Social Bookmarking Group project: Part 2, Why internal ?

Why Internal is a Very Good Question… 

Why internal is a very good question, and one we debated rather vigorously before ultimately deciding that this product was best suited to our needs as a tool by our staff, and for our staff. Here are some of the main reasons that came up in our meetings.

One of the first reasons was just how valuable the opinions of our colleagues are, staff is ultimately the most valuable resource a library has, they are the people who know an individual collection best, and as such are best suited to speak to and advise on a collection. This tool also forces our staff to really get to know our collection, and in turn as staff entered reviews it started to identify different areas of the collection where staff had expertise, we might not have know about this specialized knowledge otherwise, and would have been wasting valuable resources. For instance I may not have known Andrea from Gov Docs was an expert on Romance novels etc. Knowing this as a consequence of her reviews I could then go get Andrea if I was having trouble identifying new literature in this genre, or I could ask her about the genre in general and learn more, expanding my own knowledge base. By keeping the site internal we also know where these reviews are coming from, they will be professionally done, and without biases.

We also identified our librarians as experts on regional and local knowledge. We like to think of our staff as experts not only in library science, but also in the community. They are part of the community and as such really have their fingers on the pulse of the community. This allows them to create reviews of materials that may be of local interest. This specialized slant to the tool would be lost if it went entirely public. We also felt that as the community changes this resource allows us to add reviews on materials that reflect community evolution. As such we hope that the reviews will mirror the collection and ultimately the community. The tool also allows us to add reviews during promotions and themed events at the library. We find interest in books surrounding particular events surges. If we are able to identify and review books with similar themes and content ahead of time, we would not have to scramble to the same extent during special events and promotions.

We also had some practical concerns when implementing this system that made us reticent to release it to the public. We wanted to try the system internally first to work out any bugs and to gage how successful and helpful the tool was. If we released it immediately to the public we would have been unable to take it back and make it internal again, especially if it proved popular, the whole notion of trying to put the cat back in the bag. Another technical concern was the fact that this tool is not something we have created in house; as such we don’t ultimately have any control over when the site is up or down, and we can’t guarantee it will be around forever. We found the site was down for updates rather frequently; as such we would probably have to field public complaints when this occurs even though we would have no control over this.

Making it open would also negate some of the advantages to using the system, if we were to go in that direction the tool would then become very similar to any number of external tools already used by the library. We envisioned this tool as something very utilitarian that would help our staff and enhance service, by keeping it internal these isn’t the same need to be nit picky, we could speak more freely and could identify real world reading habits as opposed to a glossed over version that we would have been forced to use had we gone public. There is also the notion of the library mystic, to some extent the public expects us to magically know everything, or at least be able to figure things out with a few clicks. This tool will facilitate this process to some extent. Ultimately people don’t really want to know how magicians saw the girl in half or pull the rabbit out of a hat, just as they don’t really want to know how we do our tricks.

I hope this answers your question!