Social Networking Strategies For Libraries

Presentation

supercrazylibrarianguy — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 19:54:58 +0000

I’m submitting a proposal to deliver a presentation on this topic at the 2008 Online Northwest conference. My focus there would be on del.icio.us and Bloglines as two cool tools to use together, and some of the strategies and practical apps outlined here so that the whole library can get value out of the process. I’ll probably keep the blog and widgets ideas on board to help answer questions or to add a little to the presentation to spice it up. Maybe I can also do some show and tell – here on this blog, I have the latest del.icio.us links from my del.icio.us account as a widget in the sidebar, for example – would that be a cool addition to a library home page? A kind of “What’s new online?” Maybe you could create a widget of a certain tag in your del.icio.us list, so that every time you come across a site or article that would have a high patron interest (rather than some obscure web app that you want to come back and look at later, or an article about library policy and ethics or something, right?) you can tag it and it will just pop up on the website. Depending on how you want to play, if you had a blog that patrons can look at, you could tag each new post in del.icio.us and have it show up in the list as well. Random, disorganized and miscellaneous links might seem like the antithesis of library organization, but a lot of people don’t know what they want when they come to the library, they just want to browse. Having random links might create a reason for people to return to the site regularly, to see what strange and interesting new things your librarians have found…

the pieces by themselves

supercrazylibrarianguy — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 20:12:36 +0000

Blogs, bookmarks and feeds are all good tools by themselves. Each one takes a bit of time and practice to get used to. It’s good to have a plan for eventual integration – this blog/site has some suggestions in that area, but each piece needs to be introduced and championed, has to have it’s unique merits explained and explored before the full integration will make sense or be useful.

Del.icio.us is a great place to start – it has some real immediate benefits, doesn’t depend on a social network for most of the benefits to be seen, and can be integrated easily into the other components as they’re added.

Blogs are a good next step, but can take some time to get used to. There are people who like blogging, and others who don’t.

RSS feeds take some time to explain, but once you’ve gotten past that stage and on to the usefulness of them, people get more interested. Using something like Bloglines to keep track of the other blogs, and to del.icio.us links/tag can be a great way to show staff how Bloglines can be useful to them in their day-to-day.

Also, using the Firefox browser can be a huge help when using web 2.0 tools. The drag and drop features on the browser, the quick customizability, the easy addition of buttons, the ability to open up all the contents of a folder in tabs (I have a folder marked “Startup” that I open in tabs every morning. It has the various sites, blogs, and wikis that I work on, as well as my Bloglines and facebook accounts) all combine to make Firefox a better tool than IE for Web 2.0 explorations.

Internal/External thoughts

supercrazylibrarianguy — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 20:58:36 +0000

There are two parts to the puzzle of Social Networking Strategies for Libraries – the first is the use of Web 2.0 for enhanced internal workings of the libraries – communication, information access, etc. The second is the library’s interaction with the community – dissemination of information as well as interactivity and co-creation of information. There are places where these two parts overlap – one can simultaneously promote good resources to other librarians and to patrons, of course. There are also places where things are best kept separate. I’m going to have to explore these a little more, I think. I’ll be working on it over the next few weeks.

Step-by-Step

supercrazylibrarianguy — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 20:38:42 +0000

So far, this model works best for users who have their own computers – managers, librarians and administrators. I will include notes on how to make this system useful to people who do not have dedicated computers, also.

PART ONE – What the social network coordinator does.

1. Set up a central del.icio.us account and any special collections account/s.

2. Set up department specific blogs for each library or library department. Make these blogs the home page on shared computers, with links in the sidebar to other relevant pages, such as your libraries Intranet, home page, catalog, etc.

3. Make sure each person in the department can post to the blog.

4. Place a widget in the sidebar that shows the new links being added to the central del.icio.us account.

5. Set up a Bloglines account for yourself with feeds coming from each blog, the del.icio.us account and the “links for you” page in your del.icio.us account.

6. Be a champion for this project, talk face to face with people who will be using it, provide clear instructions on how to post, be willing to meet with and walk people through the process of getting a del.icio.us account, etc.

PART TWO – Getting everyone else on board.

1. Everyone sets up a del.icio.us account for themselves or for their department, if it is a department where few people have a computer dedicated to their own use. Part of this process is adding buttons to the browsers on each computer, and giving users their department’s username and password, so that they can add links from whichever computer they are using.

2. Users upload their bookmarks – this is most relevant to people who have dedicated computers, and have been able to add bookmarks to them. However, some departments will have folders and bookmarks in their browsers as well, for commonly accessed sites.

3. Users retag their uploaded items, and send links to the central account using the for:username tag – not every link, but links that are relevant to the purposes of the central account – providing networked access to great web resources for educating library staff and helping patrons.

4. Users set up their own Bloglines accounts – this will work better for users who have their own computers, but as long as there is time allotted for staff to check this information, then it will also be of use to those without dedicated computers.

5. Users subscribe to an RSS feed of other departmental blogs and the central del.icio.us account. Training on how to do these things will need to be available to all users.

GENERAL NOTES

As you can see, the adminstrator is the only one who has to have knowledge of widgets to help build this network. Individual users have some basic set-up that can be a little time consuming – uploading their bookmarks and tagging them with new tags and setting up a Bloglines account and adding RSS feeds to it.

Please see individual pages listed at the top of this page and in the sidebar for more in depth information about the why and how of using each of these tools for social networking.

Internet collection development

supercrazylibrarianguy — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 16:29:25 +0000

The Internet is ripe for collection development – on a lot of levels, web pages equate to books – they contain a lot of information about a certain subject or theme, or cover a lot of subjects using a certain format. In some ways a good web site is better than a good encyclopedia because it can be updated with new information, and added to when necessary. Places like the Librarians Internet Index are working to build a taxonomy of good Internet sites based on their subject matter, and that’s great. But that’s only part of the collection that’s available out there. Blogs and podcasts are the equivalent upgrade to magazines – newspapers are already putting themselves on line, as well. There are also a lot of videos available, and not just time wasters either. A lot of good institutions are producing helpful short videos to train or inform.

With Bloglines and del.icio.us, a lot of Internet collection development can be accomplished on a day-to-day basis, with a relatively low amount of time consumption.

Practical stuff

supercrazylibrarianguy — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 01:39:32 +0000

After giving a talk recently about the benefits of using del.icio.us in libraries, I began to realize that the kind of information people in the “early majority” need in order for them to adopt new technologies is the practical kind of “how exactly is this supposed to make my life/work easier?” So I started thinking about how to model practical social networking uses.

I’ll use the pages to model different ideas for different web 2.0 tools like del.icio.us, blogs, RSS and Twitter, as well as other ideas as they come around. I’ll try and cite/link to any sources that come along also.