Weeks 13 & 14: Best Practices & Evaluation

Learning Objectives

By the end of week 14, students will:

• have developed their own ideas about the place of social software in library service provision
• understand some of the challenges in implementing social software, as well as techniques for overcoming those challenges
• synthesize our readings on and experience with social software into best practices for the use of social software in libraries

Readings for weeks 13 & 14

There are no prescribed readings for our last two weeks, but students should continue reading and posting to our del.icio.us archive. The focus for these two weeks is on evaluation and best practices and, as such, we will be spending most of our time blogging our final thoughts on social software and libraries and synthesizing everything we’ve read about using social software in libraries into a
list of best practices.

Things to do in the final 2 weeks

• Evaluating social software for libraries: of all the social software technologies we’ve reviewed this term, what are your “favourite” tools for libraries and why? What would you consider to be the low-hanging fruit, i.e. the tools that could be implemented easily and with the greatest impact? What social software tools (if any) do you consider to have the least potential for library service and why? As you synthesize for your blog, consider the two questions stated in the course syllabus:
  • does social software have a place in library service provision?
  • what social software applications can be harnessed by information organizations?
• Best Practices for the Use of Social Software in Libraries: I’ve mentioned during the course of the term that during the final two weeks of class, we’re going to be compiling a list of best practices for the use of social software in libraries. A “best practice” can be defined as a process and activity that has been shown, in practice, to be the most effective (definition source). With this definition in mind, I’d like you to think about the articles/blog posts we’ve read over the term and pull together some best practices for the use of social software in libraries. My hope is that this exercise will give you both the opportunity to think critically about the best way to implement these tools, as well as provide a reference for you when you go about implementing them yourselves! (make sure to tag your posts on this topic with "bestpractices")
• Tell us about your personal experiences with the social software tools tools we’ve used & looked at this term, please do so this week. Which tools have worked for you, which haven’t? What is your opinion of blogging as a learning tool? Do you plan to continue blogging? Are you hooked on feeds or does your aggregator haunt & torture you? Do you think you’ll continue using del.icio.us (or any other bookmarking/tagging tool)? Let us know!
• I’d like you all to think about the educational journey we’ve been on over the past 13 weeks. How has the distance ed. experience been for you? Is there anything I could have done differently to make the learning experience better (be honest, I can take it!)?