Week 1, Assignment 1

1.) OCLC report: Information Format Trends: Content, Not Containers (2004).

The article mentions how people are moving away from "packaged content to social information about location, presence and community...Mobile communication tools are shifting...allowing for increased many-to-many interactions..."(p5).

On the topic of social information and interacting, I recently came across a website that works with your mobile phone to find out where to go and what to do in Pittsburgh (www.spot.deeplocal.com). It works via text message, where if you send a text to 27126 with the word SPOT, or with another keyword you are supposed to receive a text with information about your surrounding location. I've never tried it, but I thought it was a good example of the use of social information.

2. Leid Library

I thought the policy they had for find an avaliable computer for a student was a great idea. Being able to see how long someone has been logged in, if they are a community user, and if a staff person needs to ask them to leave. While I have waited in lines for computers here at the several computer labs across campus, it's never been a long wait, but it still can be annoying. I am pretty sure Pitt has a policy where they can ask people to leave if they aren't doing school work, I've never asked anyone to leave.

I was also impressed with how the Leid Library was able to hav,e what appears from the articles description, a seemingly quick fix if a computer goes down.

3. Information Literacy and Information Technology Literacy

First off their are all kinds of literacies. You can be literate and able to read, literate in health information, and cultrualy literate. So it doesn't surprise me that just being information literate won't automatically give you IT literacy. Right now I would fall under the information technology literacy of someone who knows how to use the tools, such as word processing and spreadsheets.

Muddiest Point:

I have a comment on a question that was asked in class. One student stated that they did not have web access at home. I believe the University does provide a free dial up service. While it is dial up, and it probably is slow, it is free. Here is a link to a pdf of how to access the dial up service via a PC, http://technology.pitt.edu/Documentation/VistaDialup.pdf and for a mac http://technology.pitt.edu/Documentation/Dialing_into_PittNet_Using_PPP_with_MacOSX_Leopard_FINAL.pdf