Impress Your Professor: The Web and Us

The first edition of this semester's Impress Your Professor series comes from the 2009 August/September issue of the ASIST bulletin. As many of you have noticed,  information is becoming more social. By social, I mean we are interacting more and more with each other through  networking, commenting, tagging, etc. Not all social websites are successful (Re: the ongoing Facebook v. MySpace debate, among others). In his article, "The Information Architecture of Social Experience Design: Five Principles, Five Anti-Patterns and 96 Patterns (in Three Buckets)," Christian Crumlish attempts to lay out a successful plan for drafting a successful social website.

While Crumlish lays out a structured list of dos, donts, and shoulds, I was struck most by the philosophical tone of parts of the article. Social media is not just an application, people use it discover concepts of self-identity. On the web, we can personalize anything and everything. The web is no longer a "thing" we visit. It's become a place where we create extensions of our personal selves. We form new communities that reflect back on our lives outside of the social web.

Crumlish's article is chock-full of good stuff - take a look!

YouTube Tuesday

Bookmarking the Web
Social bookmarking is gaining in popularity. It's easy to use, can be accessed anywhere, and encourage collaboration.



Library Stereotypes Can Be Funny
What happens when Mr. Bean visits his local library?