Starting a New Assignment

  This past week I did my final transcription of an interview, and started my new project. The final interview I transcribed was one where my supervisor interviewed Hiten Shah who has done Internet marketing work. Shah discussed social media, but argued that the term is outdated. He stated that what is important is how Facebook or Google search results can reveal much about human psychology and behavior. The fact that the Internet allows us to socialize is less important than how the Internet, through what is normally called social media, can show and teach us much about human beings and how they behave. I think Shah was arguing that the Internet perfectly mimics how people behave in the real physical world. In other words, people often behave on the Internet the way they do in the physical world. Perhaps that is true on Twitter and Facebook as people interact with friends, family, and some well known Internet personalities they follow. But I do not think it is entirely true on many Internet message boards where strangers communicate and behave in ways they may not in the real physical world (such as going on the Internet Movie Database and making racist or sexist remarks they may not towards people they speak to face to face). Nevertheless, librarians could use Facebook and Twitter to learn about the people they serve and how to meet their information needs.

  The new project I started this week is a report on mobile technology, which is designed to inform members of The Association of Virtual Worlds about mobile trends, and any news related to mobile technology. So far I have cut and pasted into a Microsoft Word Document all my supervisor's blog posts about mobile technology. In the next couple of weeks, I will be doing an observation and analysis of all the major mobile trends, and will do a conclusion and support it with references to the blog posts.