LIBR 246-13 Building the Social Library Online

Here's my last post for this course. It seems like it has been a long time since Haikus and Top-Ten Lists, but as in my favorite style, I've included some bullet point lists and summaries. Happy reading!

Phil Bradley blogged about some interesting topics lately and I wanted to share with everyone.

1) Grab All is a search engine that allows you to compare results from different engines side-by-side. 

2) An article about using del.icio.us to monitor site activity with screenshots. I thought this might be useful for our metrics discussion.

We spent the past few months playing with and comparing various social software technologies, but if or when the time comes to implement social software in the places we work, we are sure to come up against resistance. (Unless you work in an office culture where technology is embraced, and even that has its downfalls.) Across the board, I think the three issues we would mostly likely face are time, training, and utility.

I thought screencasting is a great way to provide reference services at a library because it pulls together so many elements that would occur in a face-to-face reference interaction. I really enjoyed doing my screencast with Jing. I thought it was pretty intuitive and a worthwhle experience.  To be fair, I regularly do screencasts for my job and find that they do help, especially since we only provide remote support (phone and email).

Never using Garage Band before, I thought my experience with the software went relatively smooth. I wasn't able to get the jingles in that I wanted. I think this was because I decided to not use my headset with microphone, the feedback was horrible, but I used the computer's isight mic instead.  I'm not a hundred percent sure why this was the case, but I'd rather have clarity over a fancy podcast.

I can see the potential of using Second Life as a resource for Libraries to provide services, but I'm not to sure how I feel about using Second Life right now. I have a failry decent computer, a macbook that is less than a year old and DSL internet, but it moved so slow! These types of resources have to be targeted to specific audiences because in my mind Second Life is a niche thing. There are interesting lectures from poets, book groups, and even international reference suport, however, if I could do those things in my "first life" - I would.

Although I'm not working in a library, my current job allows me to provide various virtual reference services through email, IM, and VOIP/co-browsing demonstrations. In my experience, here are 6 points that any person working in a virtual reference environment should think about:

Meebo Transcript:

[21:07] me: Hi, I have a quick reference question.

[21:07] librarian: whats the question?

My profile took a long time to set up. Why? Because unlike some of the other tools we used adding applications were not as simple as finding code on MySpace.  I had to Google the code to add RSS feeds... and half the time I had to go through not-so-reliable-looking websites to find it.

User Generated Participation is...

If I were to fill in the blank,  I would say, it is worth trying.