Social Network Comparison

Social networks can serve a variety of purposes from general to targeted communication. As Facebook has grown it has evolved from a solely social connection, mainly for young people, to a platform for communication among a wide variety of users including individuals, businesses, and groups. Depending on a users' "likes" their news feed can be filled with news from friends and family, local and national news, advertisements and promotions.

While Facebook is wide-reaching, sometimes a more targeted network is better suited for certain communication.  A particularly focused social network is LinkedIn -- designed to promote connections based on professional experience. I have been aware of LinkedIn for quite a while, but  only recently created a basic profile. With only a few years of library experience, I hadn't felt the need for a professional social network account, but now that I've begun a MLS program, I can see that having a way to connect with and share ideas with other library professionals will be useful. For example, LinkedIn would be useful to keep in touch with classmates after a course ends and we no longer communicate through coursework. For IUPUI's School of Informatics and Computing, maintaining a social network presence can build awareness of its programs and serve as a common digital meeting place for faculty, staff and students in its varied programs.

A few months ago my husband set aside some time to enhance his LinkedIn profile with a more detailed explanation of his experience and a greater effort at connecting with colleagues. He quickly re-connected with a former colleague who happened to be looking to add to his staff and wanted someone with particular experience and a known work record. Although they had lost track of one another, LinkedIn provided the forum to reconnect and, in this case, resulted in my husband joining his former colleague's new company. A professional social network like LinkedIn seems especially useful in a career area with a lot of mobility, like engineering project management. My husband and his colleagues truly have a network that exists outside of their current employers and being able to stay in touch is very valuable as they end up moving between employers or acting as contractors depending on the location and time frame of particular projects. LinkedIn provides a useful and appropriate forum for sharing professional information.

Minecraft in the Library

Minecraft is by far the most popular game of the half-dozen available for play on the X-box in the branch where I work. The disc makes frequent trips to the cleaning machine and has been replaced several times when it cracked or just wore out.

Its popularity is challenging our generally "hands-off" approach to the X-box -- patrons may choose from among the games we have designated for in-house play, only one game at a time can be taken from the service desk, we'll get the system started but are not game experts. These general policies don't take into account our patrons'  desire to save their Minecraft creations. Recently the system's available memory was too full for another of the games to play, so everything was erased. We had some very disappointed Minecraft players.

While I have not played Minecraft, I did understand and sympathize with our patrons'  plight. I have been aware of, and at times a number of years ago, immersed in talk of Minecraft as the parent of two early adopters. My oldest son is not just a digital native but a a natal digital native -- he has an innate understanding of technology and was drawn to this game early on. He was intrigued with the story of its sole creator sending this game out into the world. His younger brother is much less interested in gaming, but was drawn to the ability to build and create, describing it as "electronic Legos on steroids."

Once the game became more "corporate" they lost interest as it moved away from the need to plan and strategize to build and protect resources to a more cut-throat survival format. But judging by the continued popularity of the game and books related to it, they seem to be Minecraft outliers.

Social Networks - To Facebook or Not to Facebook

For years I was a Facebook resister despite all the people telling me I had to get on Facebook. Normally being told  I "have" to do something that is clearly optional is not an argument I take seriously. Eventually I gave in to my brother's plea that I sign up so my friends and classmates who frequented his business in my hometown would stop asking him, "when is you sister going to get on Facebook?"

So nine years ago (I had to look to find out when I actually joined, April 2007) I created an account, added a few of my real-life friends, and eventually even dug up an acceptable profile photo. At first my relatively slow-moving news feed just served as brief relief from scanning middle school drivel and all those duck-face photos I encountered when spot-checking my kid's account.

Over time more friends and family appeared, and I began to appreciate being able to keep up with their life events even though we are geographically scattered. Then, somewhere between the "takeover" of Facebook by adults and the deluge of cat videos and political rants, Facebook launched groups.

Again, at first I wasn't sold but as the number and intensity of kid activities ramped up, I came to view Facebook groups as a time-saving gift from the digital gods. Facebook groups made communicating with individuals involved in an activity so simple. I became silently impatient with adults who refused to join Facebook and wanted individual emails. Who has time to wrangle an unwieldy email list when I can quickly post that last-minute schedule change to the group?

Interestingly, it seems I've re-created my slow-to-adopt Facebook strategy with Twitter. I made an account several years ago to be able to see one thing which I can't even remember now. Late last week a friend sent me an early morning Facebook message, saying "Congratulations" to my son. She saw his news on Twitter. My son on Twitter? I know he doesn't have an account.

I signed into my never-used feed and after poking around a bit found his high school principal had tweeted congratulations to him for an award he had won. I guess maternal vanity finally wore me down. I am now following the principal, the school, the school corporation; my older son's university, his college within the university and its marching band; the college my youngest will attend in the fall and its athletic programs; and my employer. Better late than never, I guess. I don't anticipate using Twitter nearly as much as Facebook, but I'll be ready if it comes up with the next great digital option.

Book Review

The Astronaut Wives Club
A True Story

by Lily Koppel

Review

Announcing selection of the original astronauts, NASA enlisted not just seven men, but also their spouses and children, in a bold venture to prove American superiority in the face of the Cold War.

America's space race, launched as a competition to beat the Soviets to the moon, was both a technological and public relations project. Public interest in every aspect of the astronaut families' lives, stoked by contracts with Life magazine, meant extreme pressure on the wives to project the model of perfect family life, no matter what the state of their marriage. Whatever was going on at home -- infidelity, serious illness of a child -- the astronaut wives were expected to do their patriotic duty by publicly declaring they were "proud, thrilled and happy."  Realizing only their sisters in the space program could fully understand the chaotic, demanding life they were living, the wives band together to weather the loneliness, fear, and public scrutiny foisted upon them by their husbands' careers. Much like a family, the women do not always agree with one another, but they rally for support when any one is facing extreme challenges, particularly the "death watch" of each mission and the too frequent tragedy of sudden death of a spouse. Just as the country is grappling with societal changes in the 1960s, the rewards and expectations of the astronaut wives evolve with subsequent "generations" as the astronaut corps expands in preparation for Gemini and Apollo flights. With the addition of the New Nine (1962), the Fourteen (1963) and the Nineteen (1966), much of the camaraderie of the original group is lost as all of the wives cannot even recognize, let alone know one another, yet they remain members of a small and unique sisterhood.

The unique experiences of the astronaut wives is a compelling story but this rendition, with no citations beyond a breezy four-page acknowledgment, and the curious-for-non-fiction subtitle "a true story," often feels like a collection of interesting information in search of a more effectively organized narrative.


Pub Date: June 11, 2013
Page Count: 384pp
ISBN: 978-1-4555-0325-4
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing