My experience with social software - podcasts

Reading my blog you'd think I had no life outside work, but I actually have a 5-year old girl and a 3-year old boy. I am fortunate that both like books, but my daughter is also proficient with Barbie.com and my son is a Star Wars addict (he knows the names of members of the jedi council beyond Yoda and Obi-One). When researching for my podcasting presentation, I came accross Book Talks. My daughter was very intrigued by the book reviews of children's books and I even suggested we go out and get a couple of the books reviewed. There are podcasts by Disney and others which honestly are really boring, but the book reviews were short, fun and the podcast graphic is a little mesmerizing. I actually think babies would watch the graphics.

My experience with social software - social tagging

Great tool. I have access to a lot of commercial business, legal and tax research tools and all of them have a "briefcase feature" which I use to manage research results. Even with all these expensive and top of the market tools, I still go to Google for more especially for private companies. Delicious is my Google briefcase and I thank this course for allowing me to discover it.

My experience with social software - instant messaging

I don't use ms instant messenger. I feel bad ignoring people and saying I'm busy and often set the status to show offline so no one will be insulted. At work however I am on a team of business researchers located all over North America and I've even been sametimed by a colleague in Japan. We are required to use the instant message software in lotus which is sametime and have it open for the entire working day. One feature which I find really useful in sametime is the ability to indicate more that just "I am away" you can state "back in 5minute" or "in a meeting till 4." This really helps coleagues who are often really time pressured and need to consult you. They know when you're going to be around and don't have to keep checking to see if your status has changed. The only trick is you have to keep updating your staus and putting in the details.

My experiences with social software - Blogs

I am a more private person and tend to shy away from communication on the internet which can be read by anyone except for my use of these tools for this course. However, I was involved in a project at work for delivering a course on tax research to junior and beginner tax professionals (working on getting CAs). Even for those whose careers are in tax, it can be a pretty dry subject. To elicit some class interaction as much of the material is self-study and online, I suggested using a blog for students to raise questions and issues they encountered during the course so we could address these in a series of seminars being held via webcast and face to face in some locations. No one contributed to the blog. I suppose it mught have been seen as exposing ignorance or lack of understanding and where this is a work setting not just a learning forum, employees might be even more sensitive to this. The blog was set up as an internet cafe with a blog post started on a number of topics which the students were invited to comment on. This structure might have made it too formal. I think people are used to using this kind of blog as a social space and have difficulty communicating in a work social space.

Does social software have a place in library service provision

I think social software can be used by libraries in a number of ways.

The blog is an excellent medium for organizing information on particular issues. Libraries often have a useful links page which has a simple list of sites where information can be found, but as new and interesting websites keep getting added to the internet daily this kind of list is not as useful anymore. Blogs can help organize the links into specific categories of interest. RSS feeds keep the content up to date and the posts and comments allow for interaction. Blogs are also great for libraries to use as electronic message boards.

Social tagging is a great way for libraries to improve internet searching and assist in finding information for library users. It can also serve like blogs as a means of organizing links to website into various categories for library users.

Instant messaging has a place in the library and can add to library services. It is very useful for pushing links to library users and to provide library users with an instant connection which leaving an e-mail request can't do.

Podcasting could be used to give voice to the library and to communicate in spoken conversation with library users on the internet. This could enhance library services.

Wikis can be a collaberative tool for libraries, but except for working on a resaerch project with a team or other internal team projects, I don't see the wiki as being that applicable to library services. I also don't see social networks contributing much to library services. I think they are useful for connecting to the greater library community and for library users to connect to each other.

Those are my initial thoughts. Will post more later