A Delicious Experience

A library term I've just discovered is "resource discovery."  Who knows why I don't recall hearing it before.  I've worked in libraries steadily since 2000, and sporadically before that.  But now it's popping up everywhere...and I must say...I like the help I'm getting in "discovering" the resources that I want. 

I signed up for a delicious account as "agenesis", as per the instructions of 246 Exercise 5 and did a search right in delicious for "social media".  Up popped an article on mashable.com, and I linked to 2 other articles from there.  Right away I noticed (consciously, thanks to the assignment instructions) that I like browsing through links that others have saved--especially when they include a little description of the page! 

The most popular URL of the first 3 webpages I saved had been saved by 620 others, and their top tags for this site were "search" (too broad a tag, I thought), "semantic" (semantic what?), "sentiment" (I didn't understand the reasoning for this tag; so there's a knowledge gap), and my favourite tag, "semantic web" (I like the precision of this tag!).  I used this final tag because I couldn't imagine saving much else under the individual words "semantic" or "web." 

Via the "semanticweb" tag, I found a video of Tim Berners-Lee @ TED in 2009 talking about "next web."  I saved this site because surely the WWW inventor has a few valuable things to say on what we can expect next in online communities. 

Having wandered down this path, I then came across the tags of "jaycollier."  This person had a "social" tag (all his/her tags comprised one word), and found an intriguing-looking blog post entitled, "A Diaspora from Facebook, or From Reality?" from the EchoDitto blog.  In the notes field, jaycollier had copied the final paragraph from the post--and I did likewise, as this is an easy way to add descriptive info to the delicious link: 

"Will we collectively use the tool of online social networking to enrich and enliven our real world social lives? Or will we take refuge in it from an increasingly hostile, ecologically degraded, and isolated society: a diaspora from reality?"

This looked like a resource I may refer to in my social software paper, or use as a jumping off point.  And if you read this, jaycollier, thanks for the tip!

I searched for the tag "libr246-13bell" to see what else had been saved for this class.  But I couldn't tell if others from the class had saved any of the same articles as me.  I could see how many saves a link had, and who was the first to save it; but beyond that, I was lost.  In any case, I chose to bookmark a link on metadata, tagging, folksonomies, and web 2.0.  It seemed relevant, and again, may be helpful  for my social software paper.  I think delicious may lead me to all sorts of interesting and relevant material!  

What do you think of the move away from the wisdom of the expert and towards the wisdom of crowds? (Tags = blogpostwk9, blogpostwk9n4)

We no longer trust experts.  We’ve been fooled too many times.  Politicians have made too many promises they haven’t kept.  We see TV shows and news stories where experts took the witness stand in court and were later proven wrong.  Doctors have made mistaken diagnoses, teachers have misjudged their students, authors have poor hypotheses that can be refuted by anyone with a habit of critical thinking.  In his keynote message at the Netspeed conference last week, Jesse Hirsh commented that our society is moving away from “so-called experts” as authorities to the social wisdom we find within our online communities.  The Internet is our authority now.  If we want an answer, we can find ratings, reviews, recommendations, and derive our interpretation of the truth from the voices we choose to listen to--rather than take the advice of one mere “expert” who may have an agenda or want to sell us something.   And experts often cost money, whereas our peeps--our online communities--often offer up their opinions freely, at no charge, to benefit the community.  We like authorities who do not require anything of us in return.

Libraries and other collaborative communities have found that opening their collections up to crowdsourcing can have very positive results.  Next-generation OPACs like Bibliocommons give users resource discovery options via other library users’ online opinions (Tay, 2009).  Allowing members to tag items in a collection can make a collection more accessible, less institutionalized-feeling (Chun et al., 2006).  And this open sharing of information & opinion is where business is headed, too; it worked for Toronto-based gold mining company Goldcorp (Tapscott & Williams, 2007).   So this is what people want and what they respond to--the ability, the spaces & places, the invitation to get what they give online--information offered up at its point of need.

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Tay, A. (2009). "Libraries and Crowdsourcing - 6 Examples." Musings about Librarianship.

Chun, S., et al. (2006). “Steve.museum: An Ongoing Experiment in Social Tagging, Folksonomy, and Museums.” Museums and the Web 2006. Albuquerque, March 22-25, 2006.

Tapscott, D and Williams, A. (2007). "Innovation in the Age of Mass Collaboration." Business Week.

Impact of Organizational Culture on Knowledge-Sharing



I’m lucky to work in an organization that has tech-savvy, trend-aware leadership.  The assistant director has personally encouraged me to engage in social media, in particular, to connect to a larger knowledge-sharing body, beyond our workplace.  This assistant director has fostered an atmosphere where the employees are trusted by management to do their jobs well and supported when they want to initiate changes to workflows or policies, for instance.  The director herself has a philosophy that happy employees are more satisfied and do better work; and this means that she has put policies in place that allow for flexibility and creativity.  Plus, she supplied free coffee and pop!

Hutch Carpenter, in his blog post, “Enterprise 2.0: Culture is as Culture Does” (2009),   talks about how culture maybe isn’t the big potential barrier against change in the workplace that everyone makes it out to be.  If management dictates that a change will take place, employees will fall in line.  So, if administration at my workplace let us know that we would now be using Basecamp for all our special team projects, we would use it.  Admin would create training documents and set up sessions for us to learn how to use the new system, and a plan would be developed for the stages of implementation.  Admin would communicate the phases to staff, ensure those that needed to be trained were, and evaluate the process during the roll-out period.

This has been my experience in my organization when technological changes are afoot.  The people in management have had a vision for a better way to do business, they’ve made a plan, and made it happen.  This doesn’t seem to be what Carpenter means by “organizational culture”--he seems to imply that culture is all about employees’ attitudes to change (or maybe he’s merely just sick of the term...he does make that clear)!   But to me, the vision and mission of management has been to grow and improve our organization, and I have learned--and adapted--from the example of my “superiors”.  The culture at my workplace has been envisioned by management, and they have modeled it and made it happen.  

I have learned a lot about how to encourage change from my supervisors and bosses at work.  For instance, in one of our latest “improvements” which was adding the BiblioCommons interface to our regional library system OPAC, I’ve seen them gently support and encourage their staff, deal with conflict gently and efficiently, work through strategic plans and plans of service, and praise the staff as a whole for accomplishments and awards.  They employ the elements that Carpenter suggests for new-tech adoption: outline defined “in-the-flow” use cases, engage enthusiastic evangelists, broadcast deployment & verbal support from management, and establish evaluation frameworks.  We are in the business of knowledge management and sharing, and that happens best when people feel enabled to share, communicate, and collaborate openly and safely with the tools chosen by those in charge.

Marketing Critique



Chinook Arch Regional Library System (CARLS) is a public library system in southwestern Alberta, Canada.  Headquarters staff offer their member libraries operational support (technical, consulting, training and collections), information services (database subscriptions and reference, resource sharing, programming (summer reading, “Paperbacks by Mail”, multilingual book service, video conferencing), communications & marketing, and contract services for specific programs (interlibrary loans, “Books for Babies,” French language block collection rotation).  Within the “Chinook Arch Plan of Service for 2010 to 2012”--based upon needs assessments, user satisfaction surveys, Municipal Sustainability Plans, and other communications--is a committment to offer “web development,” “marketing materials, training and resources,” “website development” and a “web presence.” 

The web presence that CARLS provides education and training for allows its member libraries to try on whatever social media seems appropriate to reach and serve their users.  CARLS’ focus in its own social media use is to market and brand the region as a whole to patrons; and to communicate, educate and support regional library staff.

The most popular and widely accessed elements of CARLS’ social network strategy is its Twitter feed and its blog.  Both are facilitated by CARLS Consulting staff: the manager of Consulting Services (a librarian), the Automation Services librarian, the Technology Initiatives Librarian, the IT manager, and a consulting assistant. This team takes turns posting comments on the “Overarching Insights” blog, posting about once a week.  Topics include upcoming projects and events, libraries in the news, what they learned at conferences, and tips for best practice.  The intended audience is member library staff, volunteers and trustees.  The Twitter feed for “Chinooklibs” displays on Chinook Arch’s homepage, giving quick and meaning blurbs to all who use the site as their gateway to their library experience.  

Chinook Arch has a Facebook page which they do not advertise--perhaps because there is currently no strategy in place to manage the site.  Actually, CARLS has 3 Facebook pages, each bearing little activity and little definition.  The librarian who initiated the pages is currently on maternity leave.  However, over half of the 30 staff members at Chinook Arch headquarters have Facebook accounts and include their co-workers as Facebook friends, including Chinook Arch’s assistant director who advocates for his staff using social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flock browser) to learn and to communicate in the workplace. Often, daily comments do not refer directly to workplace activity, but 14 of the 19 co-workers identify Chinook Arch as their workplace and occasionally refer to their workplace in their posts and status updates.

Another established but underused account is the Chinook Arch YouTube channel.  The site was created in July 2010 for video tutorials for library staff throughout the region.  CARLS HQ departments have been made aware of the channel and of the software and hardware available at HQ for tutorial creation.  Library managers have also expressed an interest in more online training which they can access asynchronously and remotely to avoid taking time away from their rural libraries.  Apart from Consulting Services, Interlibrary Loans has also created training videos which are intended for ILL staff throughout the province of  Alberta.  The ILL videos, however, have inexplicably disappeared from the Chinook Arch YouTube site.  ILL staff will be looking into this issue as they look to post more short videos this fall.

Chinook Arch was one of three library systems in the province of Alberta to receive a grant towards the RISE video conferencing project.  VC equipment was installed in all Chinook Arch libraries and HQ, and in 2010, over 3500 participants in these 3 regions took in over 800 video conferences.  Chinook Arch boasted in its 2010 Annual Report that the RISE network allowed libraries of any size or location to access information and programming available in larger centres.

Perhaps the biggest investment that Chinook Arch has made into user-focused social media is the overlay of BiblioCommons to its online catalog.  BiblioCommons is a library catalog interface--created by non-librarians!--which facilitates greater discovery and access to a library’s information, while enhancing the site with users’ comments, ratings, lists, tagging and user-to-user messaging.  The result of this has been happy reviews from patrons who love the prototypical web 2.0 features of BiblioCommons.  CARLS has also recently rolled out a mobile version of BiblioCommons, and uses both web and mobile versions of Overdrive, an e-book and audiobook service to deliver those formats.

Even if these efforts to implement social media were not conscious efforts at marketing Chinook Arch per se, the result has been that users are making the connection that CARLS libraries can deliver more of what they want--easy searching, attractive layout, ways to add their favourite items to lists, sharing opinions and comments with other users, and finding resources via the social aspect of the medium.  However, these implementations have been carefully strategized. The move towards BiblioCommons, the blog, Twitter feeds, and the YouTube channel was fuelled by the Needs Assessments and surveys conducted for the 2010-2012 Plan of Service.  The fact that library staff and library users have reported high satisfaction with CARLS technology initiatives and supplemental support suggests that use of social media will remain steady and likely increase due to ease of use and enjoyment of new features.  Chinook Arch has built a reputation as an administration that does the research and listens to its stakeholders.  The librarians at CARLS travel out to the member libraries several times a year to visit library staff and to attend board meetings.  Both online and face-to-face investments work together to show that Chinook Arch is invested in getting patrons the information they want and need in fun, satisfying and effective ways.  

If I had to give any advice to Chinook Arch for next steps in their social media strategy,  I would encourage the organization to make subtle enhancements to their BiblioCommons interface, allowing users to move from a failed item search to an interlibrary loan request.  This would align CARLS services with the recent “Alberta Public Libraries Technology Report” commissioned by the Government of Alberta Public Libraries Services Branch.  The report recommends “Transparent/Seamless Access to Public Library Holdings: Update and create services that realize transparent (i.e. ‘seamless’) access to all Public Library holdings for all Albertans.” CARLS staff report that plans are underway to move in this direction.  

As for the 3 underused Chinook Arch Facebook pages?  It’s okay to let them languish for now.  Library staff and patrons have many of their social and information needs met by the well-designed and function-rich BiblioCommons OPAC interface, and for now, that’s where the masses will gather to connect to library holdings, the blog, Twitter feeds, and each other.

No Wiki-Wiki

I don’t like wikis.  They ask so much, and give so little. “Contribute!  Collaborate!  Make the world a better place!” they shout!   And many wikis don’t ease you into the process, for instance by suggesting that you “start here” or by providing a table of contents.  I know I’m being a bit harsh, but I’ve seen too many poorly constructed, ultimately abandoned wikis to feel that they are a useful tool for long-term use on anything less than a highly-specific theme for a small, invested user group.

It seems that libraries are moving away from the wiki model for several reasons:

1.  it’s difficult to develop a clear overarching structure that many participants can understand and work within.  If you look at the example of the Alaska Association of School Librarians, you’ll see that even a neat looking page can semi-hide the fact that the point of the wiki is very vague.   The introduction simply refers to the sidebar, and the postings in the FrontPage column offer little clarification to the wiki’s purpose.  Also, you may notice that the site was last updated over a year ago...why was it abandoned do you think?  Did lack of wiki structure cause the collaboration to collapse?

2.  People prefer commenting to collaboration.  Tagging, rating, commenting--or merely reading--are less labor-intense for users, so libraries move to blogs, podcasts, social bookmarking to better serve their stakeholders.  As Cashel mentions (2007), wiki contributors are more likely to edit than to create.  

3. It’s more difficult to maintain a wiki which may depend on several collaborators for content than a blog which typically one person writes & mediates.  The structure and readability of the info on a blog or podcast is more current, immediate, accessible.  It’s a simpler information delivery method for writer and reader both.

If I were to choose between a wiki or social bookmarking for a library study guide, I’d likely go with the social bookmark system. Wikis tend to look more confusing than they are, and the “collaboration” model often leads me to wonder, “Who’s in charge of this?”  Wikis should always designate a person or department who holds responsibility for the content, even in the midst of collaboration.  I think many wikis have failed because of this lack of perceived leadership.  Social bookmarking, on the other hand, both personalizes the information sharing experience and gives each user a sense of ownership & responsibility through having an individualized account; choosing social bookmarkers to follow; adding to the organization & structure of the site through tagging, rating, commenting, and saving; and seeing how this makes a difference.

That said, just today I discovered the nicest, most helpful and organized wiki I’ve seen:  the APLEN Training Wiki.  I googled a topic for work, found the wiki in a pile of results, and found it to be a very helpful source for various work projects.  What I like about this wiki is the clear sidebar which notes the topics on the site.  Also, I have been to the APLEN office in Edmonton Public Library, met the staff, and recognize other names on the site.  This gives me a sense of who is ultimately responsible for the content, and to whom I might go with questions or concerns--instead of posting such on the wiki for all to see. (Again, Cashel suggests this is a characteristic of successful wiki--collaborators know each other. And as Nichani concludes, it’s best if the intended collaborators have previous experience in working together in online environments.)   I have socially bookmarked this wiki for future reference!

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Cashel, J. (2007). “When to Use a Wiki.” Online Community Report.

Nichani, M. (2007). "Planning and Sustaining Wiki-Based Collaboration Projects." Pebble Road.

Make your library seem like you give a hoot...

This week for a class we students were pointed to a few library MySpace and Facebook pages.  Some of the links didn't work.  Some of the profiles were last updated last year.  Some pages had practically no information on them...made me wonder why the library bothered to sign up for an account.  Some pages actually looked nice, conveyed interesting information and a pleasant layout, and was recently updated!

Let's just give a shout out to Hennepin County Public Library, this week's big winner [in a list of losers...I so hope this list is not representative of North American libraries in general]!

If I'm ever in charge of my library's social media presence, here's a few things I'm going do based on what I saw this week:

• post all library events on my wall or notes page so people know what's happening NOW 
• take crazy photos of the library, the signage, the people, the seasons changing, cool book displays, events, construction, rare books, 
• (Okay, now a shout out to my alma mater, University of Regina Dr. John Archer Library!  Woo!  Archer posted some great photos of their book displays--my favorites were the staff picks with neat props!)
• I'm not going to put on a bunch of photos that only mean something to library staff...okay, I will, but in a separate album, and maybe make it private.  Students don't want to sort thru that stuff.
• the best contact info, directions to our library, opening hours, and other websites are going in our profile
• link to the FB pages of our community partners: other libraries (yes, let's work together), schools, theaters, charities, professional associations...whatever might interest our patrons (and NOT get me in trouble.  But I'm not going to think about it too much).
• I will want to put pictures of staff on our site and outline what they do.  I might get some flack on this, but I can make a case for this being an awesome idea.  As a library user, I love this kind of stuff.
• Rude comments are going to be erased.  I'm creating a safe place here.
• I saw a search field...people can search their OPAC on Facebook?  Even if you get redirected to the library's webpage for results, that's still a cool idea, IMHO!
• I'm going to keep it light, fun, informative, pretty...like me.  IMHO!