Twitter

I've used Twitter more consistently in the last two weeks than I have in the last two years that I've had a Twitter account. I've used it off and on without understanding a lot of the features because I had no reason to learn. Twitter is confusing in the way it is set up. I still have trouble knowing who said what to whom and when. I also get thrown off by the "home" page and the "profile" page. However, I've enjoyed using it to share and gather information for this class. This was the most useful time I had with Twitter because I was actually communicating with people for a purpose. I felt a personal connection . . .and it was just fun. In fact, one of my non-gslis747 friends started reading our list and enjoyed it!

The most successful uses of Twitter seem to be for announcing events or sharing links to websites. I believe libraries can use this for those purposes. Also, if a librarian was very captivating, useful and humorous, perhaps a specific librarian at a library could make a presence on Twitter. It could sort of be like a "Dear Abby" librarian-style type of thing.

Our QC library might benefit from tweeting about new acquisitions, events, and other occurrences at our library. A student aide or circulation assistant could even tweet about the availability of study rooms during exam times, study hours, or printer/equipment statuses. This would be of use to students and save them time.

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies

             Every company, business and institution seems to be trying to make their presence in the social media technology world. On countless blogs, wikis, and social networks there are businesses trying to sell me something, get me to click on something or get me to go somewhere. It seems that some efforts are misplaced. Is a presence on Twitter the best option for a nursing home? Are they really attracting the right audience? Perhaps companies, businesses and institutions should give more thought behind their selected uses of social media technology.

            The POST method is an acronym for the "four-step planning process" that Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff (2008) describe in their book Groundswell:Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.  POST is designed to help companies and businesses interested in incorporating the groundswell strategy into their social media plan. POST stands for People, Objectives, Strategy, and Technology.

            Libraries can also incorporate POST into strategizing whether or not a social media presence makes sense for their library and, if so, what kind of presence is appropriate. Here’s how:

            PEOPLE- Li and Bernoff (2008) stress that it is important not to start a social media strategy until you know the capabilities and social media interests of your customers (Li & Bernoff, 2009, p 67. In libraries, it would be wise to gather demographic information about your users to find out if social media technology even makes sense. If your public library caters to a senior citizen community, social media may not work. If you are in an academic library, a social networking presence is ideal.

            OBJECTIVES- What does your library plan to get out of a groundswell approach? What is the library’s mission and/or goals? If your library is an academic library, perhaps you’d like to provide ample research assistance to users. If you are in a museum library or special collections library, perhaps your goal is to gain more attendees at your special events and exhibits.

            STRATEGY- How does your library want its relationship with the users to change? Do you want them to become more engaged or do you want more traffic in your library? This is important to consider as it determines how to measure progress, prepare you for the ultimate goals, and what kind of social technology is most appropriate.

            Technology- The absolute LAST thing, according to Li and Bernoff (2009), that should be considered is the technology. An academic library may consider using social networks such as Facebook to connect with their groundswell of college-aged students. An art library at an art school may consider using Flickr to connect with their groundswell. It truly depends on the audience and your objectives.

            The groundswell technique is about concentrating on the relationships you have and hope to have with your audience. This comes before using technology. Especially in the library setting, proper research is needed to ensure a library’s successful attempt at a social media presence. “We want to get involved with Twitter because everyone else is doing it,” is not the groundwell approach. Building meaningful relationships with your users is the groundswell approach.

More about POST.

Buy the book.

Find it at your library.

References

Li, C., & Bernoff, J. (2008). Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business Press.

Social Bookmarking and the Maui Community College Library

The Maui Community College's Delicious page includes lots of tools, reference resources, and links to sites about web 2.0, technology and the Internet. There are also social resources such as the "It Gets Bette Project's" Youtube site and games to play online.

Here is the library's mission from their website: University of Hawai'i Maui College Library's mission is to provide resources and services to stimulate intellectual curiosity and to facilitate learning and research within the academic community.

Not only do the sites bookmarked achieve this mission by including websites that are about education and research, but the very fact that the library has a Delicious page does this as well. This library is appealing to their users who are college students that spend ample amount online for school and free-time. MCCL is making their presence known in the digital environment and aiding their users there.

Was this review helpful?

This picture reminds me of something that I discovered the other night. I logged in to my weRead account on Facebook and decided to look back at some of my reviews of books I've read. In addition to my poor grammar, I noticed that weRead now has the little thumbs up or thumbs down option about the “helpfulness” of a review.

3 or 4 of my reviews are reviewed as “unhelpful” and 2 are reviewed as “helpful.” 

I started thinking. Not about the irony of a review of my review per se (which is bizarrely metacritical and, in a lot of ways, alters the true essence of an honest review), but more about my reaction to them. Why am I that bothered and curious about the identities of these people who don’t find my reviews helpful?  Why do I want to know WHY they did or didn’t like my reviews of books. Am I too critical of books? Is my grammar, as mentioned, that despicable? But this isn’t about them liking or disliking my reviews, it’s about them finding my reviews “helpful,” right? So why or why not are the reviews helpful? Is it because the user doesn’t agree with MY review? Does my review give no insight to the characters/plot/writing/font used in the reviewed book? IT’S MY REVIEW! I don't need a review of my review! I didn’t ask you if you liked it or not.

Facebook Manners And You

There is no official etiquette book for Web 2.0 technologies, but this comes close. This video, posted on YouTube about Facebook and now re-posted by me on Blogger (Web 2.0 overload!), speaks about the sad state of human relationships that are confined and defined by computers and social technologies. It also illustrates, albeit with humor, the potential dangerous ramifications of positing private (and perhaps false) information about other people.

What are some other rules of Web 2.0 etiquette?

Library Blogs

I have to admit that before this assignment I have NEVER looked at a library blog. I'm a member of 4 public library systems and I frequent my school's library website at least 3 times a week, but I've never seen a blog advertised on the sites. Perhaps I never truly looked, but it turns out that 3 of the 4 public library systems I'm a member of have blogs (or in the case of NYPL, multiple blogs). Of these blogs, the one that stood out the most (not in a good way) is the Montgomery County Public Library Blog from my library system I grew up with in Maryland. There is a lot of text, seemingly random, and written in the first person by, presumably, a librarian. Why should I care what this librarian thinks?

None are as interesting as the Georgia State University blog we had to review for this week's reading. First of all, the other blogs are not updated as frequently as this one. The last post on the GSU blog was on Friday, October 1 (not 1 or 2 weeks ago). The post discussed the buzzworthy movie called The Social Network that was released that day. The post was short and included links to read more about the movie and Facebook. This is relevant and compelling. The posts are all succinct, well-thought out, and updated EVERY weekday. The scope of this blog reaches beyond GSU's library to current events with a librarian's flair. This is a fine example of what a library blog should be in today's environment.