I got carried away!

Yesterday I built up my own netvibes page and got carried away. I don't know if I made it by the book (and I suppose that there isn't a saying like that in the virtual world) but now I have my information flow-page that keeps me updated with those issues I'm currently interested in. The problem is minimizing the content as there's so much wonderful new things to learn and get updated on. From a researchers point of view I would surely like to research what identity we're constructing by combining different information resources. Who am I to someone who doesn't know me? Can you figure out the age of someone who is behind a certain netvibes page? This question comes to my mind because we usually market services or products according to the age of our "target". In spite of the fact that the virtual reality is the place where the consumer isn't constructed through demographics but through different practices.

Anyway, netvibes is something that I would really like to recommend to every researcher, student who wants to handle the daily information flow easily. My page is found here: www.netvibes.com/msuokannas

Getting inspired by web 2.0 for libraries

I am currently taking part in a conference in Stockholm. Read more here: http://www.nordlib20.org/ It's nice that I don't have to provide the information but I can of course share my interpretation of things that I have heard. I am already inspired by web 2.0 and now I just have to find out how I should convince faculty members to understand the opportunities of web 2.0. I would also like to give some supporting tools or good practices and that I surely have learned today. I already got my account in netvibes.com and I hope that I could inspire both students and faculty to build up their own "research source site". I see that the discussion around web 2.0 is much about being visible or not, who the model reader for a blog is and how you should get empowered by web 2.0.-stuff.

Amnesia

I just read an interesting article in Svenska Dagbladet (published on the 9th of November). The article was about research results that describe how every generation remembers better than the previous one. The professor of psychology Lars-Göran Nilsson is the leader of a project where 4200 randomly chosen respondents aged 25- 80 have had their memory tested during 20 years. The aim is of course to find out the reasons for dementia and at an early stage. One of the results is that the development of the socalled episodic memory is mainly dependent on education, nutrition and how many siblings you have. So this means that if you are educating yourself, eating well and on top of that have sisters and brothers you could perhaps feel saved from the horror of dementia...Another thing is that the flow of information also makes the brain more flexible...So my future concerning a functioning memory looks great (well educated, two brothers and a sister and taking care of my diet more or less successfully, working with information every day). But it doesn't help that I have senior moments and I have to admit that CRAFT (can't remember a f**king thing) lurks behind the corner. Yesterday I didn't remember the name of someone I should know but of course when I say remember it means straight away. After some minutes I knew the name... Some kind of cognitive overload, tiredness could have been the reason...Or maybe my archiver was resting ;-). Anyway to avoid these scary moments of amnesia I'll try to concentrate on taking care of the factors mentioned above as much as possible. BTW, professor Nilsson suggests that the year for retiring could be higher as we're getting smarter and remember more and more...

To read interpretations of your thoughts

Yesterday there was a story about my subject in Hufvudstadsbladet and I was even interviewed for that! I really liked the story and how it was written and combined with comments from other researchers and older consumers. In the text there was once again an example of lived ideology: seniors don't want to see older faces in advertisements but they like their own age. In other words they are content with their age but don't want to be reminded of it...So the lack of older faces in advertisements has to do with the fact that you feel okay being older but you don't want to see yourself in the mirror (if you see advertisements as some kind of mirror). It could be that how the older body, face is met in society doesn't correspond with your inner feeling...What do we think when we meet an older person?

Tuning in for choir practice

It's time again for my choir practice and I usually look forward to it as singing always gives you energy. Breathing in the right way and trying to produce a sound as nice as possible is so inspiring...But today...I'd rather stay at home as I can't stand one of the monotonous pieces we will perform in two weeks...It's a piece that was found in an archive and I really think that it should have stayed there...Maybe it sounds nice when we all sing together but I can't catch the pulse of the stuff...It feels like eating a lot of crispbreads without drinking anything between...And as my mental state is this the singing will certainly sound flat and stiff and dull...A good metaphor for anything that we're forced to do...It becomes tuneless and without rhythm. But then again there are these wonderful songs that make every cell membrane come alive, breathing becomes easy and your stiff face muscles loosen up...

Reading with awareness

Today we don't meet just a lot of advertisements but we meet texts of different kinds that tempt us to take part of some thought that someone has written either profoundly or maybe just scribbled. At the moment I see myself as a surfer between texts of different genres: from profound texts to scribbled texts and the reading happens from dawn till dusk. There is the morning newspaper, the newspaper on the bus, the five books I read at the same time, the e-mails, the blogs, the documents of strategy, the texts I try to produce myself, the discussions of students within a course...But do I really read with awareness so I could tell another person about what I have read? How profound is my reading and do I really have time for that? As I work with information literacy skills "cognitive overload" is often mentioned ad nauseam. But I even think that that's a really important point when information literacy skills are learned. We don't just need the skills to find the information and evaluate it we should also try to process the information so much that it evokes new innovative ideas. It goes of course without saying but I feel that it's rare that you are both a really fast and a profound reader and that you're able to read a lot of texts and process them thoroughly. Do we really have time today to read a text, then think about it, and then read it again and then write about the thought? And if you read a lot and surf around, is there a possibility that you get lost in the texts and the border between your thoughts and other people's thoughts get blurred...These thoughts come up as I have to discuss plagiarism with students within a course...Soon....Anyway couldn't you say that academic texts differ from other texts also in the sense that there is more thinking behind, which means that you can't be that up-to-date with all the superficial societal changes...Just a thought