Networking

Social networking sites are, for me, primarily a marketing opportunity for the library. If a presence is established in online social networks, then it is a great opportunity to draw new users to us. The trick is to attract current users to our online presence. If we can do that, then hopefully we can use that as a base to expand. Doing so however, is not as easy as it sounds. Someone else might have pointed it out already, but the Facebook group "State Library of New South Wales" has 30 members, whilst "I MAKE THE NSW STATE LIBRARY BADASS" has 179 members. I believe the trick to establishing an online presence in these networks successfully is to achieve the right mix between informality and authority. We don't wish to denigrate ourselves, but we do need to make any presence casual enough that clients are attracted to it and are relaxed enough to engage with us through our online presence. An overly formal presence reinforces our image as stern gatekeepers, and effectively discourages clients from talking to us. And that's the second use of these networks: to engage with our clients. A greater online presence allows us to have a discussion with our clients in regards to what they see as our successes and failures, and what we can do to improve our services. By observing any discussions between themselves, we can also gain further insight into how they use the library and its services.

I think some of that might have actually been coherent.

Google docs

I can see the usefulness of this. Obviously clients frustrated by the lack of Office applications on the reading room PCs find Google docs useful. The other use for these applications is for people who travel a lot and lack a laptop. They could access their documents wherever they are (assuming there's net access).
For the library itself, I'm not so certain it could be used for work by staff. We already have a network for common access to documents, and the capability to restrict access to anything that might need it. Also, for professional purposes, they may not provide enough features that are required.
It would be useful for anyone working with colleagues in other institutions, be it in public libraries or the other state libraries. There are also possibilities for those who work with suppliers and publishers. I imagine there would be issues surrounding any sensitive documents though. Would we trust our documents to be stored on servers and equipment outside the library?

Can I have some salt with my mash?

Ok here is my mash-up, put together very hastily I should add. Its a photo of one of my favourite bands when they performed at Lancaster Library. Its a good way of getting people to come to the library, and certainly draws publicity. I'm not sure what the clients actually using the library might think though.

I don't see too much to get excited about with using mash-ups at the library. At first glance there's nothing new about it. Its basically the same ideas that have been used in computer publishing and design for years. It would be very interesting though to let the clients loose with the library's pictures collection (digitised of course) and see what they turn out.

Podding along

Podcasting is much like anything else that the library would choose to place on its website. Its a form of communication with our clients and colleagues, and the only new thing about it is the format it is delivered in. Theoretically anything we currently choose to communicate can be produced as a podcast - news and events at the library, reviews of new items, blogs from staff in an audio-visual format, staff presentations, history of [insert your own item/topic], talks by authors about their work. The list is endless.

My favourite would be to see vodcasts from staff in regards to the collection material, and not just the heritage items within the collection. It would be nice to see some presentations or discussions in regards to the library's more contemporary material, or the more controversial material in the collection. If nothing else it might get people talking about us, and might appeal to a new generation of library users.

The trick with p/vodcasting of course lies within the production standard. Having listened to some of the podcasts out there, there's nothing worse than listening to an otherwise fascinating topic being ruined by a monotonous drone. If a client or stakeholder finds a podcast boring then they are unlikely to listen to another one.

Is slamming the boards like wobble-boarding?

Is there a role for our library in regards to answer boards? Certainly. Any activity that involves the conveyance and distillation of information is pertinent to librarians. The question though is how do we find the time and resources to do so? It would be nice for librarians to spend their time on these boards, but the library's main clients must come first. Perhaps it is an opportunity for library staff to spend some of their own time in answering these questions, but make it clear as they do so that more information can be gained by visiting the library itself (or its website). I would love to see librarians rostered to answering these questions, if we had the time to do so. Perhaps the library could even set up something like this on its own site. Not just simply talking to a librarian online, but allowing for other clients to suggest answers and material.

The questions that are asked are of course interesting in themselves. Many of the questions asked seem to be factual requests. The fact that they are asked shows that not everyone knows how to retrieve information and that not everything can be easily found on Google (yes, it means we are still relevant). I'm not sure however, of our professional capacity to answer the questions posed in the relationships section Of Yahoo Answers.

Opening up our catalogue to our clients is a fantastic idea (with some moderation). I'm a big fan. Our clients, being the end users of the material, are the ones most likely to be able to evaluate an item's usefulness. For students, largely using the same material from year to year, their own comments on collection material would undoubtedly be of use to others in the same subject areas. If we could couple these features with online item requests, we could even offer similar services to sites such as Amazon - "others who used this item also requested ...". Structured subject headings and access points are great for grouping together obviously similar items, but they don't easily allow for such lateral connections between collection items, which are often highly useful.

Libratithing

Aha, now here are some things that I'm excited about. Technorati is a lot of fun. This, for me, is a site where you can go never knowing what you might stumble across. Its the sort of site where you could spend days just wandering around and seeing whose opinion you can most disagree with (or agree with, whatever takes your fancy). Its good to have a spot to go to where you can just focus on perusing blogs.

LibraryThing as well is one that I really like. I have to admit, I'm the sort of person who tends to judge people by their book collections, and what better way to do this than by using LibraryThing! But seriously, this is a great site for finding new literature and material that you might find interesting (its also a lot better constructed than Delicious). None of the features are really new - its basically a combination between Amazon and any library catalogue you care to mention. But the great thing is getting to see which books are liked by people with similar taste. Quite frankly, this is a far better way of picking something to read than by making use of published book reviews. The State Library of Tasmania integrates LibraryThing with its catalogue, and I think it works really well.

Cuil

Has anybody else made use of Cuil yet? Launched this week, and meant to have greater web reach than Google. I've tried it for a few things and it seems ok - for simple searches anyway. There doesn't seem to be any option for advanced searches though. Either you have to know how to make complicated search queries, or you're stuck making dirty searches.

I just like the format. A lot easier to peruse results than Google. I have to admit that when trying to think of something to search for at first, I tried my own name. Very shallow of me (is it a good thing or a bad thing if very little comes up?). Which raises the question: is it still googling yourself if you're not using Google?