It has been interesting re-visiting Facebook from a Library perspective again.
I mainly use Facebook on a purely personal level - as a way to catch up with friends and family.
So find it difficult to see it's uses from a Library perspective. I know that places like the national library board of Singapore have a Facebook application that allows patrons to access their library account from their Facebook page - but haven't really had the chance to examine that in depth.
The one Facebook Library use that I have seen that I liked and could see the use of was the Facebook page of Geraldton-Greenough Public Library. I like the way it show what's currently happening at the library, what's coming up, and how it showed all the photos of the library's renovations. I also liked the fact it just did all that quietly well before any of us were even looking at Facebook.
So that's the sort of thing I could see our library doing - if we ever got to that stage - at the moment our IT staff ban any access to Facebook - so we wouldn't be able to create a page for the library even if we wanted to!
Let alone allow our customers to access us via Facebook.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Library Thing
I have had a bit of a play with Library Thing.
I'm not that concerned with cataloguing what books I own (that info is sort of in my head), but I was interested to see the social side of it and how I could use other people's reviews and tags to search for books I might be interested in.
I think I found it most useful to look at other people who had reviewed or added the book I had added and then look at their libraries.
There are so many people though with such huge libraries I'm not sure how relevant this will always be. The forums and groups might be a better way to go for this, but I've never really been that social online. I prefer just to look quietly and not interact...
A friend of mine got really excited about Library Thing a few years back as she has a huge collection of science fiction, romance and fantasy. But she was only to be disappointed by the fact once she got to a certain size library it required her to pay money to continue - a bit like Flickr.
Not a drama if that is really clear up-front, but annoying if you have invested time and effort into it thinking you can continue to use the service.
I'm not that concerned with cataloguing what books I own (that info is sort of in my head), but I was interested to see the social side of it and how I could use other people's reviews and tags to search for books I might be interested in.
I think I found it most useful to look at other people who had reviewed or added the book I had added and then look at their libraries.
There are so many people though with such huge libraries I'm not sure how relevant this will always be. The forums and groups might be a better way to go for this, but I've never really been that social online. I prefer just to look quietly and not interact...
A friend of mine got really excited about Library Thing a few years back as she has a huge collection of science fiction, romance and fantasy. But she was only to be disappointed by the fact once she got to a certain size library it required her to pay money to continue - a bit like Flickr.
Not a drama if that is really clear up-front, but annoying if you have invested time and effort into it thinking you can continue to use the service.
Delicious part 2
OK - here's my real Del.icio.us post. Glad to see it is still here despite the panic. It did make me wonder though about the reliability of using such tools.
If you had months or years of work and sites stored on such a site - and then for what-ever reason it disappeared - that could be just heart-breaking.
I'm sure there must be ways of saving / backing up such info - but I wouldn't really know how, and I'm sure lots of people don't do this - they just rely on it always being available.
That said - I think sites like this and social bookmarking can be really great tools.
Definitely using tags is a good way to link into other information on your topic that other people have found useful.
I think tags would be really interesting to use with your library catalogue. I know that some libraries already use this. Patrons are so used to google searching and brief keywords - a lot of the classification we use is almost obsolete for them.
Allowing patrons to tag books and also then search by the tags that other customers have applied would be quite interesting to implement.
It goes away from our more traditional methods of cataloguing and applying subject headings - but often these are meaningless to customers anyway.
Del.icio.us is possibly most useful for me as a way to easily access bookmarks from different computers.
My trial account can be found at: Scritty's Bookmarks.
If you had months or years of work and sites stored on such a site - and then for what-ever reason it disappeared - that could be just heart-breaking.
I'm sure there must be ways of saving / backing up such info - but I wouldn't really know how, and I'm sure lots of people don't do this - they just rely on it always being available.
That said - I think sites like this and social bookmarking can be really great tools.
Definitely using tags is a good way to link into other information on your topic that other people have found useful.
I think tags would be really interesting to use with your library catalogue. I know that some libraries already use this. Patrons are so used to google searching and brief keywords - a lot of the classification we use is almost obsolete for them.
Allowing patrons to tag books and also then search by the tags that other customers have applied would be quite interesting to implement.
It goes away from our more traditional methods of cataloguing and applying subject headings - but often these are meaningless to customers anyway.
Del.icio.us is possibly most useful for me as a way to easily access bookmarks from different computers.
My trial account can be found at: Scritty's Bookmarks.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Wikis
My feeling on Wikis is that they work best as an internal collaborative tool. Those that I am just accessing for information - just feel like accessing an ordinary web-page if I am just visiting to look at the content. Though the knowledge that they have been created so easily is a definite plus. And the fact that they are created so easily but look very little different is also a huge positive if you don't have access to web designers, publishing software etc.
It means even a small club could easily set something up with very little knowledge.
In previous work situations I have used Wikis for a few things. We planned a staff development day where all staff had to access the Wiki to get info about what was going to happen, and the staff on the committee used the Wiki to put together the programme, plan the day and events and so on. This was really useful in a situation where staff were based at different branches, had access to different computer networks and no shared drives, and couldn't always make meetings.
And it is really interesting to see how the test wiki we have been using has evolved.
They are probably a much more amorphous being than a web-site. The comments on customer service and why people became a Librarian have really evolved from each other.
So its really nice to see how these sorts of discussion can grow in this sort of environment.
I think things like Google Docs also have these benefits - where they make collaborative projects between people from different locations and organisations a lot more accessible.
It means even a small club could easily set something up with very little knowledge.
In previous work situations I have used Wikis for a few things. We planned a staff development day where all staff had to access the Wiki to get info about what was going to happen, and the staff on the committee used the Wiki to put together the programme, plan the day and events and so on. This was really useful in a situation where staff were based at different branches, had access to different computer networks and no shared drives, and couldn't always make meetings.
And it is really interesting to see how the test wiki we have been using has evolved.
They are probably a much more amorphous being than a web-site. The comments on customer service and why people became a Librarian have really evolved from each other.
So its really nice to see how these sorts of discussion can grow in this sort of environment.
I think things like Google Docs also have these benefits - where they make collaborative projects between people from different locations and organisations a lot more accessible.
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