aysha's blog

We've thought quite a bit about best practices across this term and for me there have been several that popped up repeatedly and regardless of the social software tool. Each of them anticipate some of the challenges and issues that might arise when considering the use of social software in libraries and other information organizations:

Wow! We're almost finished! This has been a quick term - and I have learned so much in such a short time about social software and how it can be incorporated into libraries for and by librarians. I wanted to focus this week on the two questions from the course syllabus and discuss my personal experiences with social software this term.

Until next week...

My experience with virtual worlds is limited to a couple of months ago, when I signed up for a Second Life account after hearing so many things about it for libraries and otherwise. I created my avatar (which was a lot of fun) and ventured off onto the introductory island. I was trying to figure out how to move around and get off the introductory island when I was faced with...a naked guy...yes, it's true...running around and chasing me.

For our project on online social networks, we decided to create a social networking group called "The 2.0 Librarian" using the Pages function on Facebook. We created a forum for new librarians and library students to share their ideas, experiences, and questions about web 2.0 tools. We chose to focus on this group because we have seen how useful the content of this course has been for us, and how useful it would be to other professionals who are curious about utilising these new tools in libraries.

Until next week...

Reading about folksonomies this week really drove home the positive benefits of using social tagging in a library context, and more broadly. Despite traditional cataloguing having done fairly well in library OPACs over time, there have been limitations to its practical use by the average person. In order for an individual to be able to exploit the library OPAC fully, it is necessary for them to become a sort of expert in the subject classification system.

Social bookmarking and tagging were completely new to me prior to this course. When I started bookmarking and tagging a few weeks ago, I couldn't help feeling that it was a very individual activity, despite knowing that everyone else in the class could see what I tagged.

One of my main concerns when considering the different social software we've been discussing is the usefulness of the particular software - be it a wiki, blog, or RSS feed - for the particular library. Each tool so far has demonstrated great potential when used in the right place at the right time. For me, wikis seem to have a different kind of potential in their ability to manage knowledge for a group of people. Interactivity, gathering multiple viewpoints, and the subsequent potential for great ideas and documents are inherent in generating wikis and these are all incentives to utilizing wikis in libraries.

Last week we touched on some of the ways that RSS feeds can be used by individuals to receive information and news from online sources. This week we looked at how RSS can be used by libraries to provide timely and valuable information, outside of basic news and updates relating to the library itself.