New beginnings!

Mangere Bridge Library's Facebook page has just taken off... This is a whole new situation, and Blogger has changed so much since I was last here I am having to learn everything all over again! Wish us luck!

Week 6: Facebook - playing nicely with others

Aaahh... Facebook. Hmmm.
I wrote a lot about Facebook about two years ago. In our first blog/Web 2.0 experience. Not much has changed since then. (Have a look at previous comment using the tags...)

• What can Facebook do for you individually?

Quite a bit has changed since then... not counting Facebook's [slightly annoying] way of changing page set-ups and privacy settings [and only then letting you know]... I see that I had 28 friends at that time. Now I have 152. Well, maybe it's not a bad thing to have that many 'contacts', mostly from 'the old days'. The comment about the Zimbabwean diaspora still stands. We have found old school friends, neighbours, people we would otherwise have lost for ever. Good folk. Some of the 'friends' are pages of V8 drivers... F1 teams... library systems.. (Thanks Manukau! I've put on the book I was reading and my best authors ever... couldn't think of "a" book) All information about what we're interested in.

I play Scrabble more or less every day with my "bestest" friend from varsity days. She's in the UK now and has been for years. We used to play scrabble often when in Pietermaritzburg.

Not a lot has changed about the way I see it since 2008!

• Find 1 library (public, tertiary or other) and look at what sorts of update they make?

Brooklyn Public Library - http://www.facebook.com/BrooklynPublicLibrary. Well - most of the time they are very similar to our Manukau Libraries facebook page (or are we similar to it? ) - great information about what's happening and what to read/listen to, and so forth. Chose this one out of the 'over 500' facebook pages with 'library' in them because I'm sure I've heard about Brooklyn Public Library before - don't they use Pharos and Millennium? Together? Linked?
And then look what I found - they can alert all their followers and likers to the fact that they are at risk - this picture is from their website.
It made me realise how fortunate we are, in many ways.

• What can Facebook do for us as a public library?
  

Keep us in the public eye? As long as there are 'likes'.
BPL have 4,600 'likes'.
Arts and Architecture Library - another 'library' I looked at because of the number of likes it had, has over 38,936!!! From their info: "Arts & Architecture Library is a project of library by the University of November 7 in Carthage; Tunisia. specific for National school of Architecture and Town planning of Tunis sis at Sidi Bou Saïd ; Tunisia. The books are for Architect, Engineer, Designer, Student & passionate for Art & Architecture Page Created on September 23, 2009. Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/Architecture.Library - unbelievable! Well done to them - lots of book info as well - and suggestions. Just the ticket!

• Is it easy to use? Is it hard?
  

Ummm - Facebook does give one heebie-jeebies sometimes about 'privacy'! It's a learning thing, unfortunately. I met someone the other day whose daughter was abused via Facebook - closed her account and now has one in a pseudonym. Sad.

• Would you continue to use Facebook?

Most probably. Unless something drastic happened.

• Have our customers asked about Facebook?

Well.... not to me, but I am very pleased to see a growing number of folk on our site!

• What would our customers get out of a Facebook page?
  

Up to the minute info, reviews. My reservations long ago were that it would take 'time' 'out at the back' while we were being thrust 'out the front' and that we would have to have dedicated folk to continuously update it. Well, we do and we have and it looks good. Well done!

• Would you promote our page to customers? Why/why not?
  

Most certainly if they were that way inclined. Because there are polarised views I would be loath to promote it straight up, especially as one has to be a member of Facebook to access Facebook, unlike a blog. And some of our folk may not want to go that far.

Week 3: Twitter

Finally I tweet! (And already someone called Marissa [url supplied but I deleted it]with a tweet that says...."more sexy pics of me... etc..." is following me! She has been blocked, I hope! How to learn about such stuff in a rush!)

Is it easy to use? Hmmm - probably too much so...
Would customers find it simple? They might - but this would be the generation that uses their mobile to email folk and to post things on e.g. Facebook... not everyone...
Could we use this in the learn.nets and in our workrooms? Perhaps not to the same extent as blogs in my opinion... it doesn't seem as 'profound', if I can use that word. However, at the 2009 conference folk were using it, and that's great for those far away - but it was distracting to those sitting next to them!
Do you think that you're likely to use this site again? Hmmm... I have avoided it in the past, and I may just continue to do so... personally I am "online" enough without adding this.
What could Manukau Libraries promote via Twitter? Next generation stuff... YA...
What would you use Twitter for? See above. nothing
Would you promote this service to customers? If they required it... "Customer Service" - walking in the customer's shoes....

Shelfari update

When looking at A Dog's Life, a blog inclined to appeal to Sissi, I saw a lovely bookshelf for Shelfari books, and acted straight away....
I have joined Shelfari before, through Facebook, so all it took was linking a new Shelfari account to my Facebook application (which I haven't really enjoyed, or certainly not as much as Visual Bookshelf - see below), and now I have a lovely wooden shelf with a few books on it in my side panel ... Very nice. I like the "Reader's Advisory" aspect, with the editorial reviews, 'cos I don't often feel inclined to comment on my books.
I must admit that Visual Bookshelf imports whatever I put on LibraryThing straight away, while Shefari just seemed to be having a bad day, so VB remains the favourite for now, for both display and ease of manipulation. Give it a go and have fun!

Web 2.0... Awards

Well, I started this post a while ago, and since then I have been busy - almost back at work full-time, and so without time to go a-blogging or webbing...
Still, some of it has become a little addictive. At this rate, I can see the next household purchase will have to be a laptop and wireless connections...!

I have used, since before we started, Facebook. So I thought I would see if I could 'evaluate' it in some way...
FOR: Privacy. I am intrigued by the way one can limit who can see what. I realise there was a breach of privacy recently with the launch of the new Facebook, but it is a risk one takes. I could choose to have my friends "invisible" from prying eyes, for example, but I find that I like being contacted by people from the Zimbabwean diaspora, and if that is a way to find friends, then I'm going to leave it like that. It's a choice, and they certainly warn against exposing all of your information.
Contact. I like being 'found' by people from long ago! Even if I then don't take up their offers of friendship (or they don't take up mine...)
News. There are some things I wouldn't have learned about without Facebook, like the death of a colleague in that almost contact-less country of Zim. And the notifications are great.
Groups. Have a look at the Zimbabwe Wildlife ones, and of course libraries... Some of the latter are worth it, and exclusive, and others are great, and lead one into the library itself. Only problem, you do have to sign up to do this, but then again, it is a kind of privacy issue.
AGAINST: Time. Well, time-wasting, of course. It's a kind of all or nothing scenario.
Privacy. Potentially always a problem, as the related article suggests, and some of my family won't go near it. Yet I do agree with the comment that it is perhaps the 'more classy' one of the various social networking sites.

I can see an application in the library setting - Reading Groups, Young Adult groups? Liaison between staff members/library branches about stuff...
It may be a little slow to start off with, but it could be done - the person checking the 'generic' email could check the social networking site too, for example. I do think we may have a way into the lives of those people who don't come to the library, through these kinds of social networking sites.

Week 7 or Thing 17...!

Bebo, Myspace, Facebook.... I have a Facebook page, since about January this year. With about 28 friends. I belong to seven groups. I have a Scrabulous application and I still can't decide between Shelfari and Visual Bookshelf.... It's one good way of keeping up with the diaspora of Zimbabweans, and relatives who don't send Christmas cards or emails. I don't think I want to use it for anything else.
However it looks really good, being used by a library... Certainly a way of communicating that would appeal to many young people out there. Just think of the Learn.net usage after school! As mentioned before, I approve of both Hennipin County Library on Facebook and Auckland City Libraries on Bebo. I looked for other library users on Facebook, and came up with a few! There's a Library 2.0 Interest group on Facebook with over 6000 members, just in case you'ld like to subscribe to yet another discussion board or site... and plenty more groups out there with similar interests.

Library 2.0?

Hmm...
I like the idea. I am enjoying this "blogging", and I like the concepts I have seen from Hennipin County Library on Facebook and Auckland City Libraries on Bebo, that libraries can use.

For public libraries? In reading the OCLC newsletter articles, I am happy with quite a bit of what they suggest. I think that we can do great things with Library 2.0. I don't think we can afford to let it go by without adopting many of the techniques and patterns for our own use. I like the idea of wikis run by libraries, for example, and even a kind of interactive catalogue. We have a start with that at the moment - "ratings". (Out of interest, just how much is this used, I wonder?)

So, I have a few reservations, which could be dealt with by being particularly careful in our utilisation of the wonders of Web 2.0.

1. I don't know how our website 'hits' compare with our through-the-door figures. It would be good to have an idea. And I am not talking about all the libraries, but about our library in particular. A "destination of choice". People happily use the web to help them find what they want, but they still come to the library for the "serendipity", the perchance discovery of a tactile book. Something that feels smooth and just the right kind of weight for a late night read, or a summer beach book. Something that has the right size print.... Amazon tries to do this with its "search insides"...but there are still people who would rather escape the rest of the cyberworld and return to "ye olde ways" of picking up a book and looking at it at times. Libraries have a place here too. Interesting to see that Dr Wendy Schultz seems to feel that we will get there again one day in Library 4.0.
   
2. Beware the time factor. We may be 'free-ing' up staff to get out into the library to work with the people, but they may just have to pop back to the workstation to work on the wiki/myspace and respond to all those comments... 2.0 interface is a great thing, but to produce quality stuff will take a bit of time. I presume that it goes without saying that we want quality?
3. And I think we need to know a whole lot more about our customers before we devote too much precious time and energy to this. The ratings? The website hits? What happened to Airpac? Do customers want 'more' or do they want 'different'? Must we "tell" them what they want? We're going to have to get Big Brotherly in order to find out. Are they ready for that too?

Bookshelf below!

Now this was fun... partly because I found LibraryThing frustrating because it was so s..l..o..w... (I have just been there again and it said it's experiencing overload... I am not surprised.)
But, I belong to Facebook, and I have tried out two bookshelf applications. I like Visual Bookshelf... and look! I can enter the books I have read there, on Facebook, and they update to a window in my dear old Blog! I don't have to everything twice...
And to enter them on Visual Bookshelf I just have to paste in the title from an exported version of my reading history, and click on a cover that matches the one I read, mark it already read... I can then go to a list of my books and rate them if I wish....
So that was a relief.
Mind you, if LibraryThing gets a little easier to manage, I can import books from it into Visual Bookshelf...
and then - after all of that, I found an [old] blog called The Official Lair of Daniela. There are posts to this comment of course, with more comparisons... so have fun if you have the time...