reimagining of Free Willy (a childhood favourite) with the late great Steve Irwin’s precocious daughter Bindi. I was looking through the forum on IMDb and found out that the star of the original films, Jason James Richter, has a MySpace page as he’s now a bit of a rock star. So wanting to check him out, I signed up. I don’t know what made me do it, but I sent him an email and we have kept up sporadic communication since, bonding over our love of philosophy, the Scottish band Travis and obviously films. Then somehow old school friends found me, which made me build a snazzy profile page and start doing all the quizzes and I was hooked. So when facebook started and everyone abandoned MySpace, I migrated over.

Well that’s my potted history, so onto the future of facebook, and I’m not talking about the film: The Social Network directed by David Fincher of all people and starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield (the new Spider-Man) and Justin Timberlake?! I’m talking about the future of facebook for me. As I said before I find it boring now, at first I searched out people, even doing positive things like confronting my old school bully of 8 years (distinctly unsatisfying as she hasn’t changed and gave me no “closure”), reconnecting with my old best friend of 8 years (wonderful as we put a lot of water under the bridge) and contacting an old crush who I fancied for also 8 years (he’s still as crushable as ever). What is it about that number? I joined groups such as “I judge you when you use poor grammar”, “I will go out of my way to step on a leaf that looks particularly crunchy”, “Firefly is better than Star Wars because sound cannot travel in space”, “Sydney Bristow would dominate Jack Bauer AND Chuck Norris” and old school networks. I also contributed to the “addicted to...” sites and forums set up by fans of my favourite films and TV series such as the much maligned, underappreciated and misapprehended Alias. I posted lots and lots and lots of photos. And then what?

I rarely go on facebook nowadays and I’m looking for an excuse to do so again. That’s why I’ve named this post after one of my favourite Travis songs, as I feel I’ve washed up on the shores of indifference and want to get back out on the open ocean of enthusiasm again. Not sure that metaphor worked, but you get my drift. :-) Plus it fits with the pirate theme I seem to have going on. We already have a library account with 153 “friends” where we post status updates when new books, tutorials and guides are published, as well as important news. I will look into other Cambridge libraries and the like once I’m on the Cambridge network; I was part of my old university network before. Alex Ristea

The one thing I despise about facebook, apart from the way it was created, its creator (loved that Cambridge trounced the Winklevoss twins in the 2010 boat race) and the way it’s become all dominant, pervasive and omnipresent (I don’t like Tesco for the same reasons), is once you’re on facebook, you’re on, there’s no way of deleting your account. It’s scary that facebook users are now so many that they have become akin to the third most populated country in the world. You also get sent emails if you don’t use it for ages or have hardly anything on there; my brother’s experienced this.

As for LinkedIn, one social networking site is enough. I can see if you were thinking of progressing professionally it would be useful, gathering contacts and the such like, it just isn’t for me. Plus I prefer to do that sort of thing in person. I have used the website before, in my previous job as a researcher for an offshoot of EEDA called East of England International; I had to find email addresses for contacts at companies, the marketing director for example, and I went on LinkedIn when I couldn’t find them on their official websites or on databases. I was doing the business development managers’ jobs for them basically. So it has its uses. I guess with social networking sites, you just have to utilise them productively, rather than poking people, playing games and peering into other peoples’ lives. It’s just so tempting though...

To twitter or not to twitter

I've been hoping there's a way round this one, but I can't see how to get out of it seeing as though I can't complete Cam23 without it, so I've created my own personal Twitter account. I've got an addictive personality (I've recently got obsessed with Glee; I spent practically my whole day off yesterday watching it), so that's why I've been actively avoiding Twitter for so long. I'm the same about any new technology: Napster, myspace, facebook... Take mobile phones as an example; I'm still using my first phone, the Nokia 3310 which I got in 2002.

I have been using the Judge Library's Twitter account, but only to post about work information such as new books and things, that's why I haven't felt the need to make my own account. I knew it would happen, that I'd get into it too fast too soon; I started off innocently selecting people to follow, along with the obligatory ones like Stephen Fry, I added John Cusack, DisneyPixar and Peter Serafinowicz. I've just found Miranda Hart too, I adore her TV series and she's always good fun on panel shows, in interviews and as a guest on the likes of the Strictly Come Dancing backstage gossip show It Takes Two. She was awesome by the way. I'm going to stop now before I get in too deep, I've replied to a couple of tweets so I'm being obedient.

I agree with the essay about categorising and tagging as I'm against pigeonholing of any kind. I'm not even sure how useful the subject classifications are in library cataloguing to be honest, I don't use them when searching as they're so subjective, no pun intended. Although I do put them in when cataloguing of course. Therefore I agree with Shirky's comments about how biased it all is. I especially like this quote from the essay: "The essence of a book isn't the ideas it contains. The essence of a book is "book." Thinking that library catalogs exist to organize concepts confuses the container for the thing contained." Jeez, I hate the American way of spelling. To combat the limits of tagging and categorising, I've labelled this post with as many things as possible and deliberately added references to this post to make it as full as possible. I've also dutifully added more tags to my previous posts and I've just found that there is a 200 character limit; it's being pesky about it...

I've been having fun commenting on everyone's blogs. It can take the smallest of things to make me feel the urge to comment, from a picture of a Miyazaki film, to beautiful photos; all it takes is a common interest. I'm loving libgeek's Terry Pratchett titled blog, Ange's Grease-themed blog title and Helen's frequent references to popular culture (told you I'd get my own back).

All this new technology has made me long for the more innocent times when we didn't rely on all our computers and they were just for fun. Anyone remember the Commodore 64?

Writing to reach you

First lines are always the hardest, right? I hope this gets easier as it goes along. For someone who is scared of the blank page, this is quite an undertaking. I have a facebook and a myspace page, so I have done similar things before, but this is... different. Plus I used the standard template for those. For facebook or myspace you never know if anyone is actually going to read it, you're sending words out into the ether. But with this, it's for something and you know a cast of your peers are ready and waiting in the wings to comment.

So, the 23 things programme. I suppose I joined because I like to take advantage of every opportunity that comes my way; I'm on the Springboard course and have done several other of the Cambridge University courses. I'm always on the hunt for new skills and chances to progress. However I also want to integrate myself into the wider community, amongst other Cambridge librarians. I have only been in the job, and the profession, a year and a few months, but I feel I have sufficiently found my feet now (after a few wobbles) and finally feel grounded enough to look up and around at the broader landscape. As metaphors go, I'm not sure how well that works, I hope you understand what I'm on about. That's a great way to end a post I reckon.

Oh and yes, I am a big Travis fan.