Social networking and blogging along

The chart of how organisations might use social media to support the five key functions of research, marketing, sales, support and development in the article "Applying a new social media framework from Forrester to the cultural sector" was interesting, outlining typical groundswell objectives, appropriate social applications, and success metrics. It lists social networking sites under marketing as a means of talking - using conversations with customers to promote products or services, success metrics being "awareness, online buzz, time spent on sites, sales".

The examples given to be looked at demonstrate some of the possibilities for client interaction, marketing and networking in libraries.

Coashocton Public Library used MySpace to provide a club for manga and anime teen fans - a social networking service for young adult clients of the library

The ALA's MySpace page includes a Meebo widget for other libraries, librarians, library workers, students, "library supporters, and library lovers" to contact them.

On the UK Communities of practice for local government website "registered members can join communities, or create their own, connect with their peers and domain experts, arrange meetings, participate in forums, up-load documents and subscribe to conversations".

East Renfrewshire Council in Scotland uses Facebook to publicise its council services - members can sign up to receive updateds on forthcoming events, special offers, photos and newsletters.

The ALIA symposium Beyond the Hype 2008: web 2.0 used Ning to create a social network site to provide a forum for members and interested parties, to link to Web technologies, providing ways to practice using some of the more common ones.

An article on NEWSgrist titled "Up Close + Personal: Socially Networking the Museum" discusses how a Web site alone is not enough to attract attention online to websites for institutions. Museums are jumping onto social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Flickr to extend their cyberpresence to exploit the potential of the Internet for marketing, community building, and staging art projects. Something the article does point out that should be considered by libraries is that although it costs nothing for libraries to join the networking sites, maintaining the pages takes staff time. The museum justified the staff time by saying that during the first month they put up their MySpace page they got more referrals from that page than from their own host web site, and that "belonging to a social networking site also helps boost the museum's presence in the minds of the desirable 18-to-35 age demographic".

I looked at the link "The British Library is in Facebook" and it said to sign up for Facebook to see more & connect with the British Library, so I signed up for Facebook. During the sign up process Facebook found 5 people (mostly overseas) who I have been in contact with recently by email regarding family history research - I will have to check back on my correspondence with them to see if I want to add them as friends in Facebook, but this could be interesting. Apart from that little sideline, the British Library's Facebook page looked pretty boring. I had a look at their photo album - only 3 photos, one of each location. The British Library's minifeed didn't seem to do anything/lead anywhere. Of the 3 videos loaded on the site, 2 were from 3 months ago, and one from 6 months ago. Only 742 people were listed as fans. So, this seems to be a fairly new site that needs a lot of work to be interesting - maybe a good example of what you don't want your Facebook site to look like - people who visit it won't find it very intersting at present, and wouldn't revisit it in my view, or am I missing something?

Rotarua Public Library on Bebo looked more interesting, describing itself as "Here you can keep up to date on what's happening at the library and join in on the blogs and quizzes". The photos were good, including ones from storytime, a careers expo, a picture coloured in by a child at a children's activity, and people attending a talk. The comments posts were very intersting - some people expressed surprise at a library having a Bebo: "Destiny y hav a public library bebo?thats funny. im nt bein mean or ne fng...im jas asking....hollah xo " was one comment, another was "Sandra Walker Whew - I thought I owed some overdue fees or something!!!! ", and one more was "Jeffrey Setiadarma Well, this is certainly different, having a public library as a friend. I suppose it is a close one though, since I visit it very often and enjoy reading very much. Have some Luv".

I think these comments raise a few points worth considering - from a member of the general public's point of view people generally expect these social networking sites from what I can see to be individual people contacting one another, not organisations taking advantage of these sites to promote their own businesses. Some may possibly see it as an invasion of this space on the net, and if these sites are not set up by libraries to be interesting, topical, useful, and of relative interest to the people being contacted, the library site may well be avoided being visited again, or blocked from a person's contact list.

It would take a lot of work to set up and maintain a social networking site for a public library, but as long as it was set up well, regularly maintained, with a clearly defined target audience, it could be a good idea. Target audiences might be young adults (but would need to be done really well to be of interest to youth), or people who want to find out about forthcoming events at the library e.g. author visits, exhibitions, children's holiday activities, or perhaps people who want to be involved in an online book club, etc. It would need very clear objectives on what what aimed to be achieved.

The sites set up for specific purposes for library workers to connect with their peers looked interesting, and maybe being utilised in this way e.g. to network with other work related people on specific issues/projects would be useful in a library setting, more so than trying to set one up as a marketing tool.

With Second Life, users are called "residents" who can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade items and services with one another. Users can have avatars, which are a computer user's representation of himself or herself. Residents can contribute buildings, content, and other digital creationts to shopping malls, events, homes, and lands of different types. The Second Life Library Project page says that "many libraries of all kinds offer events, lectures, exhibit, collections and training in Second Life".

Interesting concept (and maybe lots of fun), but perhaps for all the work time that would be needed to set up and maintain such a site so that people from anywhere in the world could experience these programs in "Second Life" on the Internet, the time would be better spent on other activities to encourage the people public libraries are funded to provide library services to to, to physically come in and use their local public library, or access library resources provided from their library website at home, to justify money and staff time spent on these projects.

A lot of people in our local area (country NSW) don't have a computer, or if they do, don't have Internet access, or if they do, may only have dialup and not broadband Internet connection.

There definitely are lots of exciting possibilities for use of the new technologies now available on the Internet to promote library services to current and potential clients, and interact with clients, but I don't think social networking services would be the most useful and/or appropriate.