My previous post on this blog was in response to a presentation of the work of Ellison, Weber, and Gibbs, and this post revolves around another aspect of that presentation, specifically Weber’s discussion of enterprise social media in the organizational context. Enterprise social media is used in some organizations to enable or encourage collaboration among geographically dispersed individuals and, as Weber notes, provides employees with new affordances, such as high degrees of visibility, association, persistence, and editability. In particular, Weber introduces a case study that explores the use of enterprise social media among the sales department at IBM.
I have to admit that I had some issues with the case study that was presented. One thing that I found troubling was that the response rate to the survey distributed at IBM was only around 37%. I am aware that response rates for this type of work are often low, but it seems as if this would still be a potential problem, if only for the fact that those who did take the time to respond may have done so because they have strong opinions, either positive or negative, in regards to this topic. If this is the case, then the survey results may primarily reflect opinions that fall on extreme ends of the spectrum and not capture the average employees experiences with this tool. In addition, the experiences of enterprise social media at IBM may not be representative of the average workplace. For one thing, IBM is a tech company; given the nature of the company, IBM employees may be more likely to be comfortable using social media in the workplace and perhaps may be more willing to use this tool to its full potential by, for instance, collaborating with their coworkers online.
Despite the issues I had with the case study, I still think that enterprise social media has the potential to be an incredibly useful tool for librarians and other information professionals. During the presentation, Weber notes that enterprise systems allow for the identification of experts and expertise on company networks, support knowledge-seeking, provide socializing and support, and allow groups or teams to share content and work collaboratively. All of these uses could prove very valuable across a wide range of professions, including librarianship. As providers of information, the use of enterprise social media among librarians may be particularly beneficial in terms of the critiquing, recommending, and sharing insights about information resources. And when faced with a particularly challenging question that has been posed by a patron, a librarian could crowdsource answers from other librarians over the enterprise network. In my previous blog post, I discussed how librarians are valuable additions to social media networks because of their aptitude when it comes to providing information; imagine having a whole network of librarians available to answer your question! As well, depending on a librarian’s role and the size of the library, librarianship may be solitary work. Enterprise social media allows the potential of increased collaboration on projects. As Ellison notes, social media is also a context that can be very supportive of relationship initiation and development. Because of this, an enterprise social media network would be especially useful to librarians who have just entered the profession. It can be a way to make contacts in the field and ease the transition from library student to librarian.
In my experience, librarians are already creating their own online networks to gain support and share knowledge. A quick google search on this topic found plenty of evidence to support this, including lists (which can be found here and here) of the best social media groups for librarians. Clearly social media is a tool that is already being explored by librarians, and so I see the implementation of enterprise social media as a natural progression of this phenomenon. This is a tool I would like to see put to good use in the future.