Smitten...
Submitted by tiahedmunsonmorton on Fri, 2007-03-09 04:17.
In all my spare time, I like to think about food: what to put in it, how to cook it, how to burn it off.
I serendipitously, my favorite new word I've picked up since starting this course, discovered a new friend who loved to share her simple recipes. My daughter's 3rd birthday party was a soup extravaganza, brought into my house by my friend Elise, her parents, her family, and her own love of food.
Elise led me into her friend's kitchen, and I was smitten. Deb's dishes were gorgeous and her recipes scrumptious. Deb and her husband took a trip to Savannah, and shared this photo with me.
Okay, so for those of you who are still reading, those of you who don't think I have lost my-- no, I don't know either of these women. I have been to Savannah though, and have eaten at the same restaurant the blogger who writes the Smitten Kitchen blog ate at while she was there. And yes, the woman who writes the Simply Recipes blog did actually recommend the Smitten blog. And yes, I made the vanilla bean pound cake and it was worth every pound. But how did I find Elise in the first place? Yep, that would be the "Add Stuff" button on my personalized Google homepage.
What's the point? Well, I suppose, as I was sharing Deb's vacation pictures with my daughter this evening, it occurred to me that I never had this level of access to the lives of Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, or Ethan Becker when I was looking up a recipe in the Joy of Cooking. I came close with Mollie Katzen and the Moosewood cookbooks, but everything sort of fell apart when her page didn't have an RSS feed.
Again, the point? The point is that for a few minutes tonight I actually felt like I was looking at photos taken by someone I knew, not well, but someone I knew. And this level of "comfort," for lack of a better word, kind of startled me. Is this what happens to people on social networking sites? Even for those that don't ever write one single word to their "friends"? Is it voyeurism? Is it a new form of socializing? Is it any different than going to a cafe and eavesdropping on the conversation from the neighboring table? I don't know..
For now, most days of the week, I am still able to distinguish between the friends I had coffee with this afternoon and Deb & Elise!
No real link to libraries or archives, but a little food for thought-- pun intended.
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Cheri Duncan Great post! I
Cheri Duncan
Great post! I love the websites you reference and your entertaining method of introducing them.
Great Post! I know just what
Great Post! I know just what you mean. :)
Last Fall, I wrote to Michael Porter and told him how much I was looking forward to meeting him at Internet Librarian. He told me he thought we'd already met. You can make such connections with people through social software that you really can't quite remember if you've met them in real life or just virtually. I still can hardly believe I've never met Steve Lawson in real life, though we've chatted, e-mailed, blogged, etc. plenty over the past 18 months so I feel I know him.
It's so great that we can make so much richer connections with people online these days than you could make without the benefit of social software. Amazing times.
What a great post. I think
What a great post. I think that in the age of MySpace libraries tend to forget that Online Social Networking is not just for teenagers. When I was pregnant, for example, I joined an online group of women who all had Feb. 2006 due dates. We have ladies from all over the world who now have active one-year-olds, and we are a close knit group of friends who met through chance, common interest, and online social networking. I don't k now what I would do without them to help me when my son won't sleep or I've had it with his tantrums!
My husband belongs to a couple of special interest groups, including some die-hard NY Mets fans who we even occasionally meet at the game. He trades baseball cards like a giddy 11-year old with other guys across the country. And professionally, he has a strong online presence so that he can communicate and foster relationships with current, former, and potential students of his University. An important element for his position as Assistant Director of Undergraduate Admissions, and an invaluable resource for parents and students seeking college admissions information and info about his school.
Of course, he is heartbroken when he finds out that students are being blocked from his blog, IMing him, or posting to him on message boards... sometimes by his own university! Professionally, I couldn't do my job well or even hope to keep up with trends without using social networking. It's a shame that more librarians just aren't there yet. It kills me to think of so many libraries taking the knee-jerk reaction of banning social networking sites when there are so many "legitimate" and wonderful benefits of using them to improve our knowlegdge, make friends, and otherwise enrich our lives - for all of us... not just trouble making teenagers.
Sorry for the rant. I just really enjoyed your post. :)
Thanks! I love the excuse to
Thanks! I love the excuse to look at pretty pictures and share them...
I was worried that I came off sounding like I thought everyone involved in social networking had lost touch with the "real" reality, which was not my intention at all. I had in the back of my mind, but not in my fingers as I typed, how librarians can act as an information source or reality check for students putting up images/information they wouldn't want to have out in the internet cosmos 5 years from now.
So really, thinking about this more, maybe there is, in fact, a pretty big relationship between my experience and libraries/social software: the relationship itself. Is an online relationship any more or less real or valuable because it is not existing face to face?
I wonder, for those of you who have developed more defined or in-depth relationships online, and then have met the friend in person, is it weird?