LIBR 246-12: Web 2.0 and Social Networking Tools (Fall 2008)

I think time is the greatest barrier to implementing social software at my work setting.  At the law firm library where I work, time flies by so fast!  Everyone is so busy juggling multiple research projects for different people at once.  Different deadlines looms over our head and with other library duties such as ILL, cataloging, acquisitions, meetings, etc., sometimes it is so hard to find time for implementing social software in our work setting.  For example, our department recently started a wiki and I created a page dedicated to legal citations to help people when they are writing their briefs.  I really hoped that a citation wiki would alleviate people’s frustrations when using the Bluebook and the California Style Manual (these style manuals can be confusing!).  I started my marketing campaign by telling a handful of legal citation mavens (mostly former law clerks) at our office about it.  They were all very excited and happy that we now have this great tool and some have offered tips for me to add in our wiki.  But because we have all been so busy with client work lately, we haven’t had the chance to cultivate and add more information in it.  It has only been a little over a month since we started it and I’ve only told a handful of people about it.   Technically, it is a “beta” version until it has more information and ready to be rolled out to everyone in the firm.  I hope that in the next couple of weeks, I will have some time to organize the information and start campaigning for more people to participate (like actually send out emails to everybody, have an “open house” or a “show and tell” with a projector at the library to teach them how to use it, etc.).  Realistically, though, we will always be crazy busy at the law library and I think the best thing to do is to dedicate bits of time each week to make it work because I know this wiki will be a huge time saver for everyone once it is rich with information.   Besides better time management, I think it would be great to have another person or two in the library to help with marketing and inputting information.  But again, time to implement social networking tools will compete with the time we need to perform our core duties.  If you guys have other ideas on how to make our wiki work in spite of lack of time and manpower let me know!  This class actually inspired me to start that wiki page and I really want it to work and become useful!