Web 2.0 & Relationship Building

 I came across this old blog post I wrote for a LIBR 203 assignment back in my early days in the SLIS program (i.e. February 2009).

It's a brief little blurb about how libraries meet people where they are at and connect them to the larger world through relationships & technology. 

Library for travellers @ Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.  Photo by Amy Genesis © 2011

Libraries tend to meet people where they are at.  A person can walk into a local library and come out feeling informed, equipped, engaged.  But this best happens when the patron has participated in the social aspect of the library--that is, s/he has interacted with library staff whose job it is to connect people to their desired information, even if the patron doesn't know what they want!  Without staff contact, a patron can find a book on the shelf or a webpage on a workstation and feel satisfied.  But when patron and library staff person connect, the patron can learn a lot more about where s/he's at and what s/he needs.

Michael Stephens' article discusses how Web 2.0 innovations like Facebook, del.icio.us, Meebo and Flickr--when adopted by a library--can foster relationships, discussion, info-sharing, and team building between staff and patrons, patrons and patrons, and even connect to those who don't venture into the library world (people who, I dare say, don't know--but would soon learn of--the library's worth!).  Trust, or, the ability for transparency, is key in this endeavor of groups and institutions getting to know each other and learn the worth of such connectivity.

Steven Yankee, in his article on social networking, outlines that, in terms of doing business, sites like LinkedIn and Twitter are more for "branding" yourself and your organization than as a direct business tool meant for generating clientele.  But engaging in sites like Facebook is part connecting to potential users, getting to know them, and letting them get to know you.  For non-profit organizations like libraries, this is a great marketing tool!  Web 2.0 is a dream for "building a reputation," not as a stand-alone tool, but as part of a successful strategy for connecting people to their world--through libraries! 

References

Stephens, M.  (2007). The ongoing web revolution.  Library Technology Reports, September-October 2007, p. 10-14.

Yankee, S.  (2009). Social networking in the 21st century (strictly business).  EventDV.
22 (2) (Feb 2009),  p. 8.

246 - Exercise 6 - YouTube for Newbies

Is this video too small?
Please see a larger version HERE.
http://www.screencast.com/t/ePZ8TsVC4oSk

MIT Libraries Screencast - A Good Example

Today I watched a screencast entitled "About the MIT Libraries" (available at http://libguides.mit.edu/video/ ) on their LibGuides page.

I have started creating video tutorials for library staff at my workplace, so I'm interested in how to make good screencasts; scripting, what to cover, how to speak, and how to display a screencast.  Watching MIT Libraries' introductory video gave me some ideas for my own work.

I suppose that most people who are likely to watch video tutorials know how to enlarge the viewing area so it fills more of the screen than the default 4 cm x 5 cm space on a webpage.  However, I wonder if it might be good to include a note--either as a caption to the static video screen, or initially in the video--that one can click on the 4-arrow icon to enlarge the picture.  Myself, I rarely enlarged video screens on webpages when I watched them.  But my husband always maximizes the screens because he can't stand watching something so small.  I wonder if people would eschew video tutorials based on their unawareness that they can make the screen bigger?  We post our tutorials on our workplace Youtube channel, so most users wouldn't find this an issue…I think?

In any case, I maximized the screen to watch MIT's video.  It captures the libraries' webpage and contains too much detail to watch in its smallest mode.

The narrator works her way step by step through the most basic steps on the home page; her explanations of the sidebar are clear and succinct.  She also directed viewers to other video tutorials for help using the sidebar selections.

The next part of the tutorial was a map of library locations, each representing a subject area or two.  The video also directs viewers back to the home page, and on to LibGuides to find the subject librarian for their faculty, and that librarian's recommended resources. 

The tutorial concludes by pointing to the "Ask Us" and "Tell Us" buttons on the home page which allow a simple way for students to communicate questions or comments. 

The screencast is under 4 minutes, and gives good basic info for students within that length of time.  There was only the briefest of stumbles on her words in the middle of the video, highlighting that the script was well-practiced and otherwise very well delivered. 

It's been fun getting reacquainted with Flickr.  It's a respite from the sometimes overwhelming world of library service & literacy that fills my weekdays.  Lately I've felt like my brain has shut off until it gets a full day of rest from having to comprehend or execute or prioritize or analyze. 


I like what I've heard of libraries or other social organizations using Flickr to show special events, the people involved in the group.  Flickr shares stories and helps people feel connected and inspired to groups they may never meet physically.  Personally, I've been compelled to look up pictures with the tag "Venice."  I just posted some pictures of a recent trip to Venice, Italy, on Facebook; and I realized how little I got to see in the short time I was there.  I'm eager to see other people's pictures, read their comments, and get a better understanding of what I could see next time.

There is a photostream for "Alberta Libraries," (the "group") which my library system belongs to.  I've subscribed to the stream via RSS, and by looking at the photos organized into "sets," it's like looking at a calendar of major events in our province.  I recognize library staff in the pictures who I've met at conferences and during training sessions.  Other pictures show libraries and staff who I've contacted via email or telephone, and I can see what they look like.  This helps build a sense of connection, too; and I can mention seeing them on Flickr the next time we talk.  I've also found some great images just by searching for "alberta libraries".  Flickr's a fun way for me to see what some of my colleagues have been up to!

Here's a pic of my co-worker Lauren from Flickr, taken at a symposium on the future of libraries:

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.