Exercise 6: How to Create a Blog using Blogger

Please follow this link to my video.

Lurking: Less is Moar

When first making contact with an online community, regardless of the subject matter the community covers, it is generally best to read without participating in online discussions, the better to understand the dynamics and unwritten rules of the community as opposed to simply diving in headfirst. In most cases, the worst that will happen to a "n00b" who posts too soon is that they will be subject to public ridicule by other posters; however, more serious infractions, whether the rule is written or not, can result in users being banned or suspended. For these and many other reasons, those who join an online community often feel it is in their best interest to observe without participating, at least initially.

All posters in a community, whether or not the community requires them to register, are by definition anonymous. The setup of most registrations requires a username, password, and valid email address, but none of this information guarantees that the person behind the computer is who they claim to be. As such, most online communities must operate on a certain level of implied trust that all those involved will play by the rules of general decorum, if not the community's specific rules.

Lurkers who have registered at an online community but not posted there do so for a variety of reasons, the most common of these being shyness and the preservation of privacy (Nonnecke, Preece, Andrews & Voutour, 2004). However, although they may not be actively contributing to online discussions, lurkers propagate discussions held on a given site by disseminating the information they learn there to other non-members (Takahashi, Fujimoto & Yamasaki, 2003). Thus, although lurkers may not be obvious information vectors in a given website, they serve an invaluable purpose in terms of spreading around the knowledge they gain from watch the communities.

In the final summation, the anonymity of online communities can encourage users to share information with each other they might not otherwise have felt comfortable divulging. However, it is the phenomenon of lurking that is really responsible for ensuring that valuable information shared on websites is distributed amongst the online community at large.

References


Nonnecke, B., Preece, J., Andrews, D., & Voutour, R. (2004). Online lurkers tell why. Paper presented at the August 2004 Proceedings of the Tenth Americas Conference on Information Systems, New York, NY.


Takahashi, M., Fujimoto, M., & Yamasaki, N. (2003). The active lurker: Influence of an in-house online community on its outside environment. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 2003 International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work, 1-10.

Tagging in Library Catalogs: Pros and Cons

Libraries which promote social bookmarking on their website may do so successfully if they take certain factors into account. Firstly, librarians must find a way to promote this feature, whether by cloud tagging on the home page or some other prominent location, and if necessary by targeted contact with those most likely to use the tool.

Secondly, librarians must be sure that those who use tagging features are reasonably familiar with its proper use. This is generally true of current undergraduate students, who may be more familiar with Web 2.0 than most, but some form of training session, tutorial or other educational resource should also be made prominently available.

Another important consideration is which tagging platform to use. In the case of PennTags, for example, the University of Pennsylvania has a proprietary tagging network; this system, while well-organized, does not connect students with tags at other locations, as Del.icio.us tagging might. While Del.icio.us is free, by contrast, it may connect to more general tags worldwide, which may not be of as much use to those searching for specific topics.

Social tagging, in this respect, seems to work best in smaller, more specialized groups, such as a means to organize and share information for a group project in a specific class (Carpan, 2010). In such a situation, an in-house tagging mechanism such as Penn's would be more than sufficient to the task. The private tagging option on Del.icio.us might also work in such a situation, either on the site itself or using a library site with Del.icio.us widgets. Libraries working with students might also want to consider tagging applications geared more towards academics, such as Connotea or CiteULike, or one with a "sticky note" function such as Diigo (Redden, 2010).

In the final analysis, libraries can make social tagging work for both them and their patrons, provided they take into account promotion, platform, and training level. The challenge lies in determining which type of tagging, or which application, to use, how to market it to a target audience - having decided what that audience is and how they will use it - and making sure that audience has a baseline level of competence in the medium.

References

Carpan, C. (2010). Introducing information literacy 2.0. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 17(1), 106-113. doi:10.1080/10691310903584627 


Redden, C. S. (2010). Social bookmarking in academic libraries: Trends and applications. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 36(3), 219-227. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lih&AN=50403277&site=ehost-live

When Web 2.0 Doesn't Work... and When it Does

A prerequisite for successful internal collaboration is a culture which is conducive to such collaboration. Projects such as internal wikis tend work better, for example, if those involved in creating them are technically savvy, freely share knowledge, have flexible hours, and have strong managerial support (Kelly, 2009). All this presupposes a baseline level of trust and communication between employees, as well as between employees and their managers.

Internal collaboration projects often fail when their intended purpose is not entirely clear, but having the necessary resources and institutional support are also key. The intended software must be able to fulfill an institutional need that might not otherwise be achieved (Suarez, 2007), and those in charge must be entirely clear on what that need is and how the application can fulfill it. Similarly, management should be able to convey the benefits of using the new technology without appearing to coerce staff into it.

Finally, once it has been established that the application is apropos, that staff can handle the technical demands, and that management is supportive and encouraging about using it, staff must make an effort of their own to update it regularly. This can take any form from email notifications of changes to setting aside time on a regular basis to look the collaborative effort over. However, if it is done diligently and thoroughly, organizations can end up creating a resource that will prove its value to them many times over.

References

Kelly, W. (2009). "Corporate Culture, Not Technology, Drives Online Collaboration." Web Worker Daily.

Suarez, L. (2007). “When Wikis Won't Work: 10 questions to ask before full adoption.” elusa.

Exercise 5: Social Bookmarking

The first three articles I found for this assignment I found through Google Scholar. Although the articles generally had links which led to the reference, this did not always lead to the full text of the article. For one article, entitled "Tags Help Make Libraries Del.icio.us," the link provided by the initial reference brought me from its ERIC listing to the Library Journal home page, where I had to search for the article using the site search engine. Once I linked to this article rather than the initial listing link, the number of concurrent tags went from 0 to over 1000. I was pleased to note that others in the class had found this article useful as well.

When looking at tags that people from other institutions, or from the general public, had created, I found a number of things to be true. Firstly, many people did not understand, as I didn't initially, that putting spaces in between words turns them into two separate tags. As such, an article or site might be tagged "social" and "bookmarking" or "web" and "2.0" by someone who did not understand how this function worked. Secondly, I found that the general public, as opposed to other LIS students, preferred sites that aggregated information on the topic at hand, such as TechCrunch, rather than individual articles.

On the whole, I was interested to read what others in the class had found for this topic, and was even able to find articles that had been tagged for an LIS course at another university. However, the fact that so many of the tags were broken up into two or more words indicates to me both the shortcomings of this medium as a form of taxonomy and the need for further public education on the subject.

Wikis versus Social Bookmarking for Library Subject Guides

The advantage of using social bookmarking for Library Subject Guides, particularly for academic libraries, is that it enables members of multiple universities to connect to each others' work. Although the PennTags website is proprietary to the University of Pennsylvania, for example, the PennVetTags link provides Penn students information related to veterinary science from Colorado State University, Atlantic Veterinary College, Cornell University, the University of Cambridge, and Louisiana State University, among many others. In academic fields, for which collegial exchange of information is essential, this tool provides valuable information about field-specific research across the country and, in some cases, the world.

This social bookmarking is also useful inasmuch as it provides cross-referencing in the form of related subject links. Such links can be provided on sites which use Delicious as a platform, such as at the College of New Jersey, using widgets from that site. This provides the advantage of connecting the university social tagging network to all of Delicious, which proprietary tagging does not; however, the accuracy of the material with matching tags depends on how judiciously tags are created, and by whom.

Wikis, unless designed by someone with a background in web design, do not necessarily have as attractive a layout as home pages with tagging options. However, as the Ohio University Libraries Biz Wiki demonstrates, they have the advantage of displaying a variety of media, including embedded videos, live chat interfaces, databases, and blogs. Although they do not necessarily have a built-in capability to link to others' links, as with social bookmarking, wikis can still link to this information without any concern for appropriate taxonomy.

If given the choice between wikis or social bookmarking for a library website, I would tend towards social bookmarking, particularly if it provided the opportunity to share taxonomies with related outside sources. Although wikis are not without value for libraries, even at the public level, they tend to be more helpful for intra- rather than internet purposes.

Marketing Critique: Contra Costa County Library

The Contra Costa County Library website has a number of different Web 2.0 applications on their website designed to market and promote their library system, which includes branches in locations from Antioch to Walnut Creek. Access to these tools may be found under the Services menu on the left-hand side of the main page.

The first, and arguably the most useful, of these tools is a page of various RSS feeds:

RSS Feeds

These feeds are dedicated to new titles in a variety of literary genres; general library news, subject guides, and book sales; podcasts; and programs and events taking place at every branch in the Contra Costa Library system, as well as at their Adult Literacy Office. There is no information listed on the website indicating how many people have signed up for these links, but the variety of genres, events, and locations covered is impressive and well thought out.

Another marketing device on the Contra Costa Library website is the NextReads page, a series of email-based newsletters to which patrons can subscribe by checking boxes and entering their email addresses.  These newsletters provide recommendations for a variety of different literary genres, including travel, audio books, Christian fiction, romance, and New York Times bestsellers. Patrons have an option on the same page to manage their current subscriptions by clicking a link.

NextReads Mailing Lists

Although the NextReads page is an excellent option for those who prefer to receive alerts via email rather than via a news aggregator, the presence of both on the same website - not to mention different pages - seems somewhat redundant. The library might want to look into combining these two parts of their site in some way, to avoid any unnecessary overlap.

The library's social networking sites are congregated on one page, dedicated to library-related widgets. It is interesting to note that although the library has MySpace, Flickr and Wordpress blog sites, the majority of their social networking efforts are directed towards their Facebook site.

Their efforts in this area appear to have paid off: 1,481 people are fans of the Facebook page, as compared to 183 on their MySpace page. However, a closer look at the Facebook page reveals that the majority of wall comments are from either the site administrator or other librarians. Those contributing to the site are clearly making a concerted effort to promote upcoming events, but the lack of patron comments on the site appears to indicate a lack of targeted outreach efforts to those who could most stand to benefit from the announcements.

The MySpace page, although it contains several Young Adult-oriented videos, appears to be rather poorly designed, and in any case not widely frequented by library patrons of any age. There has been what appears to be a pro forma effort to attract younger patrons with the use of streaming popular music tunes, but the site takes an inordinate amount of time to load even with a 3MB DSL connection.

Facebook

MySpace

The library's other social networking efforts appear to be either underappreciated by patrons or neglected by the library itself. The Flickr page, for example, appears to have been recently updated with pictures of library events, but the various albums only have a few views each. The Wordpress blog has an interesting premise - each entry is dedicated to a different chapter of the same book - but has not been updated since November 2010.

Flickr

Wordpress Blog

 The Contra Costa Library system deserves credit for covering all bases in terms of Web 2.0 tools on their site; that said, it might have done better to focus on one or two more popular applications. For example, they might have considered creating a Tumblr page rather than a Flickr account, as this would provide more design and layout options, in addition to encouraging more patron interaction. They might also consider getting rid of the MySpace page altogether and focusing their efforts on Facebook, making active efforts at patron outreach and encouraging their feedback rather than simply trying to drum up interest on the site itself. The Wordpress blog has great potential, but also has apparent need of at least one dedicated staff member to create updates and drum up more traffic.

Overall, the library's most effective marketing effort seems to be the RSS feeds page. It covers a variety of well thought-out and organized topics and genres of potential interest to patrons, and is guaranteed to work with any number of news aggregating applications. If this page could somehow be merged with the email newsletter page, the library would have a truly effective means of providing their patrons with information tailored to their interests. However, in order to promote a truly effective online brand, they should take into account several factors: overall popularity of various applications, methods of proactive patron outreach, and dedicated staff to supervise and update all social networking applications used.

If I were hired as a social media marketing consultant for this library, I would make the following recommendations:

1. Following Lawson's (2007) example, find and target potential niche library users on Facebook, and contact them regarding the resources available for their particular area of interest.
2. Either eliminate the MySpace page, or assign a dedicated web design professional to redesign and update it.
3. Switch from Flickr to Tumblr, organizing pictures in such a way that a patron could view all items in an album behind a cut link for each post.
4. Update the Wordpress blog and make more concerted efforts to promote it on the other social networking sites used. Also, include an RSS feed for the blog on the general RSS page.
5. Make a greater effort to promote social networking tools on the library's main page, rather than burying them in the links of the Services section.

In the final analysis, this library system has made a decent start in using social networking tools to promote their brand. That said, the main issue for them seems to be following up on their efforts to make sure that they are up to date and reaching the right audiences.

References

Lawson, D. (2007). "Taking the Library to Users: Experimenting with Facebook as an Outreach Tool." (.doc). Academic Library 2.0.