Social Intelligence

What some business people and librarians are recognizing is that people like to be heard and to have an opportunity to participate in decisions, both big and small. This may mean an on-going blog about new ideas and challenges as well as everyday life. It may mean sharing books, websites, wikis, and blogs as well as experiences with the world and your colleagues. It may mean using collaborative virtual note pads, instant messaging, text messaging, email, and VOIP software to connect with people across the city, province, country and world. Being able to attend conferences either in person or remotely and or continue other forms of professional development is also important!

My Social Media Best Practices:

1. Keep up with new technology through reading and listening to as many sources as possible!

2. Use common sense and think about how you could apply this and whether it is right for your library or your personal use!

2. Discover the answers to these questions before starting a project:
What do you want to achieve?
Who do you want to include?
Who you want to connect with?
Which softwares are they familiar with and already using?
Which softwares you are familiar with and have a comfort in using?
Do you need technical support for the project you are planning?
Do you need expertise or ideas from other people?
Who do you have to get approval from or at least inform about you plan? What is their knowledge base? What do they need to know?
Do you have deadline?
How do you want to assess this project?
What stats do you need to prove its’ usefulness?
What sort of feedback system do you need to help with growth and problem solving?

4. Believe in yourself! Be willing to take risks, make mistakes and admit when you are wrong or need help!!!

Here is a blog post that will be of use for those thinking about marketing through social media. It gives a set of step by step suggestions and best practices for starting out. Thank you Sean Gallagher for this useful tutorial.:

http://community2.business.gov/t5/Small-Business-Matters/Getting-Started-with-Social-Media-Marketing/ba-p/13949#A555

My social media tool box will include some or all of the following:

A Twitter account for promotion and communication.

A Facebook page and or group for similar purposes as well as for personal communication.

An account on Skype for communicating over long distances and short ones, possibly to work on projects and attend workshops virtually.

An instant messaging software or site such as the connection through Meebo that lets me communicate with people using different IM providers.

I may also use online clipboards such as the one we used for our group project and the various Google applications from the feed reader to the search engines. And last but certainly not least I will have my bookmarks available on Delicious so that I can access them from anywhere whether I am updating my wiki or my blogs  and or sending an e-communication to someone with research assistance or professional development information.

I look forward to hearing any other suggestions and input on this post!

An interesting collection of reading for this week from computing clouds to mobile devices and how the changes in technology will affect libraries for the present and in the future. I am curious how many of you out there  would search the library catalogue from using your cell or iphone? I have a feeling that I am a bit of a dinosaur in this area in that I am only really using my phone for making the occasional call or sending text messages. I am happy to head into my local library and check for holds in person or pick them up if I get an email that they are available. I found that when I was getting text messages from an institution versus someone on my contact list I was getting severely charged for the priviledge so I will get out of my apartment, check my email, or my library account to keep on top of my holds and the books due back.

However, I may be part of a team looking after a library website at some point or communicating with providers of library software or online databases. I need to be aware of what my options are for making the library resources more searchable and accessible. I will be interested to see what direction mobile technology takes in the coming years and what people will be wanting in the way of accessible services.

QR codes and their uses caught my attention when Amanda shared the information about them in this week’s video post.  I went looking for more information about this topic and now I am going to share this post by The Proverbial LoneWolf Librarian’s blog. Thanks for providing us with more potential uses of this technology.

As to the augmented reality applications I find them slightly disturbing!!! Yet if you sent a tweet to someone tweeting about issues with research it might be a quiet way to help students, but they might consider it an invasion of their privacy.

I think that whether it is the decision to put part of your resources or all of your resources online on a third party site out in the cloud or to put the hours and technical time into designing applications for different mobile devices much research and thought must go into the implications of the decisions. Consultation is an important part of the equation. Why transfer the resources off site if your internet connectivity is not consistent enough to allow them to be accessed easily? Why take the time to design an application or a service if there is not a wide enough user base interested in utilizing it either within the library community or outside it? Are confidentiality and legal liability going to be concerns if certain files are stored off-site? Is it reasonable to store a portion of the libraries resources off-site and in the cloud so that your library is doublely covered in case of a technological or a nature disaster? Are some resources already located off-site because your library access them via a licensing agreement?