Social Networking: Undergraduate Students in the Library - Lisa Hinchliffe

working on solving the problem of placing libraries near users and the work they need to do
- integration in campus courseware communities; right now this just means putting "ask-a-librarian" and another tool in the campus bookmarks (note: for product placement, always want to be right of center so their bookmark is on the right side)
- created an I-Go browser toolbar for both IE and Firefox (http://www.library.uiuc.edu/toolbar/)

now also trying MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/undergradlibrary/ (must have been the first one in MySpace because they got this name!)
- taking a passive role, not going out friending all of their students; not intruding on their space
- currently have 600 friends in MySpace
- put all of their blog posts on their MS page
- put a search box for their federated search tool on their MS page (called "Search Assistant") and link to their ask-a-librarian service
- also make available the ability to add the UIUC Search Assistant to your own MySpace page; not as popular yet

also joined Facebook, which has become more difficult because Facebook removed institutional profiles
- created an undergraduate library friends group
- showing up in searches within Facebook
- currently have 400-500 friends
- get a lot of goodwill and/or surprise from students; actively willing to engage with them there, rather than ban Facebook
- Facebook flyers are a really good use of their marketing dollars; can put these in for only their UofI network for five days for 5,000 displays of the ad per day for $10/day; did this for their toolbar and that week they got 600 downloads of their toolbar; only 150 people clicked on the link but 600 downloads, which means word-of-mouth (actual evidence of how social networking can affect library services!)
- get reference questions through Facebook

early adopter of instant messaging (integrated into their existing reference service, rather than making it a separate one)
- have been doing this since the late 1990s

all of this work led them back to developing an online campus service
- students wanted an interactive, personal service with librarians that is different from what happens at the reference desk
- have their online classroom reserved with staff available, working one-on-one there with students
- different kind of service, as they have regular "office hours;" this was terminology they understood, as opposed to "term paper" service

also looking at Second Life
- had funding to buy an island, but the campus legal counsel had concerns the SL license would violate Illinois law; working with both to try to resolve this
- still working with the Alliance Library System's InfoIsland project (they don't pay for that, so no legal problems)
- don't have enough electricity or seating, need to remodel - hoping the students can design their ideal library in SL
- don't believe SL is "the" virtual reality environment; in fact, believe it won't be, but:
1. unlike in real life, when we build a branch, we can dismantle it (on purpose or accidentally)
2. very confident that there will be some type of virtual reality environment eventually, so good to explore it now and help shape that environment

Social Networking Thoughts (and a little about me, too) - David Lee King

current social networking projects at his library:
1. building a digital branch
- physical space vs. digital space
- transforming a library's focus to include a digital branch
2. change management with his IT department

Four things to remember when planning a social networking project
1. the plan itself
- don't plan it to death!
- start with the end result and work backwards
- figure out who's doing the work
- make sure it's customer-focused
2. training staff
- focus on the end results and explain why you're doing this; then fill in the details of how it works
- train often and train different types of staff
3. invite your customers to participate
- build your tools to make it easy for them to participate (passive)
- outright ask questions, feedback, etc. (active)
4. top-down and bottom-up; administration and staff need to:
- get it
- support it
- embrace it
- fund it
- do it
- manage it
- sell it
- use it

me

questions

1. how can we grow our presence virally?
Lisa: students are appreciative of us being in these spaces; students helped them build a game archive by bringing in their old equipment from their parents' basements; they are teaching a whole class on how to write narrative for gaming
David: compelling content and awareness (marketing) are the two big things

2. how can we integrate into search engine results?
David: blogs and Flickr pictures come up high in the results; go where the users are, don't expect them to come to you
Lisa: know your community, as more of our audience probably starts with us; saw Google Scholar as an entry point

3. unique services libraries can offer?
Lisa: based on their Facebook wall, students like them and trust them a lot, but they base their decisions on convenience
David: if your content is good, your users will trust you

4. notion of authority tied to publication; is there a new definition to authority now?
Lisa: convenience and ease of access are now the definition; social networking for her is about helping students discover the resources the library have; can't start from the position students should stop using Google and MySpace and use the library instead; teaching students to make those judgments about authority, although she's not sure students automatically equate publishing with authority
David: the old way was, I'm a published professor so I'm right; just because it's in print doesn't make it right; if you remove that, what do you have left? the content - is it correct or not? if your content is correct, you become an authority; if you can write well, you probably have more authority, if you take photos well in Flickr, you have authority - reputation? (I said this)

5. how can libraries distinguish their services without diluting their brand
David: don't try to compete with Google, Flickr, etc., but can focus on localization
Lisa: undergraduate students are not looking for us to provide a place to express their opinions; the institution might not even be able to get the aggregation effect you see on these other sites; faculty have a lot of interest in conveying their beliefs about authority and accuracy; their faculty has had success with faculty using RefWorks to push authoritative content out to students; faculty cares less about what students think are seminal articles; goes back to the planning piece - know what it is what you want to do; innovation with a purpose

5. libraries have had trouble creating critical mass for things like tagging
Lisa: that's the big question; where do we seek to engage them? do we really want them tagging because they only have so many hours in the day, too
David: do you have to build a critical mass of information before people will use it? have to do it in the right thing, too (comments in the catalog are good but forces the users to go into the catalog) - don't keep it hidden
Lisa: maybe rather than looking to create those tools locally, look at how to integrate into the existing tools; how do we build bridges between tools? could be more sustainable; important to scan (look at what LibraryThing is doing, for example)

Audience question: Lisa, within your undergrad population, what are the demographics? do you have a sense of who is using your MySpace?
Lisa: UofI population isn't really representative of Illinois students because it's competitive and pulls internationally; but can say that areas of tension in their student body are urban-rural, so it's interesting that there really is more a focus on who you're connected to than who you are in a social network; the library hasn't concentrated on demographics of their friends in part because they're not looking for one-killer app for social networking; trying to solve connecting to students wherever they are, not the one place they all are

6. mashups
I missed capturing the answers to the question

7. mashups like Borders and Gather.com; how can libraries incorporate this?
Lisa: at least pulling out relationships among content; can we at least create something that lets folks see relationships so that they can dive in; it would be nice to let the user know if they need to log in, rather than forcing them to without knowing there will be good content on the other side; how can we say it's worth walking down this path (our resources, logging in, etc.)? that would tell folks a lot about what we have (exposing ourselves more)
David: it really does involve exposing your content outside of the wall (out of the OPAC for example); talk to your vendors

Audience question: public librarian, seems like it's not worth it for libraries to push forth with the social networking movement until you know there is a critical mass of users, but if we keep waiting and waiting until it's worth it, it reinforces the perception that libraries are the last to adopt anything; things might be over by the time you get to it
David: the whole concept of play; maybe something is a failure, but that can be good if you learn from it; can walk through the library and see what users are using
Lisa: people keep asking her how many UofI students are in Second Life; difficult to tell because the SL app doesn't run on most of their computers; goes back to scanning and listening to futurists and understanding technologies, even if you're not using them; would really like to learn SL with only a few users to figure it out well - were asked to put a game on reserve for a class this semester! takes a different mindset to test with a few users, rather than a mass of them
David: Second Life is a really good example of this question; his library is exploring SL, but probably few Topeka residents in there; it's a good time to figure out what they can do there; doesn't do any good for them to have a virtual reference desk there because users won't come into SL to ask a question, but maybe storefront can showcase local art and folks will come there to look at it

audience question: libraries have traditionally composed of user-contributed content; is there enough attention being paid to new ways we can listen, not just talk? also, the elephant in the room of mashups, etc. is that we pay for access, not materials, so it's more than access, it's also ownership
Lisa: agrees it's also a way to listen; UofI owns only ocpies of certain things, especially popular culture materials of the past, so big challenge is who archives what's out there now? not sure she agrees we can't mashup things we don't own, but the tricky thing is the skills to do those mashups; tools have gotten pretty easy to use (RSS feeds for example), which is now a pretty basic skill set
David: don't have to own it to mash it; we might want to own something related to it, maybe combine it with original content; with the listening to customers, yes it's very important and will be different in every community; could, for example, ask the communty questions at the beginning of library events; having the tools is important, maybe have to reorganize composition of staff a little (do you need a programmer?); look at end result, figure out how you can do it

audience question: Lisa mentioned staff time for going into these things is difficult - how do we determine return on investment for using these sites?
Lisa: figure out what you mean by "return" - look at the value you are creating for your user community; what you learn is important, too; the actual investment is going to vary, so if you have to train people first, your investment is much higher the first time if you don't have the opportunity to hire someone new with that skillset; but then have to prioritize that skill

audience question: interested in cataloging and books, we all know there is a tremendous knowledge that exists only in copyrighted, print books; do you have ideas for using social networking to connect users to this tremendously rich resource that exists only in books
Lisa: exposing the content hidden in the OPAC is a big issue; students still love books, but books don't appear "in the flow;" LibraryThing has really helped visualize how this might work; could map metadata for which databases have relevant material; different for us to run the content, rather than connecting users to the content
David: our younger generation doesn't care if it's in a book, or a print book - they just want the information; can be on a blog in chapters, on a wiki, etc.; do want to connect people to books we own but also know what else is out there; library pushes new media, not just books

last question: what's the one thing folks should do when they get back?
David: meet with your staff and take back what you learned; figure out if you want to do something
Lisa: ditto; the barrier to entry on these tools is really pretty small, even though you have to figure out how to maintain it; even just starting a blog you don't intent for anyone to read it, just to get the experience; can experiment in this area really quickly; play - all of us working in this area are having a lot of fun playing with all of this stuff

Jasmine noted how OCLC is going to add social pieces to WorldCat

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