Social Media in Library 2.0

I was introduced to Glogster (and the verb “glogging”) in this week’s module on creation.  Forgive my use of the 2.0 suffix that we all so dislike, but Glogster is basically Poster 2.0.  Users can create posters using pictures, videos, audio, and hyperlinks, and graphics.  The posters can be linked to, or embedded in, web pages and blog posts, and can be shared via Facebook, Twitter, and a myriad of other social networking tools.  Glogster’s mission statement:

Glogster is committed to bringing the best Multimedia Tool & Expression Space for young people, students, educators, and all creative people through its innovative Glog format and the new online phenomenon, Glogging.

It occurred to me that these posters would be a cool way to link library users to recommended books, so I thought I’d try my hand at creating one:

The benefits of glogging:

• The software is generally intuitive and easy to use, and it only took me a few minutes to put together this simple poster.
• Any item in the poster can be linked to an external webpage.  In my poster, all of the pictures link to book reviews from www.yareads.com: in a real library situation, I would link to the library’s own reviews or to the item’s catalogue record.
• It’s easy to embed videos.  I embedded this booktalk video from YouTube: a librarian could tape his/her own booktalks for this purpose, or link to book trailers and other relevant videos.
• The user can choose graphics to match the content of the poster.
• The visual (rather than textual) foundation of the poster is attractive, especially for teens and children, and is great for those with visual memory.
• More text could be used to customize the poster: a librarian could easily incorporate readalikes into the poster.

Difficulties:

• Once an element is added to the poster, you cannot edit certain aspects of the element.  For example, once a photo is added, you cannot go back and add a frame: you have to delete the original photo and add the photo with a frame separately.
• The software is slow to load.

Other uses of Glogster:

• Subject guides: The basic ideas mentioned above could be applied to a subject guide.  This would likely be more complicated to create, and would probably benefit from a combination of text and images, rather than just images.  It probably wouldn’t work well for all subjects, but it might be effective for some (e.g. art, genealogy).  It might also work better for public library subject guides than academic library guides.
• Library events: Glogster is a neat way to “scrapbook” photos and videos once the event has finished.  When appropriate, the photos/videos could link to library webpages or other community events.
• Staff introductions: Librarians and other staff members could create “about me” posters.  They could include interests, education, photos, video, text, and/or links to other social networking profiles, like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.  Librarians sometimes have this information on the library’s webpage, but a visual profile could be much more interesting, and it would be especially appropriate for a young adult librarian.

Here are a few glogging libraries and librarians:

• http://lshucha.edu.glogster.com/teacher-librarian-vision/
• http://ugolini.edu.glogster.com/virtual-book-talk-non-fiction-/
• http://hardesty.edu.glogster.com/childrens-searching-behavior/
• http://doctorloopy.glogster.com/doctor-loopys-house-of-fun/

Can you think of more ways to use an interactive poster?  How could they be used in archives and non-traditional information organizations?