Social Networking and Librarianship

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1 Social Networking and Librarianship Dr. B. Maharana Reader & Coordinator P. G. Department of Library & Information Science Sambalpur University

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3 Web 2.0 in Brief and Benefits User-Centered Personalized content Collaborative Social - Conversation/Community Interactive- Participatory, not passive Content-rich, multi-media-rich De-centralized (control) Portable- available anywhere, anytime Many-to-many and/or few-to-few communication Networking opportunities galore Convenient

4 Social Media Harnessing Web 2.0 Technologies & Tools

5 Social Media Social media encompas many technologies Internet forums Weblogs, Micro blogging Wikis Social networking Podcasts, vodcasting Photographs or pictures Media/Video sharing, social gaming Social bookmarking, tagging Slide sharing tools Instant Messaging, chats, RSS, Mashups Personal portals, Virtual worlds, and many others

6 Social Networking Sites

7 What are Social Networking Sites? Social Networking Site an internet or mobile-based social space where people can connect, communicate, and create and share content with others.

8 Three common elements of Social Networking Sites 1. a member profile (in their definition this is always a web page); 2. the ability to add other members to a contact list (the names of your contacts vary they might be called friends or buddies); 3. supported interaction between members of contact lists (interaction varies greatly, and there will typically be some degree of interaction facilitated between people who are not named contacts). Reference: Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship Danah Boyd & Nichole Ellison

9 Social Networking. old wine in a new bottle While the term social networking may be new, the concepts behind it creating community, sharing content and collaborating with others are not. In fact, they have been around for a long time, as early as the time of Plato in 400 B.C.

10 Consulting Research Scientist, OCLC

11 What do people do with SNS? Viewing content/finding information Creating and customising profiles Connecting with existing networks, making and developing friendships/contacts Adding and sharing content Posting messages public & private Collaborating with other people

12 In his book, The Age of the Platform, Phil Simon describes the value of a modern platform as follows: [Platforms] bring together like-minded individuals who often share surprisingly similar goals. Together these individuals make up the most powerful component of any open project: the community.

13 The Network Effect. While many networks give us the means to connect more effectively, none has changed how we live, learn, work and play more quickly and some say, more profoundly than the Web. This is partly because it has collapsed so many different media into one source, letting us read, listen, watch, play, talk, sell, buy, work, publish and broadcast all in the same space.

14 Profile-based SNS Content-based SNS Bebo, Facebook and MySpace, Flickr, Youtube Social Networking Services White-label SNS Multi-User Virtual Environments Mobile SNS Ning Second Life MySpace, Twitter Micro-blogging/ Presence updates MySpace, Twitter People Search Classmate,

15 Types of SNS General MySpace, Facebook, Google+, Orkut, Bebo, QQ Friendster, many more Professional, academic, research LinkedIn, Ning, ResearchGate, Academia.edu Subject specific Library2.0, ALA Connect Internal - ALA Connect External - Facebook

16 April, 2013 Statistics on Social Networking Sites (Unique monthly visitors) 750,000, ,000, ,000,000 70,500,000 65,000,000

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19 Social networking is an opportunity for libraries and museums to do the same bring together their patrons, raise funds and even have their core audience have a say in what exhibits they d like to see, or what improvements need to be made.

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22 How Social Networking Works? How social networks manage millions of users and hundreds of millions of updates? Social networks are built on top of LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl)

23 Reaching the users in their preferred environment Meredith Farkas Academic librarian, Portland State University If libraries are not the first place our prospective users go to do research, they will likely miss any marketing we do on our own Web sites. This is why we must start looking beyond these sites and toward putting our content where our users actually are.

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26 Potential Use of SN Sites for Library Services The way users interact, share information, seek information has now undergone a big change Provide new exciting form of development Be aware of developments & adapt to changing environment Enables libraries to place them in current environment Potential for reaching out to users where they are present Create professional image & impact Enables libraries to add social elements Remain valuable & relevant to users Need to take fully informed decisions to make its full potential

27 Few SNS for Librarians Communication MySpace, Facebook, Ning, Blog, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Distribution Flickr, Youtube, Wikipedia, PBWiki, Slideshare, etc. Organization Del.icio,us, Connotea, LibraryThing, etc.

28 New York University Libraries on Facebook

29 Library of Congress on Facebook

30 Maharshi Dayanand College Library

31 New York University Libraries

32 MIT Libraries

33 University of Michigan Library

34 University of Washington Libraries

35 MySpace for librarians

36 Denver Public Library

37 New York Public Library

38 American Library Association

39 British Library

40 British Library

41 New York Public Library

42 American Library Chennai

43 New York Public Library

44 ResearchGate

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48 Planning for SNS Use by Library Planning is vital for implementing Think before- benefits & drawbacks Planning help us anticipate any problem and craft library presence that will meet future needs of users Choose a social network site Go where your users are Take a poll or conduct a survey Reason for conducting poll & Educate users Look at the features offered Identify subject specific, profession, region

49 Planning for SNS Use by Library Initiate the process & get it approved Management, staff Encourage staff & user environment Prepare policies- social media policies Think of the services you can offer Create profiles & services that interest users Keep up with the changes

50 Plan to Market & Promote Effectively Need to reach out to as many as possible Integrate with library marketing plan Develop marketing plan Know your users Know your library Update Library Brand Identity Combine push & pull marketing techniques Create social marketing campaign User-centric, offer value, feel & experience, interactive, memorable, shareable, keeping it up

51 Best Practices to Follow Follow friendly etiquette Let users choose libraries & librarians as friends Use proper tone, language and content Blend professional with personal Use separate account for library & personal Take care of privacy issues Engage in reactive services Engage students to seek services Engage in proactive services Ubiquitous librarian Offer services never seen before

52 Assess-Impact, Participation & Success Assessment is must Money, time, effort, other resources spent Identify tools & techniques to assess Use quantitative & qualitative measures Monitor usage statistics Take surveys Hold focus group discussions Informal communications Initiate studies & other methods Set the goals & achieve them

53 Issues, Concerns, Challenges Many feel libraries do not have a role in social networking Libraries are places for learning & information Requires time & resources Not very heavily used Students may not be eager to communicate with library staff on Facebook, Google+ etc. Getting users to treat librarians as friends- a challenge These sites can be only compliment Users may not like the presence of library on SN

54 Issues, Concerns, Challenges Hard to maintain regular posting & updates No guarantee of how long these tools will remain More useful for librarians than libraries Focus more providing online services using library website Need to do a proper study & then step in Mastering & keeping with technology Engaging users (staff and students) in using social networking tools Achieving an informal yet presentable tone of communication with students

55 Future Developments Increase in global social connections Providing more services Access to core features Integrating other social tools SNS will be around for some time to come New SNS in new form may come More people connected with SNS Libraries will have to make use of this opportunity

56 To sum up SN sites are beneficial in promoting library services interacting with users communicating within internal staff Benefits are more than the cost involved Provide new platform to reach out users Important to see users response before introducing These SN sites are evolving rapidly & will get better day-by-day Important for libraries to seek new avenues & therefore consider benefits of using these tools Face the challenges & place library in centre place of these technological developments

57 Thank you!!