Category: Reference Services

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Just Because Managing Social Media Reference Services

Information Is Not An Island

I really, really wanted to title this post “The Short Second Life of Amy Ashmore,” since hanging out in Second Life did in fact feel a lot like a poorly written vampire novel (sorry, Stephenie Meyer). Watching my avatar fly around, I even felt a bit like a vampire – I had become something other than myself (and markedly less human-looking) and was zooming around in a world where no other people seemed to exist.

I managed to resist the urge, however, (although clearly not the urge to tell you about it), since what I really am interested in is one particular aspect of Second Life: the concept of Information Islands. This spatial metaphor troubles me. Information should not be an island. Ideally, it should be available anywhere, anytime, whenever it is needed. The whole concept of having information seeking be a part of this virtual world suggests (to me) the premise that information should be available anywhere. But by using the concept of information islands, Second Life seems to be reinforcing the idea that information can only be found in certain locations (ie. a library), and that even in a virtual world these locations are physical.

Of course, Second Life is not alone in this – the web is populated with spatial methaphors: websites, postings on walls, dashboards. I guess I was hoping that in an immersive virtual world, we might get away from this, at least when it comes to information. No such luck.

Admittedly, I have absolutely no personal interest in Second Life and would never choose to be in that environment outside of a professional capacity. But even assuming that users were already there, the software and design seems to add steps to accessing information, not remove them. Both times that I went to Info Island, I found it empty. Eerily so. Does that mean the users in Second Life have no information needs? I doubt it. But why manoeuvre yourself all the way over to Info Island when Google is just a browser click away? (I found manoeuvring myself anywhere at all to be a challenge). I’ll pick ease over immersion any time, and judging by the fact that hanging out on Info Island felt like being Tom Hanks in Castaway except with more buildings, I’m guessing other Second Lifers feel the same.

But wait. Moving away from physical spaces. Isn’t this what many librarians are trying to do with information in the real world? I’m not saying there’s no place for the reference desk – after all, I spend my days sitting behind one. But in the real world, users don’t have to go there every time they want to know something. They can email. They can chat. Maybe they can even tweet their information needs. In the real library world, there is certainly a huge push to see the library as more than a physical space. So why replicate the physical space in virtual environments? Now, I realise that providing information services isn’t what Second Life was designed for. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to move beyond these constraints. It’s also possible that there are a whole slew of Second Life information-seeking features I just don’t know about. But I certainly couldn’t find them. So what gives, Second Life? I want to get off this island.

Categories
Just Because Managing Social Media Reference Services

Personal Aggregation vs. Mediated Aggregation

This week in LIBR 599M, we were asked: Is aggregation a new role for librarians? Haven’t we always gathered, organized and used classification systems, integrated information? If we take aggregation to mean a combination or composite of date from a number of sources, then I tend to agree that aggregation is not a new phenomenon for librarians. Using this definition, traditional tools of librarianship like indexes, encyclopedias, and even subject guides can be described as aggregated content.

In what ways has Web 2.0 changed the ways in which information is aggregated? I see three important differences (although there are probably others):

  1. The kind of information that is being aggregated has shifted – user-generated web content has become increasingly significant
  2. The speed with which information can be aggregated has dramatically increased
  3. And, although this is more debatable, I would argue that who is doing the aggregating may be shifting. That is, users, rather than librarians, are aggregating their own information.

Now, I’m not suggesting that people have never created their own personal learning tools and that this has always been done by information professionals. That’s not true. But the new reality is that what used to take years to compile might now take only minutes. This massive shift in speed and ease, combined with a substantial change in the amount and type of content out there, means that increasingly I think people are finding their own ways to pull together the information they need, rather than requiring the library to do it for them (and I am making an enormous generalization here which is certainly true of everyone). Now, after suggesting that aggregation has historically been a role of libraries, I don’t mean that this is no longer the case. In the recent CARL/ARBC environmental scan of academic libraries which I assisted with, RSS feeds were the only tool we found to be used by every single library we looked at, and I’m sure these feeds are incredibly valuable. But I would also guess that a not-insignificant number of students and faculty at these universities also use personal RSS feeds to aggregate self-selected content. These feeds are personally tailored to the interests of each individual user.

Let’s take my own RSS feeds as an example. There’s a lot of stuff about libraries in there, but also updates from The Sartorialist, friends’ blogs, and music reviews. No library in the world would provide me with this exact mix in a single feed – but I easily have the power to create it myself. When I really want to point out here is that there is a difference between my personal aggregated content and that mediated by others. As Lorcan Dempsey writes, “One clear development is a blurring of our social, business, learning and educational lives as the pattern of our communication and interaction across time and space changes.” Both self-selected and mediated content can be very valuable, but they likely serve slightly different functions. So maybe part of the real power of Web 2.0 is (bad joke alert) the possibility of having your aggregated cake, and reading it too. For libraries, we need to know how to use new tools to access new information, but it’s clear that we can also have a role in teaching our users how to do the same.

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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.
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