Online Communities Challenges

Online communities, if created successfully, gathers a core of members that are active and interact with each other on a regular basis. Like the need for immediacy in instant messaging and social networking, online communities need regular updates in order to keep the interest of their users. One of the main challenges of creating an online community that is successful is ensuring that the target audience will actually be interested in the subject enough in order to create an account and log in day after day. Some subjects for online communities, I believe, are more successful than others. Those circulating around an individual's own work (writing / artwork / crafts) are very popular because users can show their individuality and comment on the work of others. Two such communities are DeviantArt and Flickr. DeviantArt allows users to create their own scrapbook of art as well as follow other artists and join 'groups,' quite like Facebook.

Online communities in libraries, I believe, require another special touch in that it has to be actively promoted at events that correspond to it, as well as through normal promotion such as flyers, bookmarks, and notices on the library webpage. Topics of interest would have to be polled either through circulation statistics, a survey, or another method such as recognizing that the teen book club is an extremely popular event and that there is call for a more often method of sharing book information with other people, rather than a weekly or biweekly grouping. The challenge with this is the same as with any online community, in that there is a need to create a strong user base of core members who will keep the ball rolling. While staff members can be part of this user-base, like other social networking tools in libraries, staff need to be sure that patrons feel able to give in their input and that it is not only a place for announcements rather than for communication between staff and patrons as well as patrons and anyone else who is interested in the subject.