Transforming to Library 2.0

The Building Academic Library 2.0 Youtube clip provided much food for thought.  

 Planning and meeting user needs

• Trying to be Library 2.0 for the sake of it is a waste of time. If effective plans, directions and partnerships are not in place it will be very difficult to reach desired goals and cater for user needs well.  To be able to truly meet user needs we need to know exactly who they are, what they want/need AND where they hang out - we need to find and involve them.

Being willing to adapt, change and keep up

• There never really was a Library 1.0 - libraries have always been using technology, innovating and responding to user needs.  It is more of an evolution - and one that we need to keep pace with and look further a field for ideas and inspiration. Traditional "truths" and current practice need to be challenged to ensure we are doing them for the right reasons - not just because that is the way they've always been done.

Getting all (or most) staff on board

• Organisation 2.0 is a key to a successful library 2.0. Developing a risk-tolerant culture within not only the library but the whole school is important. Encouraging others to have the progressive mindset is not always easy, and will require gentle patience and perseverance in many cases. Providing staff with hands on experience and professional development sessions will assist them greatly. Resistance is natural and it will take some longer than others to make the (ongoing) changes required.
• Innovative and interested staff need to be nurtured by giving them adequate time to experiment and implement web 2.0 systems.

Challenge traditional views

• We need to challenge the idea that the library is the fountain and provider of all knowledge and change it more towards a more cooperative, collaborative approach - where we work together to achieve great services.

 The idea of a "perpetual beta" where the library is constantly evaluating itself and changing its resources, technologies, systems and ideas is where I want to be.  I loved Biancu's (2006) Library 2.0 Meme Map as I think it sums up neatly what Library 2.o is all about. 



References:

Biancu, B. 2006. Library 2.o meme map. (Image) Retrieved 13/12/13 from http://www.flickr.com/photos/bonaria/113222147/sizes/o/

Farkas, M. 2007. Building academic library 2.0. UCBerkeleyEvents. Retrieved 10/12/13 from  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_uOKFhoznI.

Arizona State University - 4Cs of Social Media

The more ASU Library Minutes (2013) I watched, the more Anali Perry grew on me and I found her to be entertaining, likable and very informative.

By taking a fun, laugh-at-yourself type approach to providing valuable information to library users, they effectively build community and conversation. These days people do not have as much time to sift through or search for this type of information. The short and snappy delivery means that students will be more likely to watch this useful information - quick and straight to the point.

Students are actively encouraged to collaborate, engage in conversation and to be involved in content creation. They are told “communication goes both ways”. The library minute titled “The Social Connection” for example, is saying that the library wants to work in partnership with students to provide the most relevant and needed resources – “we want to know what you want” and “we don’t wanna be the socks” you got when you really wanted an IPad for your birthday.

Community is enhanced and needs are satisfied by providing many different avenues for conversing with the library, and also for researching purposes. Top 5 Resources for Online Students shows that there are many different ways students can conduct their research. The University Library provides so many avenues of possible conversation and collaboration – they have made themselves accessible via all of the mainstream social media tools. My first thought was “Do they really need ALL of these modes?” I think they have done this is to try and capture the bulk of their students’ attention – everyone has different social media preferences, so if you put yourself out there using Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, podcasts, youtube (and all the rest!) you are likely to reach most people via one method or another. Feedback, comments and suggestions are welcomed and used to improve services.

The Library Channel’s motto “embracing change, embracing the future” says a lot about the culture that the library is trying to establish – moving away from the traditional, conservative image that libraries have had in the past, towards a contemporary, interactive service that is keeping pace, and in fact setting the pace in the information services field.

References:
Arizona State Library. 2013. The Library Minute Series. (YouTube clips). Arizona State Library. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCA6A813AA9C9A574.

Delicious ...... or not so tasty?

Thomas Vander Wal tells me Delicious is a folksonomy - where users free tag information/objects in order to retrieve them easily later. Obvious benefit = language is applied BY users FOR users - no conventions needed and it is a "free" state of language - morphing with users' cultures and vocabularies as time passes. Outdated terms are no longer used, while new terms are instantly applied.

My initial ideas about Delicious included wanting to find a way to categorise links - file them into folders as I normally do on my laptop. I am now realising that by adding (well thought out) tags I am actually doing so, in a different way. I no longer "drill down" to the file/info I need, but search for its related tags to find it quickly and easily. That's neat - and a new concept to me.

Good points - adding the bookmarklet will mean quick and easy link additions. I can make some links private for those that are for my own personal use. I can search my own links and also those of others - fabulous! I'm looking forward to searching for useful sites using the tags method. I have connected Delicious to my Twitter account - sites mentioned there will automatically be transferred to Delicious. Will monitor this.

Difficulties - I have not found the search function to be very user friendly at all. I'm confused about how to search for particular people - the search options seem to disappear as soon as I start typing keywords. The help menu was not easily found and was not "searchable".  Would like to set up networks here, but am really confused as to how.

Educational Use - would be great to share useful websites with colleagues if only I could figure out this networking thing!! Could use it with students to recommend/promote new books - lead them to reviews etc. Students could also collaboratively contribute resources to a common area. Staff could use to share educational resources.

I will use this site, but believe it could be more user-friendly in assisting people to connect with others in a similar field. Will certainly require a lot more familiarisation time before I feel completely convinced it is wonderful.

References:
Vander Wal, T. 2006. Understanding folksonomy: Tagging that works. dConstruct archive. Retrieved 3/12/13 from http://archive.dconstruct.org/2006/understandingfolksonomy.

Module 1 Musings – “Social media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate”

The above quote comes from the YouTube clip The Social Media Revolution 2014, (Totalprofit 2013).

Web 2.0 - organisations (including us in libraries!) can no longer just hope people will visit their website/opac/physical library – the key strategy for today is to tap into social networks to get in the face of users and to keep us (and our services) in their minds (Barnatt 2005).

78% of people trust peer recommendations, while only 14% trust advertising (Totalprofit 2013) – businesses are going to have to realise that SM is going to be (and probably already is) a very powerful tool in “selling” your organisation’s business – whether it be a commercial venture, government organisation or educational institution.

We no longer search for the news, the news finds us. We will no longer search for products and services – they will find us. I have experienced this first hand recently – I’m not quite sure how this happened but after browsing on a sports trophies site for my local club, I am now noticing tennis trophies ads are popping up all over the place – in headers, sidebars etc when I am looking at other sites – HOW DO THEY KNOW?!!!

Fred Cavazza (2010) advises us not to confine ourselves to Facebook – using a mix of some of the other online services will provide us with a much greater richness, including some more subtle social mechanisms. Charlene Li (2010) says the same thing – to use a Media mix (ie multiple channels) .

I was impressed and inspired by James Surowiecki’s TedEd clip (2005) The power and the danger of online crowds. The idea that various forms of social media were able to collectively provide better and more comprehensive coverage of the 2004 Colombo Tsunami  than traditional news reporting avenues was staggering.  First hand accounts, images and videos allowed social networkers to show a true picture of what it would have been like to have been there.

James also captured my attention with his thoughts about “Collective intelligence”. Under the right conditions, groups can be remarkably intelligent. But there is also a “dark side” – he argues that the more tightly linked we become, the harder it is for us to remain independent and that the network starts to shape your views and interactions with others. I can see the sense in this – often it is easy to get swept along with the mentality of the group. James believes that networks make it harder for people to remain as independent thinkers. I like his ant metaphor - where no individual ant knows what it’s doing, but collectively they work together with remarkable results. But occasionally one ant goes astray and all the others seem to follow and just do what the ant in front does. He sees this as being similar to a network situation – we need to be careful not to blindly follow the one(s) in front but should remain independent and separate-thinking if the collective intelligence of the group is to be fully realised.

Lots to think about as I move on to trying to nut out my project proposal - got a lot of ideas in my head at this point and think it is time to start documenting.

References:


Barnatt, C. (2008). (YouTube clip). Explaining Web 2.0. Accessed 28/11/13 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BAXvFdMBWw&feature=related

Cavazza, F. (2011). Social media landscape 2011. Fred Cavazza.net. Retrieved 29/11/13 from  http://www.fredcavazza.net/2010/12/14/social-media-landscape-2011/

Li, C. (2010). Selling social media strategy to leadership (podcast), accessed 21/11/2013 from http://ontherecordpodcast.com/pr/otro/selling-social-media-boss.aspx. 

Surowiecki, J. (2005). When social media became news. Ted Conferences LLC. Retrieved 25/11/13 from http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/james_surowiecki_on_the_turning_point_for_social_media.html   

Totalprofit. (2013). (YouTube clip). The social media revolution 2014. Accessed 25/11/13 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eUeL3n7fDs&feature=player_embedded