Evaluating Social Software for libraries

Wow, what a whirlwind of social software technology we have
looked at in the past 14 weeks. While all of these technologies have some use
in a library setting, some are more conducive to the library environment than
others. I really like the ideas we looked at with media sharing, as I think
this is a medium where libraries can really show how far they have come and use
media sharing as a great marketing tool to show your library to the world. This
also seems like an easily implemented medium, as most (if not all) libraries
will have at least one person on staff with the knowledge and technology to put
media sharing to good use. Library blogs are another easily implemented tool,
just because they are so easy to start and keep going as long as your library
has at least one person on staff dedicated to producing an up-to-date blog and
writing it with an eye on producing quality content and not just blogging for
the sake of blogging; content is key with blogging, as no one will want to read
your blog if it is not updated regularly and if it doesn’t speak well to your
intended audience. I think RSS has the potential to be useful in a public
library setting when talking about the OPAC, as long as RSS can be hooked up in
a way that patrons can subscribe and be alerted to what items have just been
added to the library’s collection. This would potentially be a boon to patrons
who want to know what new items are going to be added to the collection so that
they can put their reserves on right away. Social bookmarking and tagging could
be somewhat useful, but I think that for these to be useful, your library would
have to have a clientele that is dedicated to the tagging business and will do
so in a responsible and efficient manner. Otherwise, this is an application
that may die on the vine. The same goes for folksonomies – unless you have
patrons who are willing to create the folksonomy and do it well, it may not
have any use in the library setting and I still think that it may undermine the
work of cataloguers.

Finally, I am a big believer in the wiki as a social software tool
that can be used in a library setting in a most effective manner, so much so
that my final project involved creating a Difficult Customer wiki for use in a
public library setting. Wikis are great because of the way they allow many
users to add their own content, and within a library context, I think this can
be a great team building idea that benefits the entire organization. Wikis are
the very definition of social
software, as they encourage one and all to assist in the creation of a useful
repository of information, which is what Web 2.0 applications are all about.