Maggie's Thoughts on Social Media

Because we’re talking about immersion this week, my Vista post dealt with my own experiences in Second Life. I’ll sum it up: while it was an interesting experience, I don’t think that I would use this immersive environment again. Long story short, I found the experience to be rather stilted (although some of the blame can be put on my computer) and I don’t enjoy gaming or RPG anyway. However, I am aware that Second Life has a large group of users – some estimate that there are 750,000 registered Second Life users, although not all of these users sign-on frequently. One group of users is particularly interesting to me – can you guess which?

Yep, it’s librarians! I read Marilyn Johnson’s lukewarm This Book Is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All and found that one of the more interesting chapters was about librarians in Second Life. Johnson seemed to believe that it was necessary that librarians make their presence known in virtual worlds, but I’m on the fence. After all, if virtual users want to reach a librarian, why not simply find a library with email or IM services and get in touch with them? However, I understand that some librarians are quite interested in making information services available everywhere (a noble and valid goal). Because of the rather low number of users in Second Life, though, I don’t feel that librarians (in most cases) should be paid to work a Second Life reference desk. I appreciate that there are librarians who enjoy working in Second Life, but I think that this is best left as a volunteer position. When I used Second Life, I visited Info Island (here’s a short YouTube video about it) and didn’t get the impression that it was an incredibly popular, well-used service. Again, I applaud librarians who answer questions across all platforms, real and virtual, but don’t think a Second Life librarians meets any unmet needs.

While I don’t feel as though I’ll be a Second Life librarian, I would love to hear from anyone that has experience providing or receiving reference services in Second Life. Please, comment away!

P.S. As it’s the end of the semester, I’d just like to take a moment to thank all of my classmates for their thought-provoking comments on my blog, and for the incredibly intelligent and interesting posts on their own blogs. I’ve enjoyed this experience and will try to blog about a library-related topic of interest to me once a week throughout the next couple of semesters. Please feel free to continue to comment!

Our LIBR 559 module this week was called “Aggregation” and in the two days the module has been running, I’ve already learned a ton about aggregation services and their purpose. I mentioned this in my Vista posts this week, but I’ll mention it again here: before this week’s module, I hadn’t been using an aggregating service. I am now using Google Reader and loving it, because all of the articles and blog posts that I would normally go searching for are all right in front of me, in one convenient spot.

One of the questions that Dean listed at the start of the module was “How can we use aggregating tools to deliver innovative library service?” I’ve been thinking about this since I started the module, because I had a hard time understanding how aggregators could be used in libraries. I understand that for librarians – and especially for librarians interested in social media – aggregators can be a life saver, allowing very busy professionals to quickly catch-up on developments in the field or on personal interests.

What I can’t quite figure out is how librarians could help library patrons to use aggregators. Sure, public and academic libraries could hold a class demonstrating this to users, but it that the best way to inform users of this incredibly helpful service? I searched for libraries using aggregators and could only find a few. Perhaps the most interesting was the London Public Library in London, Ontario. They discuss RSS and aggregators like BlogLines in their section called “How Do I Use The Website?” Still, when it comes to libraries working innovatively with aggregators, I couldn’t find many examples. An idea that jumped into my head while searching was that rather than displaying the library’s homepage when users sign on to computers, a page could come up about how to use an aggregator like Google Reader. That way, patrons could have a customized homepage every time they log on to a computer. Patrons might feel as though their library experience has been customized, and that the library is an excellent source for news, entertainment, social media work, etc. This might also show patrons that library’s are more than just paper, and could lead to a better understanding of libraries as both physical and digital spaces.

Information Literacy

Since I couldn’t get SlideShare to work (and for some reason I tried for 3 hours), I’m posting PDF’s of a short slide show here – just click the beautiful blue link above. It’s a rough outline of my presentation. Feel free to comment!

Having just finished reading, viewing, and listening to the content of Module IV (“Creation”), I find myself inspired by the final video in the module, “Participation Culture, Creativity, and Social Change.” In the video, the creator, David Gauntlett, discusses the need to move away from “Factory Learning,” which involves simply digesting what is being taught without thinking critically about it. Gauntlett believes that to create real social change, we have to encourage creativity and critical thinking. Using the example of global warming, Gauntlett demonstrates the importance of new and innovative ideas in solving serious global problems. These ideas, according to Gauntlett, can be generated via social media.

Last week, Sara blogged about the perceived gender divide in social media participation, which got me thinking about social media as impetus for social change. I know this topic has been covered before – I’m sure we all remember the importance of Twitter in disseminating information during the Iranian election – but I have started to wonder what the librarian’s role is in promoting social media tools for social change. After a round of cursory Google searching, here’s what I came up with:

1) First and foremost, the knowledge that a librarian incurs simply by working with various forms of media and social media is a valuable resource to researchers, patrons, and social media enthusiasts. In the paper linked to above, librarians are listed alongside journalists and producers of alternative media as groups who can help critical social movements get their message out.

2) Radical Reference, an organization comprised of volunteer librarians, answers often difficult questions from activists and independent journalists. Radical Reference maintains a wiki on their site as well as a delicious site, which holds a list of the articles and sources that they’ve used to answer questions.

3) Blogs such as the Social Justice Librarian offer a librarian’s take on current social justice issues. Most recently, the current blogger, Greyson, wrote about the Canadian government’s “decision to scrap the mandatory long-form national census” in favour of a short and voluntary survey. Greyson and her three partners in blogging also tackle issues such as intellectual freedom, privacy, and equal access to library resources.

4) In Washington, D.C., a small library called the Provisions Library exists, with the purpose of offering “alternative perspectives on a wide range of social change topics… its innovative exhibitions and public projects strongly engage the arts as a powerful means of exploring social issues.” Because the Library only lends books to Washington, D.C. residents, the Library has created their own LibraryThing account, which lists all of the books in the library. For those interested in social issues but not able to visit or borrow from the Provisions Library, this is an invaluable resource when researching.

These sites and examples of social media usage were found via a quick Google search. If you can think of others, or have conducted a similar search, please let me know what you’ve found! I’d love to be able to add to this list.

I think at this point in the course, it’s pretty obvious that I approach social media with a very critical eye. As I read Module 3, though, I was so excited to see such a variety of social media platforms that I could rally around.

Libraries, by nature, support collaboration:  books, journal articles, and other materials available in a library allow others to share ideas and to complete research. I love that Library 2.0 encourages this collaboration, and encourages collaboration between professional librarians and other academics and library staff members.

One of the facets of social media that bothers me most is that of the blurring of personal and professional. Much of the social media that I’ve used in the past involved oversharing and digital narcissism, and I worry that this frivolous personal use of social media will spill over into the professional use of social media. This is why I’m still unsure about whether or not libraries should have Facebook pages – how much information is too much? In responding to other users, how will libraries be professional while still being personable?

With social collaboration, however, professionalism is almost built in: librarians would probably employ services like Socialtext, GoogleDocs, and Basecamp with a specific project in mind and for something more than sharing what someone ate for breakfast or pictures of a vacation. There seems to be a clear purpose to these sites and I love the idea that instead of cluttering up inboxes or distributing everything on paper, everything can be stored on the Internet and accessible to all members of a group.

If I could make one complaint about most of the social collaboration tools (other than GoogleDocs), it’s that users must pay to use them. I’m sure that each of the sites are worth it – they look well organized and most offer a variety of services. However, because they require monthly subscriptions, I cannot afford them while I’m still a student. I do look forward to using these social medias when I enter the library world, though!

While glancing through Module II on Sunday, one of the questions that Dean brought up stuck with me. I’ve been thinking about it continually, and thought that this might be a nice place to address it. The question was “Is there a culture of participation in libraries?”

Throughout high school and continuing into my first year of university, I worked in a public library. I’m from a firmly middle class city in Alberta of about 100,000. Although the public library is heavily used, the majority of users get in and get out quickly. Thus, the only group of regular users in the library are members of the rather small homeless population. This unique culture of participants is probably rather different than the cultures of participants referenced in this article. Still, I think this is important. In the case of this library, the community that exists utilizes certain services – often the regular patrons (most of whom are homeless) are camped out in the periodicals area, reading the day’s newspapers. These patrons are also likely to attend movie nights and concerts. While most of them are not connected to any form or social media, these men and women still create community in the library. During the four years I worked there, I got to know each of these patrons quite well – some would want to have the same conversation every day, some would want to chat about their lives and backgrounds, and still others were looking for help accessing social services. I did what I could in each situation. What amazed me was that while I felt like I got to know these people well during the time I worked for the library, they knew each other infinitely better and could always tell me why someone wasn’t in the library that particular day (perhaps he or she was sick, had chosen to go to the mall or the YMCA instead, etc…). I can guarantee that none of these people are on Twitter, or creating mashups of their favorite YouTube videos.

The long and meandering point that I’m trying to make is that as information professionals, we must  be aware of our library’s existing communities and cultures of participation. In the library that I worked in, regular patrons were anxious to share stories, information, and insights – they just didn’t do it in the way that we imagine patrons participate now. I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but I really do believe we can be too quick to jump on to the 2.0 bandwagon without giving proper consideration to the systems already in place. In the case of my dear public library, the library’s most frequent users are not likely to be heavy social media users and wouldn’t heavily benefit from their library having a large online presence. And I don’t think that it’s a bad thing to meet your patrons where they are rather than where social media enthusiasts think patrons should be.

We are halfway through the first week of Social Media for Information Professionals, and I’m still trying to wrap my head around the definitions of affordance and constraint. On a tangential note, I’ve been thinking about the use of social medias in libraries, and have some thoughts that don’t quite fit on the discussion board. I’ll post them here.

I’ve been looking for, and haven’t had any luck finding, articles discussing library patrons and their use of social media (specifically blogs, Facebook pages, and Twitter feeds). More specifically, I’m looking for concrete data proving or disproving that social media actually brings new users to a library. I am a frequent VPL user, and just recently began following them on Twitter. I was surprised to see that VPL only has about 3000 followers on Twitter – it seems like a very small number for a library system with such a large central branch and 21 other branches. That lead me to wonder whether or not all of VPL’s followers are regular library users. Here’s where things get interesting (in my opinion): if most of these followers are regular library users, does the Twitter feed serve a purpose? If VPL is merely promoting resources, materials, and activities that are already advertised in other places (in the library building, on it’s website, through other social media platforms), what is the purpose of Twitter? How can VPL tell where users get their library-related information from? And should this information be streamlined? (I know, I know – a lot of librarians are for promoting their library on many social media platforms. I don’t think I can get behind that.) Is it worth assigning a staff member to keep up on various social media platforms if the information can be found elsewhere? Should social media platforms be given up, or should the library instead stop printing paper calendars and lists of events? Should VPL dedicate more space to discuss non-library related news, or to talk about books and reading materials more generally? I notice that they do a bit of this but – in my opinion – could do more.

If anyone has thoughts about this, I would love to hear them. Additionally, if anyone can point me to articles (popular or scholarly) that talk about user responses to social media platforms, especially when used for community outreach or to recruit new patrons, I would be very interested in taking a look at them. Send ’em my way!

Hi all,

This will be my blog for the next 6 weeks – feel free to pop by at any time and leave a comment. I’ll do the same for you!

Looking forward to the class,

Maggie