shelfless

I helped to set up the virtual community More than Books with some classmates. All in all the experience was both positive and enlightening.  I was really happy that as a group we all seemed pretty inclined to create something that wouldn’t just be a snapshot or a prototype, but something that would be living and breathing beyond the day we presented it to the class. Our first idea, in line with the class, was to be a resource for libraries and 2.0 technologies. Of course, in researching the possibilities, I found that the idea was so good somebody already had it.

So instead of rehashing something somebody was clearly doing well, we shifted courses and decided on creating a virtual community for librarians in the mid-west to network and share ideas and events. This became More Than Books.

The group set it up discussed the layout, the options and pretty much went to town creating the framework of the group that hopefully new users would have an idea of how the site worked and how to use it.

Once that set up was taken care of, we opened it up to the public using viral marketing. This seems the most natural way to market these sorts of services. Facebook doesn’t get users because it advertises, it gets users because people use it, tell their friends and their friends tell their friends. On the whole this approach worked well (as a starting point). We got a decent number of people outside of the class involved. Some members did get other members to join and in the end we had roughly 40 people (and more continue to join) and a sliver of representation of the Mid west: Detroit to Ohio. Ohio to Chicago. Chicago to Wisconsin.

The community really has taken shape, but it’s got a long way to go before it can become self sufficient. We have a large lurker population and not enough leaders outside of the 4 creators. This is a huge obstacle, and we need to secure ways to make people get involved.

One example that stuck out to me was this one: a user created a post, looking to make a connection, and see what others did in a certain situation, but unfortunatley  there was no response for weeks on end. Now, the more often that happens, the less interested even the leaders of the community will lose interest and abandon the community.

MTB needs to adapt to the community it has. With 40 or so members, a large number of groups just isn’t going to serve them. Groups end up having so few members that there is no real source for meaningful communication. To resolve this, we’re considering breaking down the groups and focusing the discussion onto the main forum, or a few select groups to start off with. In this model, we would encourage focusing on tagging to pique particular interests among the community, while still allowing all users to see all content easily.

As the population grows and can support more groups, then the administration will need to adapt and change again to meet the needs of what will have hopefully become a larger community. It’s not an easy road to hoe. Unfortunately these sorts of changes aren’t easily suited to Ning either. There doesn’t seem to be a way to “move” discussion lists from one group to another, or to the main page. So removing those groups will likely lose all their content.

To tell the truth, I’m realistic about More Than Books’ chances of survival and success. In retrospect, I worry that perhaps its scope was a little too large. I hope all works out. I think it has a solid team behind it, and if the interest continues on their part to nurture the community into leaders, it’s distinctly possible, but it’s not an easy task.