Bad blogger

So it seems I have taken an impromptu blog holiday - still have a few things to catch up on if I want to finish and get my hands on the prize! A combination of work and illness have been to blame for my hiatus. However being ill has its advantages, namely lying in bed and exploring the wonders of the net which led me to the following most random tumblr I have seen in a while (and there are a few!). If you have a penchant for either Nicholas Cage or Pokemon then I suggest you check out the following site. 

© 2013 Nic Cage's face on all 151 1st generation Pokemon.

For other random Tumblrs see Weird Tumblrs - it will make you giggle I promise.

Thing 17 - Creative Commons

I must admit that I find anything to do with copyright law a bit of a minefield, especially when it comes to using images found online. With sites like Pinterest and Tumblr encouraging you to 'repin' and 'reblog' it is easy to forget how the image got onto the Internet in the first place, and whether it was properly credited when it was originally uploaded. I often add images to these sites and am left wondering whether it is entirely ethical, or if I am infringing on someone's rights. I feel that I am covering my tracks if I credit the author of the work, provide a link back and add a copyright symbol, but I'm also aware that this may not be enough. For example, for the Flickr exercise I uploaded a couple of pictures of posters I had taken at WSA at the second year Graphic Arts show. Although I mentioned in the description that the photos were from here, and made no attempt to pass these off as my own work, I do not know who created them so I wonder if they should even be on Flickr?  This 'thing' has therefore been something I have paid quite a lot of attention to, and is certainly very pertinent at a time when we are being encouraged to upload images to our blogs. 

Creative Commons is something I have been aware of, but until now, didn't fully understand. After having looked at the site and watched the helpful You Tube video, I set about completing our task 'to find an interesting image and blog about it.' I decided to go a step further and find an image I could modify and use to create my own work. I therefore searched for a particularly uninspiring image, selecting the box 'modify, adapt, or build upon' on the Creative Commons search page, then opened it up in Photoshop. So this jumper that I found on Wikimedia Commons:

By Joan Rocaguinard (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL
(http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Has become this:

This is Bengt. From The Killing. He is NOT real.

To upload the original image I first attempted to copy the HTML code directly from Wikimedia Commons,  however something went terribly wrong in Blogger and I had to give up so instead I have just copied the attribution (which looks very messy). What I am a bit confused about is that although I have modified the original work quite extensivly, it seems that I still have to apply the original attribution, meaning I have no rights over the above work (can someone please correct me if I am wrong or perhaps suggest a better way to supply the attributions?!). 

I also had a look at Creative Commons licenses in relation to Flickr, and discovered that it is very easy to apply Creative Commons licenses from 'Owner Settings' in the sidebar, and also that there are surprisingly, many many images that can be used quite freely, including this rather beautiful Norwegian Fjord below:

Norwegian lake by Kosepote on Flickr.

Again, by copying and pasting the code directly into the HTML, I have the correct attribution and I can feel confident that I have referenced the image properly and have stuck to the terms of the license. Phew!

In conclusion, although I think getting your head around copyright and Creative Commons can be a bit confusing, and with so many different licenses available it is important to pay attention to what you can and can't do, anything that encourages the sharing and use of creative works is worth getting to grips with. I still want to delve a bit deeper into Creative Commons, especially as I intend to continue to blog after 23 Things and want to be able to use images without fretting too much about breaking the law!

Library Related Amusements - No.3

If you haven't already discovered the Awful Library Books blog then you must check it out. I am bemused that some of these books ever get published. I'm also wondering though why we haven't got the following in the library at WSA - surely it would make a valuable contribution to our collection??

The Pantyhose Craft Book
Laury and Aiken
1978
via Awful Library Books.

Thing 16 - Flickr

Floral Composition no:1 © Melissa Donne, 2013.

With so many rival sites offering platforms to showcase creative works, it is hard to choose which one to invest your time in, and indeed new sharing sites seem to be popping up all the time (recently, another photography sharing website 500px has emerged as a significant rival to Flickr). Flickr however has been around since 2004, and remains a key site for managing and sharing personal photographs online. I haven't really used Flickr that much before, as regrettably I don't take nearly as many photos as I would like to. I have also jumped on the Instagram bandwagon (which I prefer in many ways to Flickr), or as one colleague once put it, the app that makes a £500 phone act like a £5 disposable camera. Hmmmm. Where Instagram is useful though is for snaps you take 'on the go'. Flickr on the other hand is for more serious photography, and is used by many professional photographers for the exposure it can bring (no pun intended).

I decided to create a new account as similarly to many of the other 'things' I had already signed up to Flickr. However I wanted to start with a fresh profile and try and explore it from scratch, in case I had missed out on any features the first time around. I added some photos from my Instagram to begin with, which disappointingly when uploaded are so tiny that you could do with a magnifying glass to see them properly (*update - I have since removed these and re-uploaded them directly from Instagram, thereby massively improving the image quality). I then added a few photos from my camera roll which hadn't been edited first, and once uploaded, I liked how these larger images helped my Photostream to begin to take shape. I then completed the Flickr exercise by adding 23 Things Soton as a contact, creating some sets and favouriting and commenting on some photos. I enjoyed looking at other people's photos and again like the social aspect of the site and the fact that you can favourite photos without having to subscribe to the photographer's photostream.

Edited in Instagram, then shared with Flickr.
Floral Composition no:2 © Melissa Donne, 2013

I have actually grown to quite like Flickr and have now downloaded the app on my iphone. It seems to have had a major redesign since I was last on here and it appears far more streamlined, easy to navigate and responsive. I am still using Instagram to shoot photos and apply filters, but I discovered I can share the photos I take on Instagram with Flickr. I ask myself is there much point keeping both apps running, but actually they do serve different functions. Instagram is more 'fun' and is I think for more personal, informal pics (and of course if you don't have a smartphone is utterly pointless!), whereas Flickr has quite a nice interface that lends itself well to displaying your portfolio, if you are a photographer, or indeed if you want to upload pictures of any of your creative work. I certainly intend to keep my account active, and when I get round to taking more photos with my SLR camera and not my iphone will upload these to Flickr - I'm even hoping there may be a winning photo amongst them!

Thing 15 - Library Thing

I am a geek so it was inevitable that I would join something like Library Thing, and this I did, some years ago, not to catalogue my entire book collection, but simply to keep track of what I was reading, had read and wanted to read, and to see what people with similar reading tastes were recommending.  I spent a good few days adding all my books, and continued to add to my catalogue after finishing each book I was reading. As time went on I grew tired of the commitment required to keep an up-to-date catalogue, and gradually my use of Library Thing dwindled. Later on, I discovered Goodreads which allowed you to sync your account with Facebook and post book reviews there as well. By now I had cancelled the email account associated with Library Thing and could no longer access it, so I stuck with Goodreads and built up my catalogue again. When I saw that we could create a Library Account for 23 Things, I decided to re-open the account and found I could import my library from Goodreads, therefore making the exercise much easier. Some of my book covers weren't recognised but this was easily fixed. So I didn't add all these books manually (well not this time although I did once upon a time!). I still prefer the Goodreads interface though, and their Blogger widgets also look more appealing than the Library Thing one in my sidebar. Both catalogues do much the same thing - i.e offer a place to list your books, connect with other readers, recommend titles and post reviews, but I still prefer Goodreads. It just looks less dated than Libray Thing (see below) and it is also completely free (Library Thing is free for 200 books and then you have to open a paid account). 

I'm not entirely sure why I use online book catalogues - I guess I just like to keep a record of what I've been reading, much as you would keep a book journal. It doesn't bother me that it is online (although maybe I get a bit nostalgic for good old-fashioned pen and paper), but it is very quick to add books and I also like that I can see what my friends are reading, as well as what are considered the most popular books at any given time. 

Onto the actual exercise.....

 'Catalogue at least 25 books on your shelves, published in the last decade and with an ISBN, and see how many have fewer than 10 other LibraryThing owners.'

What did I discover??

Well I have a few more than 25 books, and many are not published in the last decade but I did nonetheless discover some interesting facts:

• The book in my catalogue that has the highest ranking in terms of popularity is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone with 71.363 readers, making it no.1 on Library Thing.
• This is followed by 1984 with 45,104 readders, making it no.11.
• The book I have read with the lowest number if readers is Urien's Voyage by Andre Gide with 34 reads.
• I don't have any books in my collection with fewer than 10 other owners - and there I was thinking my collection was quite original!

This has possible been my favourite 'thing' so far, although I now look forward to Flickr and the excuse to take photographs in the name of work, and the little matter of a photography competition....

Thing 14 - Mendeley

This is probably the 'thing' that I have so far spent the least amount of time investigating. Although I recognised the name I wasn't sure where I had heard about it and what it was exactly. It soon became clear  that it was in fact bibliographic software, and therefore not one of my favourite things. In the past I have used both Endnote and Zotero (finding the latter much easier to get to grips with). I developed a bit of a love-hate relationship with Endnote, recognising it's usefulness but wanting to tear my hair out after another failed attempt to get the bibliography to format properly in Office for Mac. 

Mendeley however (like Zotero) has the added benefit that it is free, and ultimately, just looks much more user-friendly than Endnote (which appears quite dated in comparison). I did set up an account, added a few references including journal articles, films and web pages, then imported them into Word and created a bibliography. I was satisfied that I (sort of) knew what I was doing, but I left it at that. If I ever have cause to use bibliographic software though I will probably start with Mendeley this time, rather than wasting my time with Endnote.

If you are interested in comparing the various reference managers available then MIT libraries have produced the following helpful page. I personally have no real call to use bibliographic software at the moment, but simply being aware of its purpose and how it is used, I think is quite valuable to anyone working in an academic library. At least now if someone drops Mendeley into a conversation (why would they?!) I will know what they are talking about.....

Thing 14: Delicious

I first heard of Delicious when as a postgraduate student it was recommended to me by a lovely Liaison Librarian from WSA. After discovering what it had to offer I did try and factor it into my research 'toolkit,' however, I never really got to grips with it and just eventually stopped logging in. Returning to it now, I don't initially see any major improvements, and certainly logging in proved to be challenging (although I think this was down to a browser compatibility issue). As I have no academic project on the go, and couldn't get into my old account I decided to just pick a topic and see what I could find. It may not be any surprise to know that this ended up being Scandinavian related! Below is a screen shot of my home page which does look nice and organised with a three column layout featuring my tags, links and comments from other Delicious users. 

What surprised me was that as I got into the process of adding links, creating tags and building tag bundles, I became increasingly taken with Delicious. It was easy to find what I was looking for and and although I currently use Bloglovin to follow my favourite blogs, which works well for me, I have to use bookmarks to save other sites I want to revisit. With Delicious I can save everything in one place. It is not the most aesthetically pleasing site, but at least it is easy to navigate and looks 'clean,' (unlike Netvibes).

So from initial annoyance (logging in), to feeling unispired and unsure as to what Delicious could offer me, I know find myself wanting to explore it further. My conclusion then? A (tentative) thumbs up for Delicious!