User-Generated Content in Libraries

--Where do you see user-generated content providing value for libraries and how could it be collected?--

What I see as being the most valuable user-generated content for libraries is the addition to library catalogs that enable patrons to add reviews of materials in the collection, somewhat like Amazon. This would provide both the ability of users to rate through 1-5 stars as well as write a review that would be approved prior to adding it to the catalog in order to ensure that it is "proper." Through adding user-generated reviews, patrons will feel like they have an impact on their libraries and that their opinions matter. This would also create a sense of community, in that the catalog could become almost like a social networking tool if reviews can be categorized through the reviewer's name. Thus individuals could "view" a reviewer's profile and the items that they have reviewed and which they liked and disliked. While I am unsure how it would exactly play out on a library's online public access catalog, the ability for library patrons to provide input and generate content that reaches out to fellow patrons not only improves the library's holdings, it also ensures that the library is the hub of the online community as well as the physical community.

Patrons could also provide tags for items that would work alongside the subject headings of catalog entries. While this could become confusing, it would allow for user-generated language to provide tags that catalogers may not have thought about. This is especially true for items that fall within multiple categories or have a specific jargon description. While I do not believe that tags will supplant subject headings, I do think that they could increase the richness of each item's record in the system.

References

Tay, A. (2009). "Libraries and Crowdsourcing - 6 Examples." Musings about Librarianship.

Barriers to Internal Collaboration

With numerous tools available, such as del.icio.us and wikis, there are still possible barriers for effective internal collaboration within organizations. The main barriers are the comfort level of staff regarding technology and the workplace atmosphere, which includes the feelings of the management toward internal collaboration tools.

While an internal collaboration tool like wikis are a perfect technology for collaborating and combining the knowledge of multiple staff members, if the staff are not comfortable working with this technology, it will not be used to its full potential. However, this could easily be remedied through tutorials or technology classes that show staff how to use wikis and how it could help them. Similarly, if staff do not want to share their knowledge with one another and prefer to be the "go-to" person for specific questions, then this would also become a barrier to sharing organizational knowledge and allowing it to be available to all.

Regarding tagging tools like del.icio.us or simply having a set bookmark list available on all reference computers, a barrier could be the lack of a set number of tags that allow for easy retrieval. Staff participation could be another barrier, as some staff members who are more comfortable with technology would submit more links while others submit none. Again, showing the staff how the tagging and bookmarking works would erase most of this barrier.

Lastly, if management does not have positive feelings towards internal collaboration tools and do not believe it is a viable use of time, there will most likely not be a positive atmosphere in the organization for staff to add their knowledge to the wiki or del.icio.us links. Staff would have to do this out of office hours in their free time which is not conducive to having the majority of the staff participate.

---

Kelly, W. (2009). Corporate culture, not technology, drives internal collaboration. Retrieved from http://gigaom.com/collaboration/corporate-culture-not-technology-drives-online-collaboration/.

Wilding, G. AskNow's del.icio.us useful resources. Retrieved from http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/gateways/issues/91/story01.html.

Marketing Critique of San Francisco Public Library

Marketing Critique of San Francisco Public Library

The San Francisco Public Library system is comprised of numerous branches. These branches allow the SFPL to serve a large population and, similarly, their online presence allows for an even greater patronage.

What is the library doing to market themselves online?

The SFPL markets itself online through its main website, a Twitter page, a Facebook page, numerous blogs, and podcasts and videos of library programs. The main SFPL website is clean cut, informative, and eye-catching. Its Library Highlights section allows for patrons to browse through numerous events in a visual manner, while the library services, events, and hours are clearly stated and navigable. The library catalog itself is highly reminiscent of an Internet information search that blends into the layout of the rest of the main website.

The library’s Teen and Children’s pages are designed in a specialized fashion that targets their intended audience and shows an attention to detail and design. While the Kid’s website could be confusing to navigate to some, that the hyperlinks are incorporated into the actual background design is reminiscent of wallpaper in a child’s room and was most likely designed with that in mind. In comparison, the Teen website is clean cut and almost too simple, with few images or interactive elements that teens may appreciate, such as a scrolling message feed, chat features, or simply images of the latest movies or CDs.

SFPL’s Twitter page is active almost daily, providing important information on events and programs to its 1,366 followers. The language and jargon used is casual and avoids the formally polite phrasing of many librarians who use social media tools. The Twitter page does not, however, contain many conversations with or responses to patrons.

Similarly, the library’s Facebook page is often updated and has numerous comments and “likes” to each announcement. It has a staggering 6,379 likes. What stood out was the amount of Information on SFPL, which also includes a “status” of whether the library is open or not. The Facebook page’s Discussion section is a good attempt at creating conversation between patrons but has not been updated for months. The Poll section is important tool in order to receive patron feedback in a manner that is easy to both receive and provide. The Library’s Teen Services Facebook page makes many announcements which are image heavy but they do not update daily and only have 132 likes. What catches the eye the most is the photography folder of Teen Librarians, which consists of cartoon drawings of the SFPL’s young adult librarians. For the patrons who interact with these librarians, it must be fun to associate and recognize their favorite staff members.

The number of blogs published by the SFPL staff are numerous (21 in total), with the majority being specific branch blogs and only a handful consisting of specific subject blogs such as the Filipino American Center Blog and LGBT Resources Blog. While having so many blogs is rather staggering and looks good as a whole, they may not be updated as often due to spreading the staff so thinly between 21 blogs. Instead, they could have had a main blog for the entire system, including branch-related announcements (perhaps with accompanying photographs or caricatures to identify the branch) and events with separate subject-related blogs.

The SFPL also has a number of podcasts and videos of the events that occur at the branches, such as author visits, book readings, and branch openings. The podcasts revolve around book readings and panel discussions.

What are they doing right in their marketing efforts?

The SFPL system is reaching out through multiple social media tools as well as through its traditional website and media collection. The Kids’ library page especially shows that the library is marketing towards its youth population through the design of the website and the interactivity, even in the main categories that it chooses to embed into the front page.
Both Facebook and Twitter provide information in a timely and easy-to-access manner as well as provide a professional and modern face of the library online. Similarly, the blogs discuss interesting and important aspects of modern life, targeting audiences that may need extra support or information or even stories about people who are experiencing the same issues.

Providing specialized and targeted information is what the SFPL system is doing extremely well, in that their blogs and their Facebook pages target specific audiences and cater the announcements and news to them. This is especially important for those of differing generations who may digest and search for information in different ways. For example, the teen Facebook page is designed differently than the SFPL main Facebook page, in that it is more graphic heavy with briefer announcements.

Where are they falling short?

While the SFPL system does reach out with social media tools, it does not appear to be creating much conversation with its patrons, current or future. One of the greatest strengths of social media tools like Facebook and Twitter, let alone blogs, is to create conversation and dialog between patrons and library staff, or even patrons and other patrons. Conversation can also include comments, which the Facebook page does have, but the Twitter page seems to lack. For a previous research paper, the American Eagle Outfitters Twitter page was researched and there were many tweets along the lines of “@customer: Those jeans look great!” or “@customer: I agree with you regarding that event.” While they may appear banal messages, it shows interaction between staff and customers in a manner that is conversational and sounds like dialog between individuals in a face-to-face encounter.

The blog effort, as previously mentioned, could be condensed into fewer but more often updated blogs. Keeping a high level of activity, which includes keeping up-to-date with recent vents in the world and respective communities is especially important to a library that serves such a broad populace.

What do you think of their branding efforts? Have they build a strong and consistent brand online?

While the SFPL does have a few items that they could work on in order to strengthen their online branding efforts, what they do have at the moment is a strong and consistent foundation for its brand name. With the Facebook and Twitter pages already up and running, it is only a simple step to improve their outreach and marketing. Their blogs provide a human voice of their staff along with the extremely humanized (through caricatures) teen librarian population. By making their staff identifiable through blog posts and rosters, SFPL shows the diversity of their members as well as the population they serve.

If the library hired you as a social media marketing consultant, what would you suggest to them?

If hired as a social media marketing consultant for the SFPL system, I would firstly congratulate them on their outreach thus far and state their previous accomplishments. Then I would recommend a redesign of their Teen website in order to make it as individual and eye-catching as the Kids page. Providing a Teen Facebook page does not allow the website page to be less impacting.

Regarding the Facebook and Twitter pages, I would attempt to increase conversation between patrons and staff members either by increasing the number of Discussion threads or polls, as well as changing the tone of the announcements into one that prompts response. Questions such as whether or not the patrons enjoyed the finished event and would want more of the same type or if the patrons enjoyed reading / watching / listening the newest release of a book / DVD / CD. In Twitter, I would prompt proactive interactions with patrons, either through searching for people discussing libraries or asking for events that the SFPL sponsors. Tweeting directly to these people creates conversation and shows that the library is fine with open and direct dialog. By doing this, it shows that anybody could Tweet the library and get a response, which opens up the option of the SFPL’s Twitter account as another reference source. This could, however, cause the Twitter page to become deluged so it would be important to create a balance between announcements and discussion in order to ensure that the announcements continue at the same pace.

Prompting patrons to submit media and ensure a Web 2.0 experience is important, especially in trying to make the library’s online presence more than just the online face of the library. Making announcements about library events is not enough. If enough communication occurs between patrons and staff and the patrons themselves, the library can become a hub of the community both online and offline.

Tagging Content

What are some of the weaknesses of tagging for making content more findable?

While tagging content in order to make it more findable does seem like a good idea, especially with the advent of and overarching Facebook photograph "tags" mindset, there are some problems that can turn up when tagging is not monitored. One of the main weaknesses of tagging is that of jargon and word choice, in that there are so many different words that could be used to describe one single item. For example, if someone finds an article on the usefulness of social networking tools in libraries and tags it under "Facebook," someone who searches for "social networking tools" may not find it. Similarly, instead of using a too-specific tag, an overly general tag could also result in missed search results. Because there are so many possible word choices for items, it is possible to not be able to find what you are looking for or only find a limited amount of search results.

Another weakness of tagging is that individuals could mis-tag items either through misidentification or in an attempt to attract attention. While malicious tagging could be easily monitored by an active community, quite like malicious editing of open-wikis, misidentification could cause more problems as it would require more time to identify that it is indeed incorrect and to correctly identify it.

Libraries in Facebook?

"A big difference exists between being where our patrons are and being useful to our patrons where they are. A profile should be designed to offer something to patrons, so they will keep coming back to it." - Farkas, 2007, 122

While I have not owned a MySpace page or interacted much with it as a social networking tool, I do have a Facebook account and use it every so often in order to keep in touch with school friends. While libraries may seem out of place on Facebook, a place for individuals to meet one another and keep track of what their friends are up to, I believe that libraries do in fact fit in to this new and constantly evolving world of Facebook.

Because Facebook is a social networking website, it can work off the theory that "one person's connections to other people are more important than the person's attributes. Following this logic, people can be judged, for better or worse, by their friends and acquaintances" (Farkas, 2007, 110). Being able to make these connections between individuals, libraries can also work off this relationship by making its presence known and reaching out to individuals through services and event announcements. I believe a library that does reach out to its patrons through Facebook not only provides an opportunity to understand their patrons' wants and needs (through their likes/dislikes) but also provides a location for patrons to give feedback to the library or request certain items for the collection.

While Facebook is starting to lean the way of Twitter with profile "status" notifications and the news-ticker "Feed" page, I do not believe keeping track of patrons' statuses will be a time-worthy method of discovering what is important to patrons. Instead, noting their favourite activities or events that they did participate in could be one method. Another would be to, after creating a sufficient "fan base," to make a status announcement asking "What would you like to see the library doing" while providing context, such as teen events, adult events, etc. Patrons could respond through comments in order to provide their own feedback. This sort of response of course requires patrons believing that their feedback will be studied and, possibly, applied.

A library Facebook page could also provide after-the-fact coverage of events, such as a status announcement of the event photograph album being uploaded. This would provide a location for patrons to view photographs of themselves that they did not take and perhaps tag themselves in the photographs and provide feedback through comments. If patrons could also upload their own photographs or send them to the library Facebook page through a message, it would also show that the librarian in charge is interested in what patrons have to offer while also having a chance to filter possibly questionable photographs. This retrospective coverage also provides advertising for the next event of a similar nature.

A library with a strong presence on Facebook requires patron interaction, or else a Facebook profile will simply sit and blare announcements to the librarian making the posts. The same amount of marketing that librarians devote to promoting events and services needs to also be applied to the library's Facebook page, whether it is the form of bookmarks in holds, an announcement on the website, or posters in the teen areas. However, once the Facebook page is working and patrons regularly check and provide feedback on the announcements, it can be a great aid to library outreach and marketing.

--------

Farkas, M. G. (2007). Social software in libraries: Building collaboration, communication, and community online. New Jersey: Information Today, Inc.