LIBR 246-04/13 Web 2.0 (Fall 2010)

Before starting this class, I was full of trepidation. I’m not particularly techy and am usually something of a late adopter when it comes to new technologies. And when I read the details for our first week, where we had to sign up for a news aggregator and create an account with delicious, my fears that I was out of my depth were confirmed. ‘Oh no’ I thought ‘I’m going to be way behind everyone and needing to ask my husband for help all the time!’ But then I actually did both of those tasks (by myself!) and, would you believe it, they were not difficult at all!

We have read many articles this week about the barriers to implementing social software in libraries and it seems to me that the most significant ones are people-related, though there are, of course, other ones relating to technology, marketing and organizational structure and planning.

Here is my screencast on the joys of Google Reader

As part of my social software impact paper I have been looking at online forums for parents. After looking at our readings this week, I revisited two to compare the way they are moderated and how it affects the forum.

At the beginning of October, Gap quietly launched a new logo on its website. It was greeted with much vitriol and derision. A fake Twitter account was set up, @GapLogo and a site where you could make your own Gap logo quickly followed. The Gap responded by posting a message on its Facebook page:

This week’s collaborative blog post gave us the opportunity to experience some of the barriers to internal collaboration! Here are Group One’s thoughts on what those barriers are:

Cultural

Since I started using delicious at the beginning of this semester I have found it useful, but I notice I’m still using my toolbar bookmarks and have not yet moved those over. I also notice I have the proverbial long list of bookmarks, many of which are way out of date and need weeding, so it's good to start afresh with delicious. I like the idea of using tags as a way of being able to ‘file’ resources in multiple places so that was the area I explored for my initial three resources, though one popped in as it had a brief section about libraries using delicious.

I think a lot of what we have said in previous weeks about other social media, also holds true for wikis: use them strategically as part of an overall social media and library communication plan; and play to their strengths. I think wikis’ strengths are:

• It is a collaborative and shared effort that helps to build a community. Although there may be a manager, the best wikis have a group ownership.

Introduction

The Multnomah County Library (MCL) includes a Central library and 18 neighborhood branches in and around Portland, OR. It has a very active and well-established online presence outside of its website. MCL uses the following social media tools:

The analogy that really resonated with me this week was in Michael Fienen’s piece ‘Facebook Hates Your Brand’. So the idea is that Facebook (along with other social networking sites) is like a party host – you buy the drinks, clear the space, set out a few nibbles and so on. But then, as the host, you have to let your guests enjoy the party in their own way – you can’t go round insisting that they do the Macarena if they don’t want to.