Reading Notes - Week of November 26, 2012

Schrier, Robert A. "Digital Librarianship & Social Media: The Digital Library as a Conversation Facilitator." D-Lib Magazine 17. No. 7/8 (2011).

• librarian have become aware that digital collections are often underutilized by their intended user base
• one of the best ways to promote digital library collections is through social media, but many librarians do not use it correctly
• five principles to integrate a social networking plan into a digital library context
• listen
• find out where the conversations are and what is being said
• identify the people central to the conversation and engage with them
• platforms for listening - Google Alerts, RSS feeds, Twitter, etc.
• understand language and cultural norms
• participation
• social networking allows digital librarians to put a human face to their collections
• establish trust with users
• Transparency
• transparency reinforces positive relationships with users
• Policy
• libraries should consider developing a social media policy
• Planning
• libraries should plan social networking ahead of time

Allan, Charles. "Using a Wiki to Manage a Library Instruction Program: Sharing Knowledge to Better Serve Patrons." C&RL News 68. No. 2 (2007).

• creating wikis is easy
• free wikis are not very complex, but can be effective
• the use of wikis in the workplace is just beginning to catch on, and the deployment of wikis in libraries is starting
• wikis in libraries are used to manage a variety of information

Arch, Xan. "Creating the Academic Library Folksonomy: Put Social Tagging to Work at Your Institution." C&RL News 68. No. 2 (2007).

• social tagging allows an individual to create bookmarks (tags) for websites and save them online
• websites allow these bookmarks to be shared and new resources to be discovered
• this should be brought into libraries

I watched Jimmy Wales' TED Talk on the birth of Wikipedia.