LIS 9763: The End of FIMS

OK, so this is it. The last official thing I will probably do for my MLIS degree. This has been a long four months for every reason but school. I am very glad I took this class because it taught me a lot and gave me great practical applications for these tools for use in Libraries.

I’ve always been technically inclined so my view of social media software has not really changed. What has changed for me though is the overwhelming frustration that it seems like it might take a sledgehammer to destroy the old notions of what a library and a librarian should be. “There is no need to hope or fear, but only to look for new weapons.” Unfortunately librarians and libraries are waiting until the new weapons are a safe bet before their implementation.

I think my favorite tools we’ve looked at are blogs just because I love the content they can provide. If blogs are done right I think they are the best possible social media due to the wealth of content they provide. This being said blogs are the hardest to implement and time consuming to maintain. Facebook and Twitter sites are probably the easiest to set up and yield the greatest benefits for any organization overall. Though this seems like the obvious answer because Facebook and Twitter are the two most popular tools on the list and therefore have the largest user base to tap into.

I hate Wikis. I think it is a slowly dying technology that is being replaced with the overwhelming burst of other more relevant social media tools. Just my opinion though.

All of the tools I’ve used this term have worked for me. Do I like them all? No, not really. As previously stated just above I dislike wikis and Twitter still leaves a sour taste in my mouth. RSS Feeds are pretty neat though, I didn’t know much about them before but I should really search to see if I can find some great ones on some of the topics I love and enjoy.

The distance ed. Experience has been a bit rough for me. This being my first ever distance class I had no idea what to expect. This being my only class this semester makes it even harder to attempt to stay involved with the class as a whole due to working full time and attempting to fight my way into a position at a local library to start a career. It was a great learning experience but there was just too much else going on currently that took me away from being emerged in the class as I sometimes can get when there are actual lectures in a classroom. I love being surrounded by my peers hears their ideas and opinions as they come in the moment and creating a discussion that way.

I think Peggy’s idea about opening Week 13 up for us to talk about any random technology we know about that others don’t could be a fun and informative way to shed light on tools that are not widely popular but might deserve to be.

The last 13 weeks has not felt like I’ve been in class, it has been a constant struggle to attempt to stay engaged and remember that I actually have work to do sometimes so I can finish. The class was great I think I just strongly prefer in class lectures because it forces me to stay connected by attending classes.

So, this is Paul, Joey, Gale from Halifax, Nova Scotia wishing all of my fellow LISers goodnight, and good luck. I wish you all well in your future endeavors and maybe we’ll run into each other at a library conference sometime in the future.

The Mission: The following report is a needs assessment of the Halifax Public Libraries (HPL) current use of social networking tools. This report will look closely at the types of technologies HPL are using and give recommendations for ways they can improve their social networking services online. This needs assessment will be done with a strong link to the perspectives and technologies learned about in LIS 9763: Social Media and Libraries. This means that there will be a focus on technologies such as lifestreaming, social networking, blogging, wiki, social tagging, and RSS feeds This report uses www.halifaxpubliclibraries.ca as the main entry point in for accessing the primary information for all of HPL’s services, and by extension their use of social media.

Use of Social Media: HPL use a wide variety of social media to explain and expand their services to their patrons. These technologies include Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging, blogging, social tagging, and RSS feeds. While HPL uses all of these technologies their Twitter, Facebook, and RSS feeds seem standard use of the technologies; I will discuss later on in this report some key ways that they can improve these tools it does not deal directly with the technologies themselves. The rest of the technologies listed above either use the technology quite well or could use some thoughtful rethinking to improve their use.

Positive Uses: I want to start the assessment on a positive note for the HPL and point of some of the areas they have done well.

The Reader Blog: This blog is dedicated to recommend and talk about different types of literature. As another form of reader’s advisory tool I think this blog achieves all it could ever imagine to in terms of content. Blog articles such as “Splatterpunk” and “Books and Wine” give a great look at niche sub genres. The unfortunate part about this blog is that after being active for almost a year now it only has 42 followers and very few comments. This blog has all the potential to become a great place for social networking but there is one huge issue with HPL that causes this blog to be unable to reach its full potential. This issue will be discussed as the main issue with HPL’s social media in the conclusion of this report. ( www.thereader.ca )

Catalog Social Tagging: HPL has just introduced a new catalog and while it is not as social media savvy as you might see on some other library websites it does a great job of allowing registered users to tag library items. That is not all however and this is where their system deserves some credit. Each tag presented can be viewed in a tag cloud on the left of the screen so related materials can be viewed through user created tagging.

Virtual Reference: HPL’s virtual reference service can be found only on their teens and kids websites. It is advertised as “Homework Help” and “Ask a Question.” This is a great way for individuals to ask questions, especially with the rise of more complicated social media and its use. Unfortunately there is a huge section where this technology should be present.

This concludes the HPL’s positive uses of social media.

Negative Uses: Unfortunately for HPL there are some major issues with some of their technologies. As mentioned above with their virtual reference, with the content of their lifestreaming on their Teen’s Facebook page.

Virtual Reference: Their technology is stable and useable but they do not include it anywhere for the majority of users. This technology seems to be directed only to the teens and kids of the HPL. Instead what the main section of the website gets is “Ask a librarian.” This is a email or telephone reference service. Sorry HPL but this is 2010 and while email is a useful technology there is no reason virtual chat reference should not be marketed towards all patrons of the library, not just teens and kids for homework purposes.

Teen Facebook Content: The content of blogs and microblogging is extremely important that it hits the desired audience the technology is trying to reach. In the case of the microblogging and general approach toward teenagers for HPL they are missing their target audience by a long shot. It feels like the teen page was created thinking about kids. Their main campaign seems to be around Rubber Ducks? Now it seems that Rubber Ducks are not an appropriate focus for 13-17 year olds.

Unknown Technologies: The biggest problem that HPL faces is more of a web usability issue than it is social media. In order to create a popular social networking technology the users must know they exist. From the main homepage of HPL there are hardly any recognizable links for any of their social media except their Twitter page and a few RSS feeds. There is no continuity of page layout which makes it feel like there are four different sites; main, kids, teens, and Halifax Central Library. It is hard to conceptualize the issue here unless it is actually viewed. (See the video needs assessment report here.) Each different site does great things to promote a few of the different social media HPL uses but no one page does them all. HPL seems to be in the middle of a transition toward a more social media friendly website but in its current state the layout leaves all of the great potential of their technologies dead in the water.

Solutions: The situation of social media used by the HPL is in questionable shape but by doing a few simple and easy corrections all of their technologies could flourish. Using the negative uses of social media technologies mentioned above this report will give concrete examples of ways that HPL can fix their social media issues.

Virtual Reference: The solution here seems simple. Keep the old technologies of email and telephone reference and simply begin to promote the use of virtual chat reference for all patron age groups rather than just kids and teens as HPL is currently doing.

Teen Facebook Content: HPL are actually doing some great and involved activities for teenagers and it shows through certain areas of their Teen’s web page. The Facebook microblogging should begin to reflect these activities rather than focusing on one program that seems misguided to the wrong age group. In the “creative warehouse” of the teens web page there are activities such as an Anime and Manga art contest, Zombie Prom, and Poetry contest. All of these things should be given more attention by the Facebook page and the site overall. There should be more pictures regarding the Zombie Prom and how the event went. There is also a whole Teen RSS feed that could be added to be updated to the Teen Facebook page much like The Reader Blog RSS feed is attached to the HPL’s main Facebook Page. These are just a few ways that I believe the HPL could begin to make their microblogging on their Teen Facebook page more teen appropriate.

Unknown Technologies: This is the main issue of the HPL. Their entire website requires one main design so it does not feel split up into different segments. The HPL main page should represent all of these subsections. With an overall main design scheme for the site then the HPL can begin to arrange and promote their social media tools through this layout. Within the layout, off the main page, there should be a link to the Twitter and Facebook page, and possibly various blogs run by the HPL or librarians. The next main issue is that social media can reference other social media by using technologies such as RSS feeds, or by simply adding the different social media tools to a list of favorite pages/sites. The linking of the social media tools alone should bring more visitors to these pages and the more pages means the more possibility for social networking.

Conclusion: Halifax Public Libraries are doing a decent job with the social media technologies overall. The problem that exists is in the implementation and advertisement of these new forms of service. This problem rises from a lack of overall structure within their website as a whole which causes a great deal of confusion for the user. If the above recommendations for changes were made to the Halifax Public Libraries website and technologies then their social media technologies would be given a much better chance to reach their full potentials.

For a more visual representation of this report please click here for a video presentation of the above content.

For the final blog post of this class I am going to focus upon the idea of mediocrity. Mediocrity is a curse for many library sites because there seems to be a refusal to take the risk to do something innovative. Kathy Sierra hit the nail on the head with her article “Death by Risk Aversion.” She makes such a great point that the position any person would want to be in is either to be loved or hated but never in between. This made me think about the recent film The Social Network about Mark Zuckerberg the man who created Facebook. There is a moment when he is first beginning when he creates a rating site for all of the females at Harvard. While this angered a great deal of people it put him on the map amongst his peers as an innovative creator of software. Mark Zuckerberg made his ideas in such a fashion that he did not care if it was loved or hated and just because he may have faced some negative attention with his ideas it only helped to cement him as one of the most successful social networking individuals in the world. Mark Zuckerberg is an extreme example of this type of behavior.
The biggest issue with almost all companies is their absolute fear of change. I am positive there have been amazing ideas had by many individuals for their workplace that has either been rejected due to too large of a risk or squandered due to the knowledge that their company would never go ahead with it despite its remarkable innovation. Many libraries currently are embracing social networking, not because they feel the need to use this technology to be innovative, but to appear as though they have not been left behind. There are many libraries that are merely implementing these technologies because they feel they have to. Technology should only be brought in and used if there is a need for it. There is no need for a company to be using Adobe Creative Suite if they are not doing advanced editing. These libraries are not actually changing. They are just adding technologies that add no value to the library as a whole.
Now that I’ve talked about all of the things that libraries could possibly do wrong in implementing new technologies I should really give an idea of how I think it can be done correctly. First of all technologies should only be considered if they are solving a problem or need of the organization. This is extremely important because it will help the new technologies implementation to avoid mediocrity. Once you have a problem and the technology to solve it you cannot be afraid to attempt to create the best possible solution. No cutting corners because there are certain risks that certain individuals might find overwhelming. If it is going to be done do it right the first time and don’t hold back. I think whatever fixes the program in the best possible result it should be done even if it is a major change to the company as a whole. There is training to bring everyone up to speed on the new technology and as long as the problem is tackled with no reservations there is something positive bound to happen.
Never be afraid to take that step forward even if you are unsure about the ground you are about to stand on. It is the way to really begin to break ground and create initiatives that will put any individual or company on the map for better or worse.

Tonight, for this blog to come I think I am just going to let it flow. Take my ques from the lecture video this week and just write what I think about the technologies as it comes to me and not think too too much about the adverse effect that it might have within libraries, though it might just come up. OK, so ready, set, and go!

The first item on tonight’s agenda that I simply must get out of the way of discussion is this idea of augmented reality. While this utility might make it slightly easier to stalk people there is so much technology here yet to be unleashed upon the world. The world of GPS marking alone is a scary thing that has reshaped our world in many ways, now with the advent of mobile browsing and having such a large population using this technology there is endless potential. The immediate thought I had while watching this segment in the lecture video was of William Gibson’s Spook Country. This is a novel that is highly grounded in the possibilities of GPS technologies and what they may or may not be used for in the very foreseeable future. No Mr. Gibson didn’t talk about any characters stalking random twitter feeds but what he did suggest, and it is an opening of a novel that I simply thought was amazing, was just imagine you’re walking down an alley, and this alley has had a famous event happen there. What do you find when you walk down this alley? A complete GPS recreated modeling of the death of River Phoenix. Morbid? Well slightly but lets look past that to the fact that this probably is possible to do now. I mean could you imagine doctoring up your library space using GPS coordinates to do future library displays? How cool would that be? And such technologies such as this is bound to get patrons actually through our doors instead of just hiding on the other side of the keyboard/monitor hiding from the world. (OK, I refuse to digress on this topic once again.) Either than cool future technologies the websites such as foursquare can be a way to connect with a new breed of internet user. Those that are almost on the verge of wandering actual physical space as if it were virtual reality. I mean if you think about it I wonder if a library’s physical catalog could be plugged into the generator just like businesses, and merely through keyword searches the results would narrow and the remaining results would appear in the augmented reality vision with the books location in the library. Sure it would take a lot of effort to get all of the items of a library into a system such as that but wouldn’t it be cool?

RQ codes are a pretty neat way to store information in a cool pictorial format. These could include anything from related content to a book or display to simply a link to a web address or bibliographic information for an item in the collection. Though the effectiveness of this transfer is unknown to me it is just a cool way to store information. I could see something like this being useful in an educational manner, by creating a kind of treasure hunt for RQ codes around an area and those codes give important information about some specific subject. Either way RQ codes are still neat.

This weeks blog is more of a rant about augmented reality technologies. Honestly it has a long way to go but it could show the most potential of any technology we have looked at in this class thus far. Goodnight, good luck! See you all next week with another blog post and my group project.

You learn something new everyday don’t you? At least that’s what they say. Well today has proven this point true on many accounts. While I do not have much experience with life-streaming such a twitter and similar things I understand the basics of it and I really wasn’t very interested in the technology. After looking into some of the examples and watching the lecture video for this week there are a few things that jumped out at me that I knew about but did not consider in the appropriate ways.

The first thing I learned today is that twitter accounts for events and things can be used very well to comment on a specific event using a special code tagged in a message. Really this concept couldn’t be simpler but the collective intelligence and experience from this little innovation is priceless. If you want feedback about a particular event in hopes to improve it for the years to come looking through the vast mass of twitter posts about it might be a great way to begin research. Something very simple that could be done for libraries would be to create their own tag code and offer it out for any individuals who are posting about the library for any reason. This creates quick and easy access to responses and allows the patron an open venue for comments, questions, and concerns. Pretty awesome right? The second thing I learned today seems even more awesome than this; well I think its more awesome anyway.

Now don’t get me wrong maybe this second thing I learned today I’m just misjudging but even still there are ways to do this kind of thing I’m sure. OK, so you can set up your twitter account to find related posts about your own library? Or things that you think are cool? Or am I just taking the lecture video completely wrong? If I am, it doesn’t matter you can search for the cool things you want anyway but if twitter allows it to do it automatically there is even more awesome to be had. This is the blog post of awesomeness it would seem. If you don’t have a cool little code that people know about to link it directly to your library or a library twitter account itself you can always just search for the people who are talking about it, or other things that are awesome. Honestly, why do I think this contains multitudes of awesomeness? Because I love the idea of readers advisory and I can only assume that people on twitter post so much stuff about trying to find the next awesome thing to read or watch, and I would love to be the person to have the conversation with these people about what kind of awesomeness they would like to undergo next! OK, I think I’m done using the word awesome for today.

To conclude the blog post of awesome and awesomeness. It seems to be that in order for twitter to be successful, and as successful as it has become, is because of the advent of mobile messaging. Whats more perfect then to post a short blurb about something you’ve seen that you enjoyed that day, or made you angry, or contemplative thoughts, or how amazing the current awesome thing you are a doing actually is, for mobile messaging? Absolutely nothing in my opinion. Considering how often people are on the go these days they don’t have time to blog long and descriptive posts about all of these things but they do have time for 140 characters. So, in short mobile messaging and the increasing mobility of the internet thank you for making twitter one of the most popular sites on the internet. I am Joey Gale, this is my blog post on life-streaming technology. Maybe I’ll revoke my self-ban of twitter and start to use it. TTFN.

Social networking and the multiple communities that are built from them have taken the world by storm. Facebook has created one of the largest online communities and because of this libraries have began to consider possible uses for this new technologies. This weeks sideshow showed some good and simple examples of using social networking to communicate with patrons.
After thinking about how libraries can use online communities to help communicate with patrons in various ways. In my first blog post I commented that online communities must be used to bring patrons through the doors, not just to give individuals information. Like the one example giving in the video this week, a simple message guiding people to various workshops at the library is a great way to possibly bring in more patrons. Online social networking communities should be used to help bring individuals to the actual branch. Another example from the video where the librarian was using their own facebook page to take requests for various new materials might not seem like much but it is very valuable. Due to the interactions in that social network the patron will find out if their suggest material is getting ordered, and if it is they also find out when it is received. Considering the request I would highly assume that each of these conversations bring in at least one patron which I believe should be the main goal. For me it seems pretty clear that any online community should always attempt to give information that will bring people to the library itself. There are more than just facebook out there and libraries are beginning to start some of their own online communities.
The library OPAC is beginning to rapidly change and because of this it is becoming a basic form of online community. Some OPACs allow for tagging, and comments as well as user profiles. All of these are qualities of an online community. The issue with online communities though is how many people use it and how familiar are most individuals with the technology? Honestly, I am sure not many people have used the various OPACs out there for commenting and tagging like they could be and this is the problem. While it is not ideal these online communities should be brought to the individuals we are looking to target by using the online communities that are already popular. Facebook, twitter, librarything, myspace and so on. If individuals are already using these technologies then the library will have a greater chance if their information is on them as well. It does not require the person to sign up for a new site, they are already familiar with it, and they are popular. So, if the library sets up a twitter account there is the whole possibility of twitter users to see that library feed. The content in these library communities will have to be innovative in ways that will make individuals want to read it, comment on it, and most importantly go to the library itself. Everything else has been done for us all we have to do is get the information out there and in an accessible way. Yea, not that easy but it is better than trying to start a whole million user online community by yourself. This is week 7 and this is my online communities blog. Just remember librarians the virtual community should always attempt to enhance the real community it represents.

This weeks assignment was interesting because technologies like social bookmarking and tagging are a simple yet effective technology that can be used for many different purposes. What did I learn from the assignment? I knew it was easy to collect various forms of information in the form of bookmarks but sites like delicious allows for that information to be available in many different places at once. This can allow the collected information to be distributed.
As all collections of information become too large to manually search through there needs to be an effective and efficient way to allow it to be searched. The answer is folksonomies, which have taken the form of social tagging. Since we all have a pretty good grasp after the assignment of what social tagging is I am going to delve a bit more deeply into the issues surrounding folksononmies. Folksononmies are collective categorization systems with no proper structure like more traditional systems that libraries operate from such as Library of Congress. It is the very essence of a folksononmies’ lack of structure that allows it to be the perfect counter part to all of the hierarchical categorization structures that most searching is based from. The simple fact is because it has no structure folksononmies take on a very personalized categorization scheme. If some random piece of information floating around out there in cyberspace has only been tagged by one individual then it is likely that a lot of individuals will not be able to find that information with the folksononmies categorization system. When multiple people tag that piece of information then it becomes more likely that the combination of personalized tagging will combine to encompass what most individuals would tag that piece of information as; but there will always be random outliers. Due to a number of individuals chipping in their thoughts and opinions on how information should be categorized that piece of information then becomes as easy to find in a search, or more so, than in the hierarchical structures we are used to.
So, because hierarchical structures are not written by the individuals searching the only way to ensure productive and efficient searching is for that individual to know the system which they are searching within. Folksononmies gets rid of this notion and allows even the most random and strange possibilities for an items metadata. This being said libraries are obviously trying to integrate social tagging into their catalogs in order to have that extra level of searching to assist their patrons in finding the exact information desired. There are technologies that can harvest the metadata off librarything for OPAC purposes, or other technologies that integrate a whole commenting, and tagging ability to a system. This push sees a library catalog become as updated by the community as it does the librarians themselves. Actually, the amount of information patrons/users add to a libraries information structure probably far out weighs what the librarians do themselves. This shift sees library OPACs quickly shaping to look like most of the retail vendors websites such as Amazon. There is always a talk of familiarity for users. Attempt to create a system where there will be as little learning curve as possible which will make that system more likely to be used. Amazon is a well known and used system and considering its success it might not be a bad place to start though I think there is a lot of potential to exceed the usability of Amazon within Libraries. This is Week 6 and one assignment down. Just remember librarians a lack of structure is just fine.

Social bookmarking and tagging are two new web 2.0 concepts that have increased possibilities from other old standard methods that these two technologies grew from. Social bookmarking arose from the old standard of bookmarks which were merely just a long list of websites that a user liked collected on their own personal computer to extend no further. Tagging seems to have its roots in metadata and cataloging but instead of using language and systems which individuals do not understand it has created a way to catalog and describe items with any possible descriptions that anyone can come up with. Since both of these technologies are web 2.0 there could be problems though So how is any of this relevant to our LIS class? Well allow me.

Lets start with discussing for a moment the burst and bloom of tagging within the library system, outside of the context of social bookmarking. Tagging itself has caught on within the library system to identify library materials which allows users another criteria for searching within a catalog which might serve a greater population since they are tags created by the general collective. Tags have appeared in blogs, wikis, and all over the internet in various places. Lets get back to the actually specific topic that is in question here though social bookmarking and tagging. Is this useful for libraries? Well who knows but it is certainly useful for the rest of the world and if you’re like MacGuyver or any of those other spy type figures, as long as you have innovation you can take something seemingly useless and make it one of the most useful tools for your given purpose. The question I need to ask myself is social bookmarking and tagging anything like an elastic or maybe a piece of chewing gum? Who knows, but that is not the point, so its time to continue.

Well I said I wouldn’t talk about MacGuyver anymore but I was trying to channel a little bit of innovation when thinking about how social bookmarking and tagging can be useful for the library. First of all the idea of using it for subject guides is a great idea, also it would be useful for a pathfinder. Considering the wealth of information on the internet social bookmarking and tagging can be a great way to organize the information and websites that the individual finds. Social bookmarking and tagging could be used in the library to supplement library materials by having the option to link a list of bookmarks about that item on the description page. I was also thinking about something else as a mix between possibly using flikr and delicious is maybe create a collection of images or other material that represents an item and create a bit of an interactive read. While this last idea doesn’t really have any place in a library it would be an interesting concept to try to use social bookmaking to visually represent, with various images from the web, the closest idea to how you envisioned certain scenes and moments in a novel. Depending on the book it could end up being quite the diverse and interesting collection and they all would simply become linked together using tags.

One other idea is to take the whole library website and break it down into a collection of social bookmarking with tags that is linked to the page. It would be like a site map but with a more detailed idea of what type of information each page contained depending on the quality of the tagging. This could allow users to easily find some of the pages that can be quite difficult to get to on some of those larger library pages, such as budget reports from previous years etc. This option depends on how well the library website is and how large it is. This would just allow one more option for the user to navigate through the pages to find the content they desire.

That’s all this week, and while I’m far from MacGuyver on the innovation scale, these are a few idea that I had when thinking about social bookmarking and tagging. Week 5, out.

Wikis are a great way to organize and store a communal information source about anything you choose. Wikis bring collaboration and organization to a whole new level of efficiency which has allowed for great projects to be created. The wiki that is most known is Wikipedia. Thinking about the structure of Wikipedia and all of the many possibilities I tried to think of an interesting and innovative way to use wikis for library purposes. After thinking about it for quite sometime I think I came down to a final solution for a great way to utilize wiki technology in a library setting.

While most individuals think about wikis as being open to any individual that wishes to edit it there is also the possibility to limit the user group of the wiki to ensure specific user group inputs the information. In this case the wiki would be editable by only library staff and viewable to everyone else. I think the best information to be kept in a wiki are the various opinions, and processes for the many decisions that highly impact the library. Not only will it create an open dialogue for all library staff to address important library issues. The wiki would be a collection of all the thoughts and opinions of the library staff collected in an organized manner just like Wikipedia. Since the library is supposed to make information about important decisions open to the public this would be a great way to make this happen.

Looking at the examples I think it is interesting that some libraries have created their whole websites out of wiki technology but it does not seem very practical. There seems to be better technologies to create a web page than wiki software such as content management systems.

Another possibility for wikis is to create a collection of information that deals with library materials. This would greatly benefit reference services because they could have a huge database of information concerning what patrons and librarians of your specific library think of specific material. While there are many other resources out there that could act like this creating a wiki for your library specificity would just eliminate some possible useless or wrong information.

Overall wikis are a great technology that open up interesting and innovative solutions to make different aspects of the library far more effective than they currently are.

Blogging is a forum of online communication that can be about anything, from varying accounts of a persons day to day life to more academic writing about an important topic or issue. When starting a blog however it is important to consider what kind of message and purpose the blog will have and then create the voice and content of the blog based on that. Blogging is an important new communication tool that is being used the world over for people around the world to have their voices heard, even if it would have been better if they had never posted at all.

Those who blog just to have their own opinions out there have the first step of the process but they are missing one important aspect, their audience. Why are we studying blogs for this class? Because blogging allows for communication between the blogger and the people reading through comments. A blog should heavily consider writing to yield comments from its readers because in the end that is what blogs are all about. Successful blogs are those that not only have a large readership but also have a huge dialogue within each posts comment section. Blogs are used in a library scenario in part to get feedback from library patrons. Thinking about libraries and looking at a few of the case studies I’m going to discuss some ideas I think that do and don’t work.

I think one of the best ways to use blogging for librarianship is to be able to capture the behind the scenes operations of the library in an interesting and compelling way that would enable not only the patrons to better understand the profession but to also gain a better understanding of the operation of the library itself. I see two possibilities to achieve this from a blogging perspective; 1. A librarian just blogging about his or her own day and the type of actions and interactions that happen, right tone of voice and content pending to make this successful of course. 2. Give the patrons an insider look at various important meetings that the library has to show how the big decisions for the library are made. Obviously this type of blog would only capture a certain audience but it would be one so concerned with the library that it would be beneficial and depending on who writes it maybe more patrons would begin to read it as well for other reasons. This type of blog could also be used to form a patron base for numerous library decisions that are difficult for the library to make due to whatever constraints because it is the public who has the biggest say for what is achieved in a library.

One of the readings remarked how great lists are and I couldn’t agree more. A great book list is bound to get those individuals of the library who love the genre talking. Blogging lists can be a great way to highslight specific events going on within the library as well as attempt to bring some attention to material that the library feels is under circulated. If you really want to get the fans of a genre talking take the time out to do a solid “Top XX” list because, and I know from experience of reading through many concerning movies and books, that nothing will get people talking more than if a book or movie they love did not make it on your list. In the process the blogger will probably learn about a whole bunch of books they have never heard about before. Over all I like lists and I think people are usually willing to read them.

Do not post house cleaning material on the blog. There was one of the case studies that posted twice, or maybe more, about how the branch was still open even though the block was closed. While this is great information for the library patron it gives the audience nothing to talk about at all. And well needless to say it is boring. Blogs should be meant to stimulate discussion out of the audience not bore them to death. Please, please, I know were librarians but we can be interesting to I swear!

These are just a few of the ways that I think blogging can really help aid the library for their many causes they attempt to undertake. I know from my point of view I am already thinking about taking my film review site that I made for class last semester and changing it into a blog format. It seems so well suited for that type of material. Though it might demand a lot more reviews to keep content fresh than my lazy self is willing to write. OK, week three blog post complete; Joey out.