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Now that I have finished my MLIS degree, you can find me blogging at meganbuttita.com.  Head on over and check it out!

For my portion of the group project, I focused on public relations and marketing in libraries.  This is an under-utilized method that can greatly help any library that is willing to undertake a little bit of extra effort to promote and monitor the library.  You can find my full blog post on my portion here.

We had a difficult topic because modelling libraries after businesses is so broad.  There are many things that libraries can do to make themselves more “business-like”, but there is a fine line between wanting to provide the same services that a for-profit business is able to and a not-for-profit business can actually afford (both in manpower and monetarily).  For this reason, we tried to pick specific ideas and tools that the library could implement with little or no cost and with existing technologies and resources.  Marketing and public relations is an important aspect of any business, and it should be more thought of in libraries, as well.

Corporations are increasingly using Web 2.0 technologies within their organizations in order to effectively and efficiently share ideas and knowledge.  While Web 2.0 is ever changing, companies that capitalize on using this technology will be better suited to face and overcome the challenges that management encounters on a daily basis.  They will also be able to better position themselves against their competitors to create and sustain a more robust form of management in the future.

Knowledge management and information centers in corporate settings are well positioned to use Web 2.0 technologies to their advantage.  There have been vendors and products associated with the storage and distribution of information since the conception of knowledge management and special libraries, but these have always come with a hefty price tag.  With free applications and open source software available to the public as well as private enterprises, a new generation of information centers and information professionals is emerging.

In this paper, I will be using the terms Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 interchangeably.  I will focus on whether or not special library are using library 2.0, what is the role of the library, what tools they are using, what tools they are not using, how they are using these tools, and what the future is of special libraries and library 2.0.  I will also be adding in a recent interview with a special librarian focused on her firms use of Web 2.0 tools, whose name a firm I will have to withhold, but whose experience is on par with other special libraries that I am familiar with.

I haven’t heard much about library podcasts since I first started the MLIS program in September 2007.  I listen to a variety of podcasts on a daily basis and have added and deleted quite a few library podcasts over the past couple of years.  I’m wondering if podcasts are just so common now that they aren’t really discussed in library school, or if this is still an untapped/not-so-often talked about library 2.0 resource.  Library 2.0, I believe, is the most important marketing and public relations tools that libraries can utilize and implement at very little cost (if any) and with relative ease.  So why not provide a podcast to update users on news, programs, etc.? 

This is a list of current podcasts that I listen to, or would like to start following:

LibVibe – Library News (my favorite!)

Lake County Libraries on the Air

Free Library of Philadelphia

Seattle Public Library

Denver Public Library

Pritzker Military Library

LisNews

What are some of your favorite library podcasts?

For more, check out Podcast Alley for an extensive list of library related podcasts!

While doing my brand monitoring project, I ran across Cook Memorial Library using Picasa.  I’ve never thought about this tool as part of a library 2.0 toolbox, but why not?  I did find a good number of libraries that use Picasa for photo hosting, but I don’t know how many people would actually come here to Picasa before Flickr (especially if it weren’t obvious that the library was using Picasa).  I couldn’t find any mention of why or why not libraries were using Picasa, but there are plenty of articles surrounding the use of Flickr and lists of libraries currently contributing pictures and videos.

I personally use both Flickr and Picasa, but for different purposes.  Since I freely share my Flickr account in many places on the web, Picasa is my way of only sharing pictures to an intimate group of people.  I did a bit of researching and here are the main pros and cons for the purpose of library use:

Pros of Picasa

- Both Picasa and Flickr have free options.

- Face recognition feature that finds the same people and groups them together, making similar pictures easy to retrieve.

- Easy to upload, download and edit photos from your hard drive with Google Image Organization Software.

Cons of Picasa

- Storage limit is 1GB total (pictures and video).  Flickr’s free and paid for accounts don’t have storage limits, however free accounts are deleted if they are not used for 90 days.

- Social networking aspect is not obvious – Flickr is unparalleled in this area.

Conclusion

You can share and follow (RSS) users and albums with Picasa, but there is no community like there is with Flickr.  Flickr acts and feels more like a social networking tool, whereas Picasa is more a tool to use with those you know (family and friends).  Flickr has the ability to draw comments and views from all over the world, but Picasa feels more like a closed off space unless you have a prominent link to it on other sites.  Also, the free unlimited storage of Flickr is a big draw for libraries who upload many pictures per month.  These two sites are very similar and both have many proponents, including a free web application that displays Flickr and Picasa images on websites and blogs – PictoBrowser.  All in all, I believe library 2.0 is better off with Flickr in the toolbox over Google’s Picasa.  This is one race that Yahoo! wins over Google!

Resources Used:

Rahul’s Chill Out Zone

Tecnerd

List of Libraries Using Flickr

I’ve been monitoring Cook Memorial Library in Libertyville, IL since the first week in October.  Cook is my first memory of a library and is currently undergoing construction.  I decided to monitor this library because I have recently moved back up to the area and I am interested to see how the main library has changed and what is going on with the proposed branch in Vernon Hills.  I also wanted to find out if they were doing anything to elevate their visibility, role, and purpose within the community.

Cook Memorial Homepage

I used Twitter, Flickr, Technorati, YouTube, and Google Alerts / RSS (I created an RSS feed on the main website since one was not readily available) to monitor any mentions of Cook Memorial library on the web.  I was looking for mentions by library users, posts that would engage the community, any kind of interaction that others can read.  Unfortunately, there is not a lot happening in the Twitterverse/blogosphere at this location (they do not have a Facebook page or current MySpace presence).

Construction Blog

Through the construction blog (but not the main website) they had RSS, Picasa pictures, and YouTube videos surrounding the construction and move of the library.

Monitoring Tools and Results

Google Alerts / RSS Feeds

Book signing

Community Rooms

Community Outreach

Cook Memorial Branch Info

Public Hearings

Library Board Members

Libertyville banker named to Cook Memorial library board

Hebda throws hat in ring for 59th race

In the News

Comcast will end its role in town meeting broadcasts

Old school Girl Scouts reconstruct 1849 Mechanics Grove Elementary

Twitter

N/A

Flickr (Picasa used instead)

N/A

Picasa

No new posts recently, but they do have a presence on Picasa

YouTube

No new posts recently, but they do have a channel on YouTube.

Technorati

Who Needs an Election When You Can Knock ‘Em Off the Ballot?

Cook library branch is going up, but grant to fund it nowhere to be found

Conclusion

There is a “Construction Update” picture section on the front of the main library website, but there are no library 2.0 components to the site.  There is a Cook Memorial Public Library Construction Update blog, but the link itself is unassuming on the homepage.  I’m also not convinced that having separate entities – a blog and a website – is the most efficient way to reach your audience.

I was able to get a good idea of what is going on with the library through the construction site, but there is no conversation between library and user.  All the information is being pushed out either by the media or the library itself. The fact that library users are not talking about or to the library could be due many things including non-use of the library and/or lack of personnel to start dialog during construction period, economic climate/ issues, or simply no awareness/use/training to use of library 2.0 tools.

It is also possible that there could be a simultaneous reconstruction of their web services during this period.  If this were the case, I think the users should be made aware of these changes rather than just having to assume that there is no library outreach using social technologies.

Construction provides the perfect opportunity to reconnect with the public.  Constituents are always interested to know what is happening with their tax dollars, and Cook Memorial should be showcasing where that money is going.  I have high expectations for this library, and I hope that they will soon unveil ways to start conversations that will inspire users to become more active members of the library!

Using Flickr is a great way for libraries to be transparent and to keep users informed of things happening at the library.  It’s can also be used to promote the library and its services, such as different programs and activities.  Sadly, I don’t see this being done nearly enough.  Instead, I see libraries that have Flickr accounts but don’t have the pictures or a link visible on their home sites.  An example of this is the Reading Public Library Website and Reading Public Library Flickr page.  I’m not sure if Flickr pictures or links aren’t on these sites because of policy or web design, but it seems like a waste of effort to not link these entities to one another.  I think libraries would benefit much more from the use of Flickr if you could link out to it from the library homepage.  It would be interesting to hear why so many libraries do not have this practice in place.  A good example of a library homepage with a visible Flickr account is Clinton-Macomb Public Library.

A site I love to use to search for pictures on Flickr is Tag Galaxy.  It’s really fun to use and enables you to find pictures that you might not find using the embedded search on Flickr.

I will be writing my paper on how and if special libraries are using library 2.0 tools, and whether or not these are inward or outward facing.  Here are some resources I will be looking at:

Sources include: 

2.0 for Special Libraries

Open source systems bring Web 2.0 to special libraries

Web 2.0 and Special Libraries

a long-overdue update on the special library 2.0 survey

The Corporate Librarian
http://buslib.wordpress.com/

Selected Sources via SLA to weed through:

“All A-Twitter About Web 2.0: What Does It Offer Libraries?” Irene E. McDermott. Searcher, 15(9), October 2007: 34-39.

“‘All That Glisters Is Not Gold’: Web 2.0 and the Librarian.” Paul Anderson. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 39(4), December 2007: 195-198. Abstract.

“Anyone Can Use an Aggregator.” Steven M. Cohen. Information Today, 23(3), March 2006: 23, 25.

“Are Raw RSS Feeds Suitable for Broad Issue Scanning? A Science Concern Case Study.” Mike Thelwall, Rudy Prabowo, Ruth Fairclough. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(10), October 2006: 1644-1654.

“Back to Basics: The Wiki.” Davey Winder. Information World Review, 241, December 2007: 32-35.

“The Best of the Business Blogs.” (Part 1 of 2) Robert Berkman. The Information Advisor, 17(11), November 2005: 1-3.

“The Best of the Business Blogs.” (Part 2 of 2) Robert Berkman. The Information Advisor, 17(12), December 2005: 5-6.

“The Best RSS Tips, Sites, Techniques, and Hacks.” Robert Berkman. The Information Advisor, 18(1), January 2006: 7-8.

“A Blog Standard Approach.” Kim Thomas. Information World Review, November 13, 2006.

“Business Research 2.0.” Marydee Ojala. Online, 32(2), March/April 2008: 45-47.

“Blogging: For Knowledge Sharing, Management and Dissemination.” Marydee Ojala. Business Information Review, 22(4), December 2005: 269-276. Abstract.

“Blogging: A Modern Tool for an Age-Old Quest.” Wallys W. Conhaim. Information Today, 23(2), February 2006: 27-28.

“Collaborating Across Time Zones: How 2.0 Technology Can Bring Your Global Team Together.” Robin Hastings. Computers in Libraries, 28(10), November/December 2008: 16-19.

“Collaboration 2.0: Make the Web Your Workspace.” Jessica Dye. EContent, 30(1), January/February 2007: 32-36.

“Collaborative Reference Work in the Blogosphere.” Jeffery Pomerantz and Frederic Stutzman. Reference Services Review, 34(2), 2006: 200-212.

“Connecting and Collecting Through LinkedIn.” Ellen Naylor. Competitive Intelligence, 11(5), September/October 2008: 37-39.

“5 Ways to Improve Your Corporate Blogs.” Susan J. Leandri. Information Outlook, 11(1), January 2007: 14-18.

“How and Why to Try a Blog for Staff Communication.” Rachel Singer Gordon and Michael Stephens. Computers in Libraries, 26(2), February 2006: 50-51.

“Keep Your Eyes on the Enterprise: Emails, Wikis, Blogs, and Corporate Risk.” Nicole Martin. EContent, 30(6), July/August 2007: 54-59.

“Library 2.0 Theory: Web 2.0 and Its Implications for Libraries.” Jack M. Maness. Webology, 3(2), June 2006.

“Research 2.0: Useful Web Applications for Researchers.” Cynthia Padilla. Online, 31(6), November/December 2007: 30-35.

“RSS: The CI Professional’s Best Friend.” August Jackson. Competitive Intelligence Magazine, 9(2), March/April 2006: 23-27.

“RSS Feeds Create Added Value for Special Libraries.” Lauree G. Hart. Information Outlook, 11(8), August 2007: 26-29.

“A Social Networking Contact: How Yahoo! and Sun Crafted Employee-Friendly Blog Policies.” Alan Cohen. Corporate Counsel, 14(5), May 2007.

“Social Networking Sites, Facebook, and Knowledge Management.” Robert Berkman. The Information Advisor, 12(1), March 2008 (KM Supplement): 1-4.

“Twitter: Fun and Addictive, but Is It a Researcher’s Tool?” Robert Berkman. The Information Advisor, 20(4), April 2008: 1-3, 8.

“Web 2.0 Tools for Social and Professional Use.” Jamal Cromity. Online, 32(5), September/October 2008: 30-33.

“What Makes an Enterprise Wiki?” Mark Choate. CMS Watch, April 28, 2006.

“Wikis as Legitimate Research Sources.” Suzanne Bell. Online, 32(6), November/December 2008: 34-37.

“Wikis in the Workplace.” Ezra Goodnoe. InformationWeek, February 27, 2006.

Angeles, Michael. Supporting Enterprise Knowledge Management with Weblogs: A Weblog Services Roadmap. Presentation at the 2004 Computers in Libraries Conference, March 11, 2004.

Murray, Rick. A Corporate Guide to the Global Blogosphere: The New Model of Peer-to-Peer Communications. Edelman, January 2007.

Pacifici, Sabrina I. Corporate Blogging. Slide presentation, 2004.

Pacifici, Sabrina I. and Dennis Hamilton. Establishing a Weblog on Your Organization’s Intranet. Presentation at the 2005 SLA Annual Conference, June 7, 2005.

The first picture is of a trading card that I created in 2004 for a Clue themed project and below it, my new trading card:

“The role of libraries is increasing, not decreasing. The job may take on different contours, but its importance is only rising as Digital Natives grow up saturated in the information environment of the digital age (Palfrey, 2008, Chapter 11, Location 4344).”

Born Digital provides a road map for understanding how children, teens, and young adults are using, manipulating, and driving technology.  Libraries (specifically public and school libraries) must adapt to the demands of these Digital Natives in order to stay relevant and ultimately survive. The book is broken down into 13 chapters; each related to a specific area in which Digital Natives affect and is affected by different aspects of online and digital technology.  There are positives and negatives of growing up in a digital environment, but there are three areas where I think Librarians can assist the most.

Quality

There are billions of pieces of data on the internet, but not all information is equal.  Librarians can teach Digital Natives how to decide good and bad quality by teaching them evaluative techniques.  Parents, peers, teachers, Librarians, companies, and lawmakers all must be involved with how best to implement these processes (Palfrey, 2008, Chapter 7, Location 2942).  Librarians and students must “participate in information production directly (Palfrey 2008, Chapter 7, Location 2724)” as this is the best way to educate and instruct Digital Natives on how to use online sources to find the highest quality of information.  Digital literacy should be a part of every library’s offerings.

Overload

Information overload has been around for a very long time.  Digital Natives need to be provided with the right search skills and tools like RSS and del.ici.ous in order to avoid the effects of information overload.  While new technologies like semantic search aim to curb information overload, libraries still need to work with other public and private entities to develop strategies for the future (Palfrey, 2008, Chapter 8, Location 3329).  Education is the best way to help young people deal with information overload, and Librarians must be capable of teaching these skills.

Learners

Librarians need to be present in all the places that Digital Natives inhabit, in person and online.  Digital Natives may not learn the same as you or me, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t learning (Palfrey, 2008, Chapter 11, Location 4107). Librarians and parents need to determine goals for technology and use the right tools to communicate with young people.  Digital Natives can help institutions achieve these goals if we listen to the feedback they provide (Palfrey, 2008, Chapter 11, Location 4221).  Libraries should not implement every new technology that comes out; they just need to use the most relevant ones more effectively.  We must all get serious about how kids are learning and know when to use technology and when it has no purpose in the learning process.

These three chapters, along with the issues surrounding identity, dossiers, privacy, safety, creators, pirates, aggressors, innovators, and activists shape how Digital Natives interact with online environments. The lesson that I learned from this book is that parents, teachers, and Librarians need to solve digital gaps together, but children can also teach each other.  Governments, laws, and companies also play an important role in the future of online and offline society, but they cannot do it alone.  I agree with the authors in that “We see promise in the way that Digital Natives are interacting with digital information, expressing themselves in social environments, creating new art forms, dreaming up new business models, and starting new activist ventures (Palfrey, 2008, Introduction, Location 164).”  There are no easy answers as to how to deal with the growing number of problems associated with young people and digital issues, but our society will flourish if we can provide them with the framework for a secure and informed future.

Palfrey, J. & Gasser U. (2008). Born digital: Understanding the first generation of digital natives [Kindle]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

There are many ways online sources and information can be corrupted.  This can be intentional or simply out of ignorance.  Some online sites and programs lend themselves to community input and should be taken with a grain of salt, although they are often taken at face value.  Other sites may seem authoritative, but deserve a closer look.  As librarians, we must be ready to lead this movement and usher in a new era of online searching.

Social networking tools such as wikis (the best known of which is Wikipedia) encourage users to amend and add content to entries.  There are thousands of people who monitor Wikipedia and correct information that has been added intentionally or unintentionally incorrect.  These editors are known as “Wikipedians” and nobody, not even the founder of Wikipedia itself, is really sure who they are or what backgrounds they have in order to wield such control.  Even more disconcerting is that articles that come from Wikipedia are second-hand, meaning “no Wikipedia article contains any attempt at actual reporting — in fact, original research is forbidden.”

Wikipedia basically relies on others to do the work of gathering the information, and the nameless and faceless administrators weed out the fact from fiction.  This is a frightening realization if students, parents, and teachers are all gathering their information from sources such as Wikipedia.  The concern is who “they” are.  Do “they” have hidden ulterior motives or are “they” even out of high school?   How many of these editors have information science backgrounds?  Do they know how to search every kernel of information for validity?  Until we know who “they” are, we need to be very aware of where our children, family, and friends are getting their information online. As information professionals, we should be warning every one of the potential hidden threats that Wikipedia has to offer and remind them to double-check their information back to a dependable primary source.

Some sites such as Rollyo (http://rollyo.com/) recognize that there is a lot of misinformation on the web and allow users to pick from certain sites “you” trust, although it picks those “you” trust for you.  I do not trust a site that thinks it knows which sites I trust.  Mahalo (http://www.mahalo.com/) is another site that attempts to instill trust in users by calling itself a “human-powered engine”.  It allows people who become members to provide relevant search results to users.

Both of these sites require that you trust others to show you the best search results.  For some people, this type of site might be helpful, however empowering users to decide which sites are reliable on their own is much more useful in the long term.  A mystique surrounds these sites and their administrators.  They could be anyone – political factions, those with radical agendas, religious zealots, terrorists – all creating pages and editing Wikipedia and its kin to their advantage.  Users are placing their trust and letting their reality be shaped by these “powers that be”.

All digital content is susceptible to providing misinformation to users.  This is a fact in a world that relies on technology to provide the majority of information.  The only way to combat the misinformation is by questioning our sources, checking where the information is coming from, and being proactive in how we search.  As information professionals, we must be directly involved in how content is created and disseminated to the masses.  Hakia is one way the library profession is trying to change the way search and digital materials are used, but it is just the beginning.  With the growing amount of electronic content on the web, we must be more intimately involved with new technologies and lend our skills and voices to the next generation of internet users.

I keep coming back to this Web 2.0 search engine when I’m looking around for new stuff to play with.  There are so many sites, it can becoming pretty overwhelming!  With Gotoweb20.com you can filter down the sites by category and keyword.

Below: Conversation Prism via briansolis.com

Social networking and its predecessors have been a part of some amazing things in my life, from finding old friends to finding a job; it has and will continue to play a huge role in all aspects of my life.

Yes, I am on Library Thing, I have a Ning (and belong to a bunch of Nings), and of course I am on Facebook.  I am also on a gazillion other social networking sites, but I can’t remember half of them without looking them up on my massive spreadsheet that contains over 200 passwords for sites I at one time used or signed up for.  And herein lies the problem:

Wikis and blogs and Ning and the like – it’s all great.  The problem is the disconnect between all these things.  It’s the same type of discussion that I’ve heard based around different databases (and consequently federated search as a solution).  People want one place to go – they don’t want to have to figure out where to go for different purposes.  That is why I am focused on figuring out the best way (personally and professionally) to “bring it all together”.  It should go without saying that all social networking tools should also work via mobile devices. 

Since I’m focused on corporate libraries, my view is a bit different than how public and academic libraries implement social networks.  So much of what corporate libraries do depends on what direction the company takes.  One solution for enterprise social networking is SharePoint.  It’s not as clean or crisp as many 3^rd party applications, but it does the job for companies that want to harness the power of social networking in a secure environment.

The common thread between all types of libraries and all types of companies is that there is no one size fits all for social networking – each company, firm, library, etc. should use what they need to use to make life easier for the user, not more complicated.  In doing so, there needs to be something that pulls all of these services together or a place where everything can disseminate from.  Now, how will it be done?

Things I am interested in seeing implemented into Library 2.0:

Google Wave

Lifestreaming and Lifecasting (think Steve Rubel and the Shifted Librarian)

Skype (transforming the reference interview)

Posterous

From: The Steve Rubel Lifestream

As a side-note: Even if all the links out to different services are located in one spot on the library or company webpage, it’s better than having to figure out where the Twitter, Facebook, etc. links are.  It only takes one aggravated trip to a website to turn off a user from ever going there again.  Nobody should have to search for these things on a website – something I have become very frustrated with when searching on library websites.  The public and our users are demanding better, and we should be giving it to them.

“Collaborating Across Time Zones: How 2.0 Technology Can Bring Your Global Team Together.” Robin Hastings. Computers in Libraries, 28(10), November/December 2008: 16-19.

“Collaboration 2.0: Make the Web Your Workspace.” Jessica Dye. EContent, 30(1), January/February 2007: 32-36.

“Collaborative Reference Work in the Blogosphere.” Jeffery Pomerantz and Frederic Stutzman. Reference Services Review, 34(2), 2006: 200-212.

“Connecting and Collecting Through LinkedIn.” Ellen Naylor. Competitive Intelligence, 11(5), September/October 2008: 37-39.

My first experience with a virtual community was in 1994 on the Lake County Bulletin Board System (BBS).  Rheingold’s Virtual Community Chapter 3 talks about the BBS movement which I caught at the tail end.  The 90’s were a magical time for all of us that were a part of the BBS movement right before the dawn of the new web era.  The passage below from thetransparentlibrary.org sums up much of what I felt in these days:

Howard Rheingold (1993):

“Social aggregators that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace.” (p. 5).

I was never good at math, so I decided to take a programming course in high school that taught Pascal and Visual Basic.  I had no idea what I was doing – only the fact that I no longer had to take math.  This in itself was enough to make me very happy, but what I learned in this class changed my life forever.

I met a few friends in the class that introduced me to the wonderful world of BBS’s.  My second computer was an Apple LCIII with an external 14.4 modem (the speed!)  There were requirements for joining the BBS – all free, but pretty specific:

1.) You needed to be recommended by at least two current users

2.) You had to know the basic commands – the system ran on DOS commands and you needed to know how to navigate without anyone’s help

Once I was accepted onto the BBS, I had to pick a handle.  This is very similar to how people can choose names other than their own on today’s social networks.  It also reminds me of what I saw on the web 5 years ago on sites like Myspace.  People were still uncertain as to how they wanted others to see them – as they are in real life or in the virtual space of the web.  Some of this can even been seen today with nameless bloggers and avatars skewing our perception of who users really are.  Being anonymous online is a choice and there are many different reasons people choose to remain hidden, but it is definitely not a new concept.

My handle was Ozymandius, after the famous poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley.  I chose it for a couple of reasons: I didn’t want people to know that I was a girl and judge me immediately (there were no pictures or graphics other than ASCII creations), and I was a teenager who had just read the poem in English class.

Once on the BBS, a whole new world was opened up before my eyes.  We were all involved in linking (with different meaning at that time), lurking, learning, and leading at different times and in different instances on the BBS.  I met people who were interested in the same things as me without ever meeting these people in person.  There were physical meet-ups, but I never attended them.  I much preferred them to know me in a virtual space where I could be who I was without limiting myself by gender, race, or appearance.  To me, the internet enhanced community and I was happy with the way things were.

The BBS was a community in the truest sense.  We had similar hobbies and interests and could communicate in (almost) real-time through chat.  We created artwork – ASCII artwork – and we were proud of what we could do with the systems available to us.  I learned about hardware, software, programming and more.  While much has changed in computing, the lingo is surprisingly similar.  The information I was taught and able to pass onto others was the foundation of where I am today and what I love to do.  I’ve been a part of multiple other virtual communities since the BBS days (AOL message boards, Second Life, Ning, etc.), but I am most proud to have been a part of the Lake County BBS.

If you want to learn more about BBS’s, there is an awesome documentary available (which of course I own!)

Library 2.0 is all about the user.  As Jenny Levine states in the article “Library 2.0 in the Real World“:

 It means using the tools and protocols the rest of the world uses so that we can be integrated into their environments, not forcing them to conform to ours.

I think this is the most important concept to keep in mind as libraries adopt new technologies.  It’s not about the technology itself, but how is connects users to the content they wish to experience, play with, and create.  The library also has a responsibility to figure out what their community needs in terms of web 2.0 applications, and to also “let go” of technologies that are no longer useful to patrons. 

An example of this might be to start using Google Alerts and say goodbye to Bloglines.  Another example would be to change the library altogether, like the Maricopa County Library District and Phoenix Public Library did when transitioning to BISAC subheadings instead of continuing to use Dewey.  The end goal should always be the same – to serve the user’s needs, even if it means changing the way things ‘have always been done’ and possibly ruffling a few librarians’ feathers.

In order to know what needs to happen, librarians should listen to their users and to what other libraries and for-profit businesses are doing to meet the needs of their customers.  Michael Stephens points out the skills that Librarian 2.0 needs in the article “Into a New World of Librarianship.”  Librarian 2.0 doesn’t have to know how to program or write code or be the most technologically advanced employee, but they must be familiar with the concepts and ready to teach and learn alongside the users.

The following blog post was originally published on November 15, 2008 on meganbuttita.com.

When it comes to remembering all the different options for online searching, news, image and video sites, etc., it’s hard to know if you are using all the relevant sites. I have been introduced to InfoDesk, and it is AWESOME! Any feeds that you are currently receiving from Factiva, Nexis, RSS, Google Alerts, etc., can all be managed through InfoDesk. And, they are an aggregator – not like Alacra where you are charged per article or database you access.

The options are endless…do you want to pull together all the technology news you are receiving from Nexis, Factiva, CNN.com, RSS alerts, and the like? Do you want to create newsletters quickly with all the most pertinent information for your constituents? Are you having trouble with maintaining feeds on your SharePoint webparts (you can’t modify what is put on the part or how many articles are added to the widget?)?

Here comes InfoDesk!

A competitor to this product might be Alacra – but really, it’s not. They don’t have the capability to aggregate feeds from multiple sources, or provide newsletter templates…and they charge per viewing – not so with InfoDesk! NewsEdge, a big name in the early 00’s, was the head cheese when it came to this technology, but InfoDesk has ripped that title right off their head.

I love InfoDesk.

Thank you for understanding what Librarians need. Why have I never heard of you before?

This gets me thinking and wanting to share some other “all in one” sites with you. They are NOTHING like InfoDesk, but they are places to start when you want to use mulitple sources for searching.

If you want to find a web 2.0 application for a specific subject, or if you just want to browse all the amazing sites, Go2Web20.com

Another one I like is Silobreaker

Another fun search engine that I like that is refereed (not by librarians, per se) is Mahalo. I’ve been unimpressed by Mahalo in the past few months. I would put it at the end of your list of where to go, but still a site to keep an eye out for.

Hi all! This is my last semester at Dominican and a wonderful way to wrap up my LIS experience! I currently use and help implement web 2.0 technologies at my firm, but it is hard to get people within our corporate environment comfortable with these technologies. We use Microsoft SharePoint as our web 2.0 platform (which looks different but is the same concept as free applications) which provides blogs, wiki spaces, twitter-like webparts, customizable lists, picture hosting, RSS aggregation, etc.

We have also created on off-shoot of SharePoint that we call PracticePoint. The Knowledge Managers and Librarians maintain pages and create content for the different PracticePoint pages, depending on which practices you work with, etc. I maintain, develop, and help train people on PracticePoint, as well as manage the firm’s Competitive Intelligence page and the regional (Global, AsiaPac, Latin America, EMEA) pages with general research request content. My goal is to bring knowledge of how libraries are using web 2.0 technologies outside the for-profit world into our corporate environment.

It has been a very difficult task at hand to get people to warm up to sharing knowledge at our firm, but it is the life blood of what we do in executive search. I am most interested in learning about how special libraries incorporate social networking into their competitive intelligence and knowledge management programs, but I think there is a lot to learn from how other types of libraries are using these tools, as well.  Experiences with how others have rolled out 2.0 tools to employees / users and the pros and cons of these resources will be very enlightening and educational!

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