Alternative Social Networking
by Megan O’Neill
Alternative social networking programs are for our purposes those less popular than Facebook, MySpace, blogs, or wikis. Those listed here are a bit off the beaten track, but very useful both for business and for pleasure. There are programs for keeping track of your (and of others’) favorite websites; for keeping track of friends, acquaintences, business contacts, and companies; and for interactively searching library catalogs. While these may have different implications for librarians, and for different types of librarians, all are potentially useful tools.
Del.icio.us
Otherwise known as “delicious,” this is a social network bookmarking program. The way it works is by giving each user an online profile, sort of like Facebook. After logging in, users can access all of the bookmarks they have saved to their delicious profile—from any device with internet capability, in any web browser. Users can tag their bookmarks so that they can search “library” within their boookmarks to bring up any tagged with “library.” Users can make their bookmarks with their tags public or private, so that others searching for “library” might find a really cool site that someone else has tagged. Finally, the delicious homepage shows some of the most popular sites at any given time, with their most common tags, as a point of interest to users.
The applications of this program are many. First, it enables users to be flexible with their web browser, so they don’t have to attempt to recreate their bookmarks list in each browser they use. Second, it gives users the freedom to access their own bookmarks on others’ computers or on mobile internet devices—incredibly useful for group projects, both for students and those in the workforce. Third, the tagging feature allows users to search websites that others have found useful by “tag” subject. Additionally, the tagging feature eliminates the need for extensive folders within one’s bookmarks list. There are other applications of delicious, but these are the most obvious. The freedom granted by this program is a major improvement from the web-browser-based bookmark list.
Try it yourself at http://delicious.com/
Delicious can be a great tool for mobile librarians, for example School Library/Media Specialists who move between multiple buildings, or for academic librarians moving between classrooms. It could also be useful for ‘information management’ librarians who might be moving from meetings with clients to their office to home and don’t wish to maintain three seperate-nearly-identical lists of bookmarks. It could be useful to any librarian who wishes to find a website that others have found useful on a particular subject, but which might not turn up under that subject in a Google search.
Twitter is another social networking feature with both business and personal applications. Twitter allows users to set up an account, then post messages that are no longer than 140 characters. Messages can be posted as often as the user desires. Users can “follow” other users; their posts will show up on the user’s page, as well as the user’s own comments. Users can likewise be followed by others. There is an online program with a complementary search process to Twitter’s search function that enable users to search the content of posts, otherwise known as “tweets.” Twitter’s search function used to be fairly skimpy, but they acquired a company called Summize that had developed.
Here is a search program for Tweets:
http://www.tweetscan.com/alerts.php
You can also use this cool program to see what Twitter users are posting worldwide. However, some users opt out of this function, so it’s not totally representative. Still, it’s fun:
Since Twitter limits users to only 140 characters, there is also a program which will shorten urls for the purpose of creating links. Here’s a link to that too:
A word of caution here: since this program effectively makes it impossible for those clicking on a url to “see” where they’re going, it can be dangerous. Some Twitter users (or bloggers) will use TinyURL to link to pornographic, politically-, racially/ethnically-charged sites, or otherwise to places the clicking party did not want to go. Some users therefore avoid clicking on these urls to avoid that altogether.
Twitter’s usefulness as a social function is fairly straightforward—a user can follow their friends, keeping up on some of the day-to-day minutiae without having to pick up the phone and call as often. However, some businesses use Twitter as a way of interacting with customers by asking them for feedback, building their brand, or responding to complaints. According to an article in the New York Times blog Shifting Careers, by Sarah Milstein, such companies include Zappos, JetBlue, Wesabe, and Comcast (Milstein, 2008). There are plenty of others that do this too.
Similarly, libraries/librarians could use Twitter as a form of outreach, posting tweets about their favorite books, doing small-scale readers’ advisory, and answering reference questions. Of course, a librarian would have to be checking their Twitter page quite frequently for reference to be reasonable, but the library could have an account and each librarian could indicate their identity by starting with initials. Then whoever is working the reference desk could be in charge of checking Twitter, assuming they weren’t already swamped with email/phone/im/chat reference. Librarians could also use it as a tool to inform Twittering patrons about upcoming library events, new arrivals of books, and anything else noteworthy. There are many tips to note for those who are using Twitter professionally, but one of the most standout of these is to allow the personal to come through. After all, Twitter was created in part as a way to help individuals communicate about things that are important to them. It is more engaging to follow a Twitter user who comes across like a real person. For more tips on how to use Twitter for business, see these articles:
http://www.socializedpr.com/twitter-seven-rules/
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/50-ideas-on-using-twitter-for-business/
Encore
Encore, as many of you know, is a library catalog search tool. It allows users to search for both periodicals and books simultaneously. According to an article by Susan Marcin and Peter Morris in Computers in Libraries, Encore also provides a “tag cloud” with the results of each search as opposed to a subject heading field, and a way for users to “rate, tag, or review materials”(Marcin & Morris, 2008) Marcin and Morris were impressed by the user-friendly interface and encouraged by the promises of Encore’s development team to continue adding features.
The Wayne State University Library System just added Encore. A quick trial of Encore shows what an asset program can be, both for students/patrons researching at an advanced level, and for those who have little experience doing substantial research. It is easy to use; a search for “Jane Austen” came up with 470 hits. On the first page of hits books, videos, and electronic come up, along with an entry for each non-electronic resource telling users whether that resource is checked in. For electronic resources (mostly articles), there is a link provided to help users obtain that resource.
A possible drawback of Encore is that it may be difficult to use for students or patrons who do not understand, or who fail to take into account, the differences between books and journal articles. A patron who needs books by a certain author or on a certain topic may be frustrated to find that all the resources that student finds most applicable are actually journal articles. Another possible drawback is that Encore may not be especially useful for libraries that do not maintain much in the way of electronic/periodical resources; many school or public libraries might not find the extra expense worthwhile. However, for libraries that do contain a large number of both print/physical and periodical/electronic resources, Encore could be a great tool. Medical and corporate/special libraries in particular could benefit from a one-search-finds-all approach to the catalog.
Discussion Questions:
1) Do you think any of these social networking programs would make it too easy for librarians (yourself or others you work with) to become distracted at work, catching up with friends rather than attending to library business?
2) What do you think is the greatest strength of Twitter for libraries?
3) Do you think Delicious provides more benefits for librarians or library patrons?
4) Is it ethical to recommend these services to patrons? Although Twitter and Delicious are free at present, they may not be in the future, or more of their space may get taken up with advertising. Would that change anything?
5) These sources are not authoritative; does implementing or recommending these services go against our mission of providing authoritative information to patrons?
6) Do you think Encore would be more or less helpful to the patrons with which you anticipate working?
Sources:
Milstein, S. (2008, November 5). How Twitter Can Help at Work. Message posted to http://shiftingcareers.blogs.nytimes.com/ (2008, September 7). Shifting Careers: Smart Thinking at Work.
Marcin, S., & Morris, P. (2008). OPAC: the next generation: placing an encore front end onto a SirsiDynix ILS. Computers in Libraries, 28(5), 6-9, 62-64
~ by networksocial on November 19, 2008.
Posted in 8. Alternative Social Networking
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