Social Software

&

Intellectual Freedom

"A social networking site is an online location where a user can create a profile and build a personal network that connects them to other users."

For more examples see Wikipedia's list of social software and list of social networking websites.

flickr? wikipedia? group blog? del.icio.us?

• nothing to install, nothing to buy
• collaborative environments
• "get laid or get paid" (*)
• what's changed while you're away? (*)

"The Achilles heel of social networking technology: privacy. The intensive data mining and background snooping required to develop an accurate picture of social networks is likely to make many citizens (and employees) uneasy."

[cite: Business 2.0 - 01nov03]
Social network analysis first entered popular consciousness in 1967. That's when Harvard psychologist Stanley Milgram asked a group of volunteers to forward letters via acquaintances to a stockbroker who was identified only by his name, job, and general location. Milgram's "it's a small world after all" conclusion was that instead of taking dozens of hops, as expected, a typical letter reached its destination in just six steps--giving rise to the now-famous "six degrees" theory of social connection.

• Facebook - 42 million users (*)
• Flickr - ??? users. All of Yahoo, for starters
• MySpace - most popular social networking site ever, even if it's in decline (*)

Privacy policies: Facebook, MySpace, Flickr

1. Users of social software who are the library's patrons
2. Users of social software who are the library's employees

The ALA has guidelines on intellectual freedom and privacy.

• OPACS (sample policy)
• email (sample policy)
• IM (sample policy)
• Google toolbar (*)

This will affect our abilities in the areas of

• Outreach
• Reference
• "User-generated content"

• We made a promise
• We model decent practices
• Special digital divide considerations
• Recombining data leads to things we may not have thought of (1, 2)

• constitution - privacy expectation (more)
• COPPA (more) - minors
• HIPAA
• state library privacy laws

• Sample privacy policy

"Example Library may collect Personally Identifiable Information through online forms, such as forms to register, order, contact us, sign up for a Newsletter, or the like, through your user profile or through your posts in blogs, on a bulletin board or on a comparable experience space on Example Library's web site."
explain: data collection, sharing, retention

explain: which data you do this with

• personal
• relational/transactional
• behavioral

(more)

• Define your terms for novice users
• It's okay to set guidelines and acceptable use policies "we allow" in addition to "we don't allow"
• It's okay to moderate
• Update as necessary, but try not to be reactive

• UC privacy policy pages and other library examples
• Social software policies

other people's presentations

• MySpace Social Networking and Its Impact on Library Services - PALINET/John Houser (ppt)
• Privacy and User-Generated Content - Lauren Gelman

more social reading

• Social Software in Libraries by Meredith Farkas
• Pew Report: Social Networking and Teens
• Does what happens in Facebook stay in Facebook - viral YouTube video, solid info
• Anatomy of a "social"-ite - tools I use

organizations

• EPIC, PRC, Stanford CIS privacy category

Jessamyn West is a community technology librarian in Vermont and the editor of the weblog librarian.net. She teaches email classes for seniors, builds tiny websites for tiny libraries and advocates for sensible technology use for everyone.

IM her at iamthebestartist.

This presentation was created in HTML using CSS. There was no PowerPoint involved in this presentation except as a nagging bad example. The layout and stylesheet are available to borrow via a share and share alike creative commons license. See source code for details.

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