My first entry in this blog is about social networking: what it is, how I currently use it and what I hope to gain from completing INF506.
To me, social networking today refers to the method of creating communities and communicating on the Internet. It is creative and collaborative in nature and allows users from all over the world to engage in forging relationships and responding to new content and each other. Another feature of social networking today is that it not only text-based: technologies allow social networking to include images and videos as well as text and sometimes even 'mashed' together.
I currently use Facebook to communicate with friends and family overseas, including sharing photos and interesting stories from news sites. I also use it as an organisational tool in planning events and get-togethers with local friends and sports teams.
I also use Dropbox to collaborate on documents and share files with my family.
Goodreads is also useful to keep track of what I have read, discover new books to read from following the actions of my friends (on Goodreads), participate in discussions about my favourite books and find out what is popular and new in different genres and for different ages.
I follow blogs like ALIA Sydney and New Grads to keep up-to-date with what is happening around me professionally.
Through studying INF506 I expect to explore further social networking platforms, discover their benefits and drawbacks in terms of implementing them in a library setting, and learn what cautions need to be understood before using social media in a library - especially policies and best practices.
