Month: July 2010

Categories
Managing Social Media

Catalogue This: Managing Information in Social Media Applications

I was one of the first Canadians to have Facebook. Back in 2004 when Facebook was only open to post-secondary students, I was an undergraduate at McGill, the first Canadian institution to have Facebook access. I don’t say this as some sort of bragging point, but to illustrate the following:   over 6 years of my life are, to a greater or lesser extent, documented on Facebook. Until a couple of days ago when I started to seriously consider what this meant, there were well over 1,200 pictures of me tagged on Facebook, and I had about 45 photo albums posted. In some cases, due to previous computer failure, these were the only copies of the photos that existed. Although I’ve decreased both of those numbers slightly over the past few days, that’s still a hefty number of photos to deal with. Don’t even get me started on messages, or even worse, wall posts.

So here’s the question: what are social media platforms doing (or not doing) to help users manage the information they’re creating in these online environments? While some do this well, some, including Facebook, aren’t doing enough. If you use Facebook a fair amount, you’ve probably, like me,  spent far too long looking for that elusive photo or post. I don’t plan to get rid of my Facebook account in the near future, so I’ve started to seriously consider not only how I manage the way I’m presenting myself online, but how to manage the sheer volume of what I have out there.

This is an important consideration for information professionals. If we want to use these tools in a professional capacity, we need to think about how to manage the information we produce, or the information produced by others in relation to us. One of the significant things about producing information online (as authors like Erika Pearson and Anders Albrechtslund point out) is that it is often enduring. But the utility of this is drastically reduced if we can’t easily locate the things we need. The longer we have been using a specific tool, and the more we use that tool, both the significance of this need and the difficulty of accomplishing it are greatly increased.

Now, what can I do about all these Facebook photos?

Image: “My Social Network.” Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/luc/1824234195

Categories
Just Because

If libraries are the next big thing, is social media behind it?

By now, many of us in the library world are familiar with Linda Holmes’ NPR article about libraries as the next big pop culture wave, after cupcakes. And I’m all for it. I love libraries even more than I like cupcakes. And you should know that I really, really enjoy cupcakes.

But what I want to speculate about today is: If libraries are “in,” is social media really at the heart of this? I think it might be.

I was first made aware of Holmes’ piece through one of my many daily RSS feeds. Before I knew it, the article was zooming around the internet (or at least my library-centric corner of it), being sent out on listservs, tweeted and re-posted on facebook, and blogged by librarian bloggers around the world. Oh wait, kind of like I’m doing right now.

And then there was the starting point for Holmes’discussion: the YouTube videos. First there was Librarians doing Gaga. Then the Old Spice man had something to say about libraries, and Brigham Young University wanted us to study like a scholar, scholar. Things so popular, they were shared by people with no connection to libraries whatsoever (at least according to the extremely scientific evidence of my Facebook News Feed).

So it would seem that social media is certainly helping us to make libraries popular though online sharing. But how does this fit in with Holmes’ 6 pieces of evidence as to why the libraries (and librarians!) are bound for stardom?

  1. Libraries get in fights.Yes they do. And their fights have share toolbars and twitter archives, so that everyone can join in.
  2. Librarians know stuff. And now they will use social media, as well as traditional means, to tell you about it and let you ask questions.
  3. Libraries are green and local. And they blog about being green and local.
  4. Libraries will give you things for free. Libraries WANT to give you things for free, and they can promote those free services using every available means.
  5. “Open to the public” means “some days, you really have to wonder about people.” For better or worse, many librarians share anecdotes about  serving the public in online spaces.Scott Douglas made a career out of it.
  6. There seems to be a preposterous level of goodwill. Most librarians like to share. Now they’re collaborating using wikis to make sure everyone has the best information out there.

Admittedly my tone, like Holmes’ article, is lighthearted. But I do believe that social media is allowing libraries to promote themselves in new ways, and that this is hopefully leading to greater recognition in popular culture. So bring on the “happy-fuzzy pop-culture stories.” And pass the cupcakes.

Image: “Montreal Twestival 2009 Cupcakes.” Flickr. Web. 22 July 2010. http://www.flickr.com/photos/clevercupcakes/3920802507/

Categories
Collection Services

Participatory Library Services: Patron-Driven Acquistions

One of the things we read for LIBR 559M this week was a chapter from Casey and Stavastinuk’s Library 2.0 called “Participatory Service and the Long Tail.” The chapter discussed the need for creating ways in which patrons can have a direct stake in library services, contributing to the programs and collections that are available. Some of these ideas were reflected in a paper I wrote last semester for LIBR 580: Collection Management. The paper was called “Public Displays of Affection: User-Centered Collection Development in Public Libraries,” and I wanted to share a piece of it here. Specifically, I want to mention the concept of Patron-Driven Acquistions, through which patrons interact directly with the library catalogue to select which e-books the library purchases. Although this is arguably not an instance of social media use, it is an instance of direct participation by patrons, which is one of the most significant affordances of social media in the library world. This is an example of participatory service which provides access to the long tail, similar to those discussed by Casey and Stavastinuk.

“Libraries and vendors have also developed services to complement purchase on-demand services for print materials by meeting patrons’ on-demand digital information needs through patron-driven acquisitions (PDA) of e-books. Through PDA programs, patrons are able to dictate which e-books the library purchases and access content almost instantly. Through agreements with vendors, large numbers of e-book records are loaded into the library catalogue based on an individual library profile created by the collections librarian. Users are able to browse and loan these titles, which include fiction, non-fiction, and some reference materials, and at some point the loan (after either one or more uses, depending on the library’s agreement with the vendor) will trigger an actual purchase of the e-book which is then owned directly by the library (Chadwell 72). Although patron-driven acquisitions have been available in some form for about 10 years there seems to be growing interest in the service in the last few years, with an increasing number of vendors such as NetLibrary, EBL, and Ingram Digital (Polanka 121).”

References:

Chadwell, Faye A. “What’s Next for Collection Management and Managers? User-Centered Collection Management.” Collection Management 34.1 (2009): 69-78. Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text. EBSCO. Web. 1 Feb. 2010.

Polanka, Sue. “Off the Shelf: Patron-Driven Acquisition.” Booklist 105.9/10 (2009): 121. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 4 Feb. 2010.

Categories
Reference Services

Reaching Out: Social Media and Reference

reaching outThe other day at work, I was talking to one of my supervisors about my work concerning social media, and she made an interesting comment that has really stuck with me. “Well, there is no one way anymore,” she told me.

Of course, we can debate the question of whether or not there ever was “one way.” But whatever side we happen to fall on, I think that this observation still has relevance. People seek out information in a wide variety of ways, and so, as librarians we need to disseminate information, whether it’s our latest programs or answers to reference questions, in multiple mediums in order to reach the largest number of users possible.

Of course, this can be very frustrating. The greater number of tools we need to use in order to reach our users, the more time it takes, and the more futile it can feel. However, this multiplicity can also be empowering, allowing us to reach more people, and in some cases, actually saving time. A few days after the conversation I had, I came across this article by Nicole Engard. In it, she describes a panel she was a part of concerning Smart Technologies. One of the speakers, Chad Boeninger, talked about using new tools to reach many people instead of just one when answering reference questions.

For example, if someone asks a question which other users might also want to know about, librarians can create a blog post or even a video (I got to use Camtasia recently and loved it. Would love to use this at work). Doing this creates the opportunity that this information will be shared more widely and even re-posted or shared in other forums.

Of course, this has its limitations – although you can certainly point patrons to a blog or online video, this isn’t the right strategy in every case. But after reading Nicole’s article, I started thinking about other ways in which social media tools can help librarians collaborate to answer reference questions more efficiently by sharing with many instead of just one. One thing I’ve been trying to improve on lately is my reader’s advisory skills, and I discovered ATN Reading Lists, a wiki where librarians collaborate to create reading lists and lists of read-alikes. I’ve also utilized my own social networks (a form of crowdsourcing, I guess) to seek information, and Twitter could also be used for this purpose.

When used appropriately, I think social media has the potential to be an important part of reference services (not a replacement for traditional services, but an addition to them). There may be no one way to provide reference information, but social media tools can certainly change some of the ways in which we  share information, and even make sharing easier.

For others out there providing reference services, has social media influenced this process for you?

Image: “Put your hand up if you are having a good time.” Flickr. Web. 15 November 2009.
<http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1019/564570276_65929f5968.jpg>.

Categories
Just Because

Hi everyone!

Over the next 6 weeks, this will be my space to discuss social media at thoughts stemming from my participation in LIBR 559M: Social Media for Information Professionals. Welcome!

Spam prevention powered by Akismet