Week 14: Best Practices

Best Practices 

Folksonomy marks a power in the hands of the public to categorize and label information. Traditional classification schemes are more powerful, but many people do not know how to make use of them. Subject headings are not natural terms that most people would think to use to find what they are looking for. This being so, I really like the incorporation of tags alongside the library catalogues. Of course, The Ann Arbor District Library is a good example and also the University of Michigan Library.

Book reviews by patrons for public library catalogues are a great way for patrons to get involved with their library by writing/collaborating reviews and reading reviews through blogs or wikis. The Princeton Public Library Book Lovers Wiki is a good example.

Field/discipline related RSS feeds are great way for people (professionals, students, etc) to stay current in their field. I think that RSS feeds can be overwhelming when the feeds are updated frequently with many headlines covering a range of topics. Even though only the headlines are shown, it can become time consuming to sift through many feeds to find what you really want. More specific RSS feeds are much more useful, I find. In a public library, that could mean a feed for: children’s events, music events, book reviews, etc. An academic library with feeds for: philosophy, engineering physics, etc. Examples are the Lone Star College System and Wired. I discovered on Wired that you can customize your search feeds for specific terms as well. Wired gives information about RSS which is really helpful for people new to RSS.

Online social networking sites have become very popular among teens and post-secondary groups. Harvard University Library has a presence on Facebook and Ann Arbour on MySpace to reach out to patrons on these social networks. I think that it is a great idea for libraries to use a social networking site as a portal to their library. Providing a library presence with on site applications such as a WorldCat search and JSTOR article search.

I think that wikis would be one of the easiest tools to implement that could have a good impact. I am thinking of the Princeton Public Library Wiki. Wikis are not too difficult to set up and it allows many people, library staff and patrons, to be involved. A presence on an online social networking site is easy to set up and may have the potential to reach many people. It is a matter of creating a profile and adding relevant applications.

 I read a very interesting article on Wired about Learning 2.0 (http://www.wired.com/culture/education/news/2007/03/learning2_0), a program developed at the Charlotte and Mecklenburg County public library in North Carolina. Developed at the library was a training program for staff on web 2.0 technologies, and many other libraries around the world have adopted the program. This is a best practice that librarians should be considering as it can be safely said that “the last thing [librarians] want is for people to come into our libraries and ask about Flickr or Second Life and be met with a blank look.”