For 4 hours yesterday afternoon I sat in a typical conference room at the Hyatt (busy carpets that look really easy to clean, high ceilings, modern art knock-offs that remind you of something semi-famous but you aren’t sure what) and listened to Paul Betty and Erin McCaffrey of Regis University Library guide us through an in-depth how-to session about building widgets, google gadgets, search plugins for Firefox and Internet Eplorer, the LibX toolbar, and Facebook Applications.  Now you can learn how too.

This was an ACRL event.  I really love it when I, a public librarian, get to attend events related to academic libraries.  Academic libraries have a clearly defined user group; the students are something of a captive audience.  Often students have paid a lot of money to attend the school, and this really drives innovation at their library.  Public librarians should watch what goes on in academic libraries because there are opportunities to adapt innovative ideas to the needs of our patrons.

So…. Here is the meat of this blog post, friends. Readers really need to thank Paul and Erin, because they agreed to let me link to their wiki in this blog post. Following this link will take you to pages and pages of instructions on how you can do all of these things at YOUR LIBRARY! Take some time, make a library widget that your patrons can add to their igoogle page, make a search plugin so that your library catalog shows up in the browser as a search option right next to Amazon, build a Facebook app so that patrons can search for library resources without ever leaving the comfort of their profile.

I’ll be attending the ACRL event: “Bring it on Home!  Creating Custom Search Plug-ins for Your Library”. I’m excited to learn how to do this, with any luck at the end of this session I’ll have the knowledge so that I can create a library Facebook app that lets users search the catalog from their own Facebook page.  Now that is going to where your users are rather than making them come to you!  Here’s the description:

Discover how to create search plug-ins for web browsers and the social networking site Facebook.com. Through use of real life examples and hands-on instruction, the workshop presenters will illustrate how to deliver currently existing online content and services in the form of a plug-in. Plug-ins allow the user to customize their own search experience, providing access to content and services from the library without having to navigate to the library website first. Find out how plug-ins can help increase the online presence of your library.

Speakers: Paul Beatty, Distance Learning Librarian, Regis University;  Erin McCaffrey, Digital Systems Librarian, Regis University

Now here’s the bummer.  At the same time, OCLC is offering a symposium that I’d really love to be at called “From Linking to Thinking—How We’ll Live When
Information Surrounds Us”. Here’s that description:

Does the Web itself change how we think and learn? Join OCLC‘s Roy
Tennant as he moderates a discussion between David Weinberger (author
of Everything is Miscellaneous and co-author of the Cluetrain
Manifesto) and Nova Spivack (Semantic Web pioneer and publisher of the
Twine search/sharing tool) for a discussion that will explore answers
to questions like these: How will we organize information when
everyone is connected all the time? Will the Web add intelligence to
everyday objects and our personal activities? Change is coming to the
Web, but how will the Web change us?

Check back in later, I’ll be sure to write a review of the search plugins session I attend today.

Stephen presented first, and gave a really nice comprehensive overview defining social networking, the difference between social networking (connecting and building relationships with other people) and social media (the sharing of objects with other people in a social way). Some of the social networking use examples he presented were very practical and successfully functional, such as using a meebo me chat box on the “Ask a question” page of the library site, or creating a Facebook Page for a library. Also of note is that librarians are starting to post home-grown profile pages on their library web sites, giving students a better sense of who the librarian is and what kinds of specializations they cover, as well as profiles that advertise a librarian’s availability on Facebook.

However, there was also something oddly disturbing that Stephen pointed out. He cited two librarians who have tried to perform “outreach” on Facebook by searching for students with their school affiliations and sending out mass messages to these people using Facebook’s built in messaging system. Their messages were perceived as spam (which is, essentially, true), and their accounts were shut down. However, instead of finding different ways to outreach do outreach on Facebook, they continued to work to beat the system. Not only is this behavior deplorable — purposely trying to get around Facebook’s rules for sending messages (the Inbox, Messages and Pokes help section states that if someone is not your friend, you can only message them individually, after negative experiences with past open messaging policies) to spam users, even if it’s for a benevolent cause — it’s very anti-culture for Facebook, and really kinda makes librarians look bad. One of many interesting reports on how Facebook users interact with messages is available through the HP site.

Beth Evans reported that she had great success using MySpace with students at Brooklyn College. The library has 4,000 friends on my MySpace, and they’ve been able to successfully market services and events through the online service. The library encourages everyone to “friend” them on Facebook, which I believe to be a double-edged sword. Beth noted that the reason that students say they don’t expect to see libraries in social networking spaces in OCLC report Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World, she believes that it might be because “it may not occur to them that we have something to offer,” which I think might be an interesting discussion to have, especially with public librarians.

David Lankes tied all of the presentations together while offering food for thought at the same time. His presentation about his work on participatory reference at Syracuse was truly scintillating stuff, and is definitely worth a listen. His statement, to paraphrase a little, that knowledge is created through conversation, and libraries, being in the knowledge business, are in the conversation business, seems very natural and innovative at the same time. Reference transactions should be conversations with the patron as well as any other human or digital resources at your disposal, instead of isolated Q & A sessions, which seems a bit obvious to me (doesn’t everyone bring all of their people and resources into the process?), but it may be that not everyone does reference this way. What’s truly innovative is the Scapes vaporware (conceptual software that only exists as concept) application that he’s developing to track this very collaborative reference process. That, and while ownership of space online is OK, we’ve been “too busy chasing Amazon and Google that we’re not really figuring out whether or not we’re in the same space” competitively. As librarians, you shouldn’t “define your mission by cool features, do it by core principles,” thinking carefully about how and why people use these online spaces. We need to stop chasing all of the innovators and making second-hand copies of everything, and really create something innovative to meet our patrons needs.

So yes, social software (an umbrella for social networking + social media) can create a collaborative environment in which reference questions can be answered. However, librarians need to take care in applying these applications, and, even better, should begin to really spearhead new ways and technologies in the area.

For many, these spaces are still unexplored territory. The events of Banned Books Week are a good reason to get yourself oriented and try things out before things get really rockin’ at the kick-off party in Second Life on Saturday, September 29 at 6pm Second Life, which is the same as Pacific Standard Time. The links below are my recommendations for tutorials to help you get started.

Remember, you don’t want to wait until 5 minutes before the party next Saturday to log into Second Life for the first time, or to take advantage of the discussions and networking happening on Facebook, so give yourself ample time to set up accounts and explore!

MySpace:

• You won’t need an account on MySpace to view the information on the Banned Books Week MySpace page, but if you want to add comments to the page, you will need to log in as a member.
• eHow: How to Get Started Using MySpace: A basic step-by-step on how to sign up for an account and get started. You can see all of the how-to articles, which are a quick and easy read, in the eHow MySpace section.

Facebook:

• Take a quick tour: Created by Facebook, click on each of the aspects in the right-hand navigation to get your bearings before you create your account and jump on in.
• A beginner’s guide to Facebook for non-profits: A great basic overview of Facebook and how to get your network on *and* increase visibility in your community by understanding how people use it.
• How to use Facebook without Losing Your Job over it: Good, basic tips on security and use, with a good bit of an insight to just how open the information culture is on Facebook.
• 12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally: It’s not just for kids!

Second Life:

• You will need to create a free account as well as download and install the free software on your computer before you can log into Second Life. This can take a little while, so give yourself time to get it up and running.
• Spend time on Orientation Island: Which is where you land after you log in the first time, and it’s really worth going through all the exercises. If you’re going into Second Life for a specific event, be sure to log in at an earlier date and time to get yourself oriented and play with your avatar.
• Natalia’s Getting Started in Second Life Guide: This list of tip guides helps you get your bearings, customize your avatar (the digital version of yourself in Second Life), move around, teleport (a quick and easy form of transportation to events), and more. It also gives you some cultural tips and etiquette bits to help you grow from n00b (newbie) to an advanced beginner.
• Top 10 Second Life Tutorial Videos on YouTube and Google: I like this collection of video tutorials because they give you practical tips and a real sense of the Second Life culture. Watch them in order, or pick and choose the ones you need, and they’ll help you explore the virtual world with greater understanding.

Have questions? Want help or a tour? Don’t hesitate to post in the comments here.

It’s important to understand that, on a certain level, the new culture is making it up as they go along. On the other hand, much of the etiquette is really being adapted from early social networking sites like LiveJournal, and even from instant messaging (IM) and email etiquette.

Chris Brogan, co-founder of PodCamp, online community builder and contributor, and all-around networking guy, posted a really interesting and to-the-point post titled “Considering Social Network Etiquette” today, with the open invitation to all to participate in the conversation via the comments. The post covers a few sites like Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, and LinkedIn, but the discussion is certainly not limited to these sites.

Ask your questions. Debate the merits of the etiquette tactics discussed. If you’re experienced and feeling like sharing, definitely participate. Consider this your chance to write a “Dear Abby” to the social networking world on how to interact, or even just to read along and learn a little something.