Part two of my afternoon exploring social media was Sarah Houghton-Jan, of the San Jose Public Library, discussing Web 2.0 for underfunded libraries.
Sarah discussed several free or inexpensive tools a library can use to be involved with Web 2.0. These included various free e-mail programs such as gmail, or IM services, such as yahoo, Skype for audio and video, Jing for screencasts, etc. She also had 10 suggestions for things to do.1) Talk with customers. Put chat window where people are mad at you (i.e. where they have done a search in your catalog and gotten no results. Use the myinfoquest cooperative (a national consortium of libraries to provide 24/7 reference service). ) Interact with Customers and talk like a person. Allow comments on everything, even if you don’t think it will be a likely place for comments. Create online book clubs, using Library Thing, free blogs for recommendations, etc. 3) Be social. Go to where the patrons are and what they already use. Go beyond the library calendar – few people look at that. Instead, they go to sites like craigslist or going.com. Facebook charges $10 for 500 “flyers” to a targeted audience. 4) Use multimedia. Share images. You can take a picture of marketplace display and upload it onto your Facebook site or on the library website. Use audio and video with free software like Avidemux and free hosting usch as YouTube/BlipTv. 5) People like shiny things. Find out what they want and give them some. Simple things such as the opportunity for comments on books or a link to the large print or sound version from the print version.
6) Use free things such as gimp (a free program similar to photoshop. 7) Marry free and paid content. Don’t assume that the product is inferior because it is free. Respect customers. 9) Offers users choices on how to communicate with you, how to find items, etc.
10) Keep going. If you fail, you are at least pushing the envelope.
While these items cost little or nothing in the way of money, they do have a cost in staff time. Working in technical services and seeing how much things have changed (with a greater amount of outsourcing, etc.), it strikes me that tech services staff are a good avenue for performing these kinds of activities, although in many cases that does require retraining.