Librarians on Social Networks…Again

NextSpace (The OCLC Newsletter) asked nine experts to explore and comment on the trends and behaviors of users of the social Web.{Lori Bell (Alliance Library Systems, Second Life Librarian and Director of Innovation), Edward Castronova (Indiana University, Associate Professor of Telecommunications),Paul Jones (ibiblio.org, Director), Hemanshu Nigam (MySpace, Chief Security Offfice), Kitty Pope (Alliance Library System, Second Life Librarian and Executive Director), Fred Stutzman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ph. D. Student), Stuart L. Weibel, Ph. D. (OCLC, Consulting Research Scientist)} The challenge is how to apply social networking in a digital age to enhance and extend the public service mission of libraries, museums and archives.How do you define online social networking?

This is one impressive line-up of people.

Comment from Gary:
Yes, it’s important topic that librarians must understand, but we wish librarians would spend some of the time they are using to “think on social networking issues” to promote core services such as virtual reference, telephone reference, audio/video downloads, etc. Heck, forget all of that — how about just promoting themselves by politely (as Mary Ellen) puts it, “getting in peoples face.”

This week I had three situations that I think relate to all of this in a direct or indirect way.

Indirect
Campaign and Elections magazine has a full-page ad, inside front cover, for a company that will get your opinion out and blasted on social networks and blogs and social nets within minutes. They call themselves “blog warriors.” Nothing new, but one has to wonder how much social network opinion is authentic and how much is being manipulated by groups — either for a fee or by groups that might have well organized political views (perhaps about a local issue).

Direct
The local dog assist program for those with vision issues was making some $ today by wrapping books at a local bookstore. I started talking to a man from the group with poor version and one awesome dog. I told him what the Montgomery County Library offered in terms of downloadable audio books and what the State of Maryland offers with its statewide VR program. Like many people, he had no idea.

The same thing goes for a conversation that I had with my ophthalmologist a few days ago. He was blown away when I showed him what’s available both at his local library and also available remotely for people with site issues. He told me he’s going to prepare a new guide for his patients.

Social networking is a major issue and a potential way to reach new users. But priorities (aka time) being what it is, we have to remember that sometimes the old fashion way (word of mouth) still works in reaching new and potential users. Need an example? OK, here’s one. Just ask Google.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 9th, 2007 at 1:41 am and is filed under Libraries and Librarianship, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.