After watching Ellison, Weber, & Gibbs presentation on “The role of social media for knowledge-sharing and collaboration in distributed teams” (which you can view above) for LIBR 559, I began to think about some of the research they shared in this presentation and how it may apply to libraries and the role of information professionals. Although libraries are not specifically mentioned in this presentation, I can see how some of their findings could translate to a library context. There are a number of concepts and ideas that are broached in this presentation, but I will just focus on a couple of aspects of their work that are of particular interest to me and will post my responses to this presentation in two separate blog posts (in the hopes of avoiding a big wall of text).
One concept that is mentioned a number of times throughout the presentation is ‘social capital.’ In the context of Ellison, Weber, and Gibbs’ work, social capital is defined as the “benefits we get from our social connections.” Ellison goes on to discuss the idea of ‘bridging social capital;’ this “is linked to ‘weak ties,’ loose connections who may provide useful, novel information or new perspectives for one another.” Information professionals, whose job entails linking people to the information and resources they need, are uniquely qualified in this area.
It seems that at the moment, many librarians and other information professionals are carving out a niche in social media, and may be wondering how they can provide effective service to the public online. By understanding how people use social media to obtain information, librarians may be able to take advantage of the phenomenon of users mining their network for information through asking questions. However, for this to be effective, the public also needs to be made aware of how librarians can be of assistance in this way. Librarians can provide users with resources and information online as needed, much like they do within the library. This would also be a great way to promote libraries and perhaps create a renewed interest among patrons who have drifted away from the library over the years. For some people, reaching out to librarians over social media is a much less daunting task than entering a library and speaking to someone behind a reference desk. However, once people connect with librarians online (provided they have a positive experience doing so), they may be more inclined to use library services in-person. In this regard, social media use among librarians in a professional capacity may be classified as a form of community outreach and could be a way to reach out to certain user groups. And how amazing would it be if everyone had a local librarian in their social media network?