Library 2.0 – The A-Z of Social Networking

My workplace is a P-9 school library in the western suburbs of Melbourne. We currently use no social networking technologies to connect with our users. We are a multicampus school with 3 school libraries across 4 campuses. The senior campus utilises the public library.

Blog – A blog is the easiest starting point for any library wanting to branch out into the 2.0 world. Blogs can serve individual purposes, such as a book review blog, events blog and a new books blog; however, a blog can also serve as the predominant library website for the beginning 2.0 library. Blogs are easy to update, easy to design and are all round easy to use, for both the blog writer and blog reader. It has been a plan of mine for a long time to create a blog as a website for my current workplace library.

Good reads – An online form of readers’ advisory, Good reads takes the ‘if you liked ______, you’ll love ______’ format off the bookmarks and into the online world. Many social networking tools do this automatically, such as Library Thing. It makes recommendations going by what other Library Thing users have on their shelves. This gives library users not only the opinions of the librarian, but the opinions of those all over the globe.

Help – To create a successful social networking presence, the library would need full cooperation and input from all staff. Currently, the attitude of most library staff employed by the college is very against change. For any real change in the social networking status of the libraries to occur, benefits of the use of social networking would have to be presented to and backed by higher ranked school employees. Each school library has a Library Technician as their highest ranked staff member.

Slideshare – A media hosting tool which host slideshow presentations, Slideshare can host presentations created by teachers for particular learning areas, by the library staff to promote library services, programs or events, or by administration staff to reinforce school rules, or for general announcements.

Youth –We as a school library are serving students aged from 5-15. This demographic, especially the teenagers use a lot of social networking tools, so it makes sense to use these platforms to communicate what the library has to offer them.  

Delicious

“Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source” (Delicious). Delicious is web hosted, so bookmarks can be retrieved from any computer at any time.

Tags

Delicious bookmarks are sorted by tags, which are keywords describing the bookmark so it can be found again through searching (Wikipedia, 2011). Basically, tagging is the layman’s cataloguing. The bonuses of tagging are that terms are usually the most common word used for a particular bookmark, rather than a technical term nobody knows of unless they have a thesaurus handy. The downside of tagging is that some people may only describe a bookmark for what they get from it, rather than for what the bookmark may be offering as a whole.
Tags can be descriptive to what the bookmark is about, or personal, depending on what an individual needs from the bookmark. For example, a student could use descriptive tags to make an item searchable for others, and also use a personal tag, such as a subject code or an assignment description, to retrieve resources used throughout a subject.
An example of a tag cloud for a delicious account appears below


Networks

Like other social networking tools, people can be added to a person’s network, where bookmarks are shared between members. Networks can be organised into groups, for a basic example, personal, professional, or study related.

Add-on

Delicious has a downloadable add-on for web browsers. This feature enables quick access to bookmarks and fast, easy tagging of websites without having to have Delicious open to achieve it. The add-on for Firefox notifies the user of any new activity in their networks, so they are aware of any new bookmarks added.

My thoughts

Delicious is a really useful bookmarking tool. Before undertaking this subject I had used it mainly just to complete a 2.0 course and a lot of the bookmarks in it were work related. I had actually forgotten I had signed up for it. I have since used it to store all websites used while researching assignment 2 and any other sites I find that may be useful throughout this subject. Many of my tags are basic, but I also have personal ones such as the subject code inf206 and ass3 for assignment specific needs.

References

Delicious. (n.d.). About. Retrieved January 29, 2011, from Delicious: http://www.delicious.com/help/about

Wikipedia. (2011, January 18). Tag (Metadata). Retrieved January 29, 2011, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_%28metadata%29

First Entry

Social networking is not a new concept, though the format in which it is delivered has changed dramatically.

Social Networking to me is a virtual online medium where likeminded people can connect, interact, collaborate and share ideas and information, whether it is for personal reasons or professional.

I currently use the following social networking technologies and websites for personal use, work use and for use with my studies.

Personal: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Photobucket, YouTube, Online forums, Windows Live (chat).

Work: Blogs, Teacher Tube, email listserves, Google Reader.

Study: Blogs, Second Life, Flickr, YouTube, Wiki’s, Forums and Chat.

I have also completed the “How 2 of Web 2.0” course run by the Yarra Plenty Regional Library Service which introduced me to other sites such as Delicious, Library Thing and various Google products including Docs, Reader and iGoogle.

On completion of this subject I expect to know how to apply my existing and newfound social networking knowledge to my current workplace, in particular, how to propose that these technologies be used and how the various technologies can be practically implemented.