Online Communities

Although I have attended WebJunction webinars in the past, it wasn’t until this class that I realized WebJunction is an online community. 

 

WebJunction is OCLC’s online community dedicated to the emerging technology and training needs of librarians and library staff. It features articles, handouts, online courses, webinars and forum discussions on current, relevant and practical issues. (OCLC.org/WebJunction)

 

Webjunction was created by OCLC in partnership with other organizations and with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The focus of this successful online community is “on library technologies, management, and services, along with public access in small and rural libraries.” Joining Webjunction is free—I just created my account!

 

The American Library Association also offers an online community called ALA Connect which is a “virtual, collaborative, workspace online” free for ALA members. Non-members can create an online account for free, but it will only allow them access to public materials. ALA Connect offers its users ways to find and connect with other members around professional interests, issues, advocacy, their jobs, the work of the Association, and more. (Connect.ALA.org)—I just also created my ALA Connect account! 

 

I wanted to share an excellent definition of online communities I found on the website SocialMediaToday.com, taken from the book Online Communities by Jenny Preece.

 

Online Communities - People, who interact socially as they strive to satisfy their own needs or perform special roles, such as leading or moderating. A shared purpose, such as an interest, need, information exchange, or service that provides a reason for the community. Policies, in the form of tacit assumptions, rituals, protocols, rules, and laws that guide people’s interactions. Computer systems, to support and mediate social interaction and facilitate a sense of togetherness.

Hennepin County Library

The genealogy department of the Hennepin County Library in Minneapolis created the video Genealogy Research: An Introduction to Immigration & Naturalization Resources through 1930, which highlights the local genealogy research resources that are available for patrons interested in researching their ancestors’ immigration history. The video is posted in the library’s Vimeo page.

The content of the video is definitely relevant and helpful and it is explained in a clear and easy-to-understand way. The librarian who wrote and narrated the script did a wonderful job in providing an overview of each of the resources. Each explanation is supported by appropriate images and includes a display of the web address where the resource can be located. 

Overall the video was well made. It is not a state-of-the-art production, but it has a decent level of quality suited to the purpose and to the audience. My only observation is that I would have added more visual information about the resources directly available in the library’s website.

Collaborative Filtering: Douglas County Libraries

Today I attended Power to the Patron, a Library Journal’s Virtual Technology Summit. The third panel, ILS Role in Empowering Patrons, included the participation of Monique Sendze, IT Director for Douglas County Libraries in Colorado. During her presentation I learned about how her library has recently implemented collaborative filtering in the catalog. 

Douglas County Libraries’ new catalog gives users the option of rating materials with a star rating system. It also allows them to keep track of what they have read through reading lists that can be downloaded and shared. Patrons are now able to write book reviews and read reviews by staff and other users. Most importantly, when patrons access catalog records, they now see recommendations of similar titles and recommendations based on what “people who viewed this also viewed”. 

Sendze also shared that so far the new catalog features have been a success with their patrons. 

My Experience Using Google Docs

Of all the internal collaboration tools discussed this week, Google Docs is the one I am more familiarized with. Google Docs is a free web-based collaborative tool that allows users to easily create/upload and share a word processor, spreadsheet, form, or presentation with others. The creator can assign permission levels that would let others just view or edit the document.

I have used Google Docs in the past for group work and it has been an effective tool for creating, sharing and collaborating with multiple people in a single document. It has been like having a meeting to work on a project, without leaving home and without the need of having everyone working at the same place, at the same time.

Here is a great “In Plain English” YouTube video on Google Docs.

Exercise 6: Screencast

Wiki Software in Libraries

Private internal wikis are a great way to use wiki software in libraries and other types of organizations. This is an application of wiki software that I am familiar with and one I use on a regular basis. 

My library uses the web-based wiki application Tiki Wiki. There are several wikis set up for librarians and staff use: for adult librarians, young adult librarians, children's librarians, branch services, special projects, and others. They all require the creation of an account and password log in, and these wikis can only be accessed from the library network, not remotely.

The following are advantages of using the wiki as an internal collaboration tool drawn from my personal experience as part of a committee working on a special project at my library:

* Relatively easy to use--once you get used to it.

* The information you are working on is easy to organize and to separate according to the different stages of the project.

 * You can read others' opinions and ideas about a certain subject as well as make changes, additions, and comments. You can also upload documents and graphics.

 * When you log in you can see the latest changes in the wiki since your last log in.

There is a feature I believe my wiki is missing, and that is email notification when changes have been made or new content has been added.

New York Public Library

The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a privately managed public and research library system with 90 locations throughout the boroughs of Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island in New York City. According to ALA Library Fact Sheet Number 22, NYPL is the third largest library in the United States with over 16 millions of volumes held.

New York Public Library has a significant online presence beyond their website that includes Facebok, Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, YouTube, iTunes, Flickr, Blogs, and Voice Thread. NYPL makes use of a well-rounded mix of social software that incorporates location-based, video, audio, photos, collaborative-educational, social networking, micro-blogging and blogging.

These choices are comprehensive and reflective of the actual social networking scene. They also reveal an effort to select the most significant or popular social networking software in each category. For example: Facebook instead of MySpace; YouTube instead of Vimeo.

Some of the NYPL choices of social networking software were unfamiliar to me, specifically Tumblr, Foursquare, and Voice Thread. Tumblr is a micro-blogging software with a regular blog look and feel. Foursquare is a location-based networking site that uses mobile technology. Voice Thread is an interesting collaborative and educational tool that combines audio, pictures and videos.

Generally speaking NYPL social networking sites offer attractive content that is updated frequently and that engages users. Their sites are filled with likes, shares, comments, tags, views, retweets, and followers.

On Facebook, 41,817 people like NYPL [as of today]. After a quick search of “public libraries” on Facebook and scrolling down the list many pages, I could not find a public library with as many likes as NYPL. On Twitter, NYPL has 161,573 followers; on YouTube, 1,786 subscribers; on Foursquare, 37,576 followers.

Joan Petit used NYPL as an example of great social media use by a library in his article Twitter and Facebook for User Collection Requests published in Collection Management, Volume 36, Issue 4, 2011.

“In April 2011, the social media–oriented New York Public Library began recruiting volunteers to help transcribe 10,000 digitized menus from its historical restaurant menus collections to make the materials fully searchable. The library promoted the project solely through Facebook, Twitter, and the Web site MetaFilter. As of three months later, thousands of volunteers had already transcribed more than 450,000 dishes from more than 8,500 menus. The New York Public Library menu project thus has become an outstanding example of how a library can use social media first to promote a collection and then also to build and improve that very same collection.”

Past April, Mashable.com published the article “New York Public Library Invites 500 to Overnight Scavenger Hunt” by Lauren Indvik, reporting that NYPL “which became the first public library to launch a Foursquare badge this week, is going one step further in mobile innovation by inviting 500 people to compete in a smartphone-based challenge for a library game night.” During that successful event 500 people spent the night at the library playing the scavenger hunt game titled Find the Future and writing a 600-page book that is now part of the library’s permanent collection. Read more about it here.

A simple Google search of “NYPL social media” revealed a vast amount of online articles praising the creative and innovative ways NYPL is using social media to engage patrons and offer original, interesting content adapted to the features each social media software have.

NYPL not only has taken the lead among public libraries nationwide in using social media to promote the library and to offer new value to its users, but has also managed to maintain a consistent branding throughout the different social media platforms, making the open source softwares look and feel like another NYPL web page.

If NYPL would hire me as a social media marketing consultant, I would have to admit they have done a great job thus far, and I would encourage them to keep innovating and finding ways to use current and emerging social media technologies for the library and its patrons’ advantage.