Month: July 2011

When considering how information professionals use digital collaboration tools, I admit I have little to go on. In my experience, librarians tend to use little more than e-mail, most likely due to the wide range of computer literacy amongst staff members. In my professional career I will definitely try to abide by the Librarian’s 2.0 Manifesto, which states “I will recognize that libraries change slowly, and will work with my colleagues to expedite our responsiveness to change”, because it’s a major flaw in most systems. So instead, I decided to interview someone in the technology industry, a marketing director at Intel Corp. (who also happens to be my dad), about what tools they use to work on projects together. Since much of the company’s work is done across large geographical differences, collaboration tools are essential.

Firstly, across the intranet: for collaboration across the company, both nationally and globally, they use programs like MS Live Meeting in conjunction with teleconferencing. They share projects such as Powerpoint presentations, or use the virtual desktop feature. I also remember, from a previous call center job, that this tool was a great way to chat at work without installing extra software that would get us in trouble, heh.

When they need to do more than just phone conferencing with collaborators outside the company, it seems that the most popular tool is WebEx, which hooks up to the phone as well. This Cisco service is similar to Live Meeting, except it is web-based instead of intranet-based.

Finally, when they want a more intimate, “natural” feeling conference, they use the fancy shmancy Telepresence System, also by Cisco. Want your conference room to look like the Holodeck? Have a bucket-load of money to spend on it? This is the service for you! Seriously though, it’s pretty awesome. Up to six people can sit around a half-moon shaped table, while on the other side are three plasma screens where you can view six other people, making it feel as much like a real meeting as can be (Hrm…is that a good thing?).

All of these services are subscription-based, which is fine and dandy when a corporation is backing you, but obviously cost-prohibitive to the average person. But there isn’t a huge divide like there used to be. These types of collaborative technologies have trickled into our personal lives. While we may not have WebEx, we do have Skype, costing us only pennies a minutes to have international video chats, including conferencing, however buggy. Sharing documents is as easy as dropping them into…well…a box, with Dropbox. And, as many in LIBR559M have pointed out, Google Docs is a great way to collaborate in real time, something none of the above applications do nearly as well. My sister, who lives in Spokane, is planning her wedding with my mom in Portland, and they edit Google Docs daily, whether its adding people to the invite list or hashing out “Save the Date” wording. And it’s EASY, even for people who are computer illiterate (sorry mom!). It’s exciting to think about all the cool new stuff that will be created in our lifetime. It’s not Star Trek, but we’re getting there.

Public libraries usually do everything they can to advertise their services. As they should, with budget cuts and having to prove their worth and whatnot. Like other organizations/businesses, this has meant having a presence on Facebook. Makes sense…Facebook is a part of many people’s daily life, and many ‘like’ everything under the sun, from their favorite baseball teams and TV shows to the fast food joints they frequent and the kind of underwear they buy, making the SNS a marketing powerhouse. At least in theory…

But more often than not, it seems that organizations, including libraries, fail to see the real value of social networking- that social media affords participation and conversation with the people they are trying to reach. Instead of engaging with people, they simply shill their products and services. They talk at us, not with us. A good example of this is Vancouver Public Library’s Facebook page (for those of you with FB). Every post asks us to ‘check it out’, and unless I am missing something, never invites us to comment on Facebook, the tool we are actually using. While it may direct some traffic to VPL’s website, it is not utilizing the tool to interact with the public at all.

There are exceptions to this. I have been following my local library’s FB feed for awhile now, the Multnomah County Library system. I admit I’m biased, but I’ve always found the page to be more inviting than most. While they still advertise their services, they also often pose questions to get their patrons’ talking, and use the medium for other fun activities. Their latest is a book and film review haiku challenge, where the winner gets a free tote bag. It challenges users to be creative and to interact in a fun way. Another great use of the space is that they have done reader’s advisory over Facebook. They asked for us to list the last three books we’ve read, and then personably responded, suggesting a book and giving the reasons why. The couple of times I have seen (and participated) in this, it garnered an incredibly large amount of participation, and the moderator was extremely timely in his/her responses.

But in my opinion, the best way Multcolib uses Facebook is by, *gasp*, letting us post on their wall! Patrons post suggestions/questions/complaints, and the library responds. This simple option opens up the lines of communication between library and patron. Upon investigation, I realized that hardly any library does. I searched for every public library I could think of and literally none of them allowed this, excluding a couple Portland suburbs who probably modeled their own pages on Multnomah County’s. I’d love to hear about others, if anyone out there knows of them. If you can’t post, how can you fully interact with the library? It is then a necessarily “top-down” system, not a participatory one.

There is an obvious reason for this. You need an active moderator to make sure people aren’t posting obscene things, so libraries just don’t want to risk it/bother/hire someone to read the dang thing. This is unfortunate. And it doesn’t even eliminate the potential problem, because of course people can still comment on posts however they want to. Until libraries actually allow people to participate, I doubt FB will really allow libraries to reach others. I know that when I skim my FB feed, my eyes glaze over most library posts, because they are just shills; I doubt I’m alone in this. Libraries need to trust their patrons and let us post.

Confession #1: I am not a good golfer.

Last year, I signed up for ladies group golf lessons with my mom at the local golf course. As the others confidently took swing after swing at the driving range, I carefully lined up each shot, running over all the steps in my head. Feet shoulder-width apart, bent knees, straight back, butt out, arms stretched out to form a ‘V’, etc. etc. And invariably (excepting a few lucky shots), the ball would dribble a couple meters in front of me, in the dirt. Before long, the golf pro commented, “You’re an A+ student, aren’t you? You’re thinking too much.”

Confession #2: I am not a good blogger.

So when I read Andrew Sullivan’s article “Why I Blog”, where he mentions the advice he received from his editor, Michel Kinsley, in his early stages of blogging: don’t “think too hard before writing”, this simple comment completely resonated with me in more ways than one. Since my first foray into the uncharted jungles of the Internet, this has been my problem, again and again. Early on, many of my friends were very active on both topical and general websites, posting articles on everything from politics to professional wrestling and welcoming comments on the respective site’s forum. While I was perfectly comfortable commenting on others posts, I more often than not left my own half-written articles abandoned…they were either not interesting, witty, well written, or insightful enough for me to dare to post. So while my friends made a name for themselves, taking a swing at whatever thoughts came to mind, I was left in the dust.

So as I now attempt to make my mark on the Web, yet again, it comes to no surprise that I am suffering from “blogger’s block”. Still, I’m up for the challenge of overcoming overthinking, partly by practice and partly by observing how others use blogs and other social media effectively for their purposes. Bring it on, blogosphere!