Reasons for social media

The following two Libraries utilize a number of social networking tools

Like many other libraries the Sydney University Library uses Facebook, Youtube, and RSS feeds, to engage with key stake holders.

Specifically I was impressed with the quality of the media used to deliver information literacy instruction to what would be the undergraduate student body. A mix of Pod casts and Screen casts are used to deliver interactive content to the learner. Most employ graphically interactively and dynamic interfaces that minimizes the use of static blocks of text. I found them engaging and even fun to use. I was able to find an interesting lesson without having to scroll through long navigation menus or scan large chunks of text.

The Sydney university libraries also maintains a e-scholarship portal or digital repository for scholars to publish both finished papers or make available research data to the broader scholarly community. The university is currently undertaking a project to improving the accessibility/searchibility of the latter. Although repositories may lack the glammar of other social media they do allow the library to become a publisher of the institutions output (Much of it publicly funded) at a fraction of the costs usually associated with conventional commercial publishing. The problem has been the modest to slow take up. It seems that repositories do need to be aggressively marketed. Unfortunately the resources to do this may be lacking.

The State Library of NSW makes extensive use of a number of the more common social media applications such as YouTube, Twitter, and Flickr to deliver a range of content and news items to the general public.

Being both accessible and present will be important for this large public institution. Social media will allow the library to improve both relatively cheaply. These media will also allow the library to actively syndicate a large amount of what I would call public interest material.

The usability of the catalogue has also been improved through the us of folksonomy through tagging (If a tag is used more than ten times it is included in the record), keyword assistance search suggestions, and user enabled reviews and comments.

The benefits of social media

I have briefly outlined some of the users that are made of social media tools. The lessons of gaming, social media and virtual environments can be used to construct valuable and engaging learning tools around interactive pod/screen casts as the Sydney university library demonstrates. Or they can be utilised to build a catalogue that both guides users during the search process and incorporates relevant user content.