Oakwood Historic District (High Point, North Carolina)

Transcription

>> Okay. Well, I'm gonna go ahead and jump in. And after 6, tonight we have a really wonderful speaker, Meredith Farkas from Norwich University. She writes the information once to be free blog. That's one of just a few blogs I keep up with everyday. And she recently won a teaching award for a WISE course that she was teaching. And she also, last year, won the ALA LITA Hi Tech Communication Award. So, her blog is inspiring and she's accomplished an amazing amount for you know somebody that's been in the field for five years. She's accomplished in five years what most people don't do in 20. So, and she's author of a book called Social Software for Library. So, Meredith, we're really pleased you're here. And I just, I want to let everybody know too, after Meredith's talk, Jeremy and I will be here to answer any questions about upcoming assignments and go over anything that you might like to go over. So, welcome Meredith, and I'll turn the mic over to you. >> Alright, thank you so much Laurie, and thanks everybody for being here this evening. I'm also an instructor for San Jose State's program. I teach a class on Web 2.0 which probably is so 5 minutes ago for you all since you're--you already have Web 3.0, which I'm still not sure what that means. I'm sure you guys are going--I'm sure you guys could probably tell me better since I know I've heard a million different people tell me a million different things of what Web 3.0 is. But today, I'm gonna be talking about social networking in libraries. And I'm gonna show you some examples that I think are particularly compelling of uses of social software and libraries that I think are particularly useful and inspiring. And then I'm gonna follow it up with some--just a few practical tips on technology implementation in general that I think are really useful to keep in mind when you're implementing social technologies. Alright, so first I sort of wanted to get started by defining terms even though I'm sure you're probably, with Web 3.0, are probably way ahead of me. But I think when you're talking about something like Web 2.0 or Web 3.0, it's kinda good to go back and define your terms and start with Web 1.0. And I've always seen Web 1.0 as really being about democratized access to information. I mean I remember in the early '90s when I was doing like a summer program at the University of Pennsylvania and that was the first time I ever use the web. It was on the Mosaic Browser, and I was just blown away by how much access to information I had. Like suddenly I didn't have to go to the library to look up who is in a specific movie. I could just go on the web, look it up, and have that information right up my fingertips. And it really changed the way a lot of us access information. And it didn't matter where in the world you were because if you had access to the internet, you would access to that same wealth of information. And, you know, back then though, most of us really interacted with the web as consumers of information rather than as producers of content. You know back then to create a web page, took a lot more effort than it does now. I mean you needed a web server, stay--you know, stays on a web server, you needed you know web design skills. And even for things like, what am I thinking of, things like Usenet newsgroups where you could, you know, have discussions, and you know, it's pretty easy to close the things like that. They were usually for the really serious, serious fans. I mean I used to be on an Ayn Rand chat [phonetic] Usenet newsgroup. And I was so intimated that because people would just ridicule anyone who didn't know as much about Ayn Rand as they did. So, you know, I felt like adding contents to the web was really for the serious techie or the serious hobbyist. And what I see on Web 2.0 is about--being about is democratized participation. I mean it's kind of amazing now how it's basically, if you have access to, you know, a keyboard and can type content into a box, you can add your ideas, your photographs, your ratings of a product or a hotel. All of these to this amazing knowledge base that the web is becoming. Because now it's not just companies and techies, and you know, universities that are creating content on the web, now, it's regular people, it's people in their 80s who are writing about their experiences in, you know, World War 2. It's people, it's young children who are putting their poetry online and their photographs. It's, you know, it really runs again and we have all of these, you know, amateurs basically adding their unique knowledge to the web which is creating this just incredible knowledge base so we can all benefit from. So, I see Web 2.0 as being about the easy ability to participate on the web. I'm messing this group, sorry. [Laughter] Sorry that got me. [Laughter] Yeah, oh my god, I was such a geek in high school. Ayn Rand. So, when I wrote my book, Social Software in Libraries, I had to come up with a definition of social software. And I sort of waited until I've written the entire book to come up with my definition 'cause I think it's really hard to come up with anyone definition that actually encompasses all of the tools that I was talking about in my book. So, this is the one I came up with. And you know, feel free to disagree with me, I'm not the well and expert on social software. And I know some of my students did disagree with this in my class. So, I thought that to be considered social software tool it must mean at least two of the following conditions. >> It allows people to communicate, collaborate, and build community online. It can be syndicated, shared, reused or in mix or it facilitates syndication so that's, you know, something it's RSS feeds or something that has RSF. Or it allows people to easily learn from and capitalize on the behavior and knowledge of others. So I'm gonna talk now about some social software trends for libraries and show you some examples that really excite me that libraries are--things that libraries are doing right now. So the first way that I really like using social software is to highlight our collections. Because that's one thing that libraries have a really hard time with. I'm also getting complaints from students, "Oh, gosh, I wish you had this journal", you know, I read the surveys from our distance learners and they'll say, "Oh, I wish you had this journal. I wish you had this service." And I'm thinking, "Oh, my god, we do have this." And how do I communicate that more effectively to students and faculties so that they do know what we have, and that these things that they're basically paying for with their tuition dollars isn't going to waste. So, one thing I really like is how NCSU, North Carolina State University's special collections is using Flickr to actually make their special collections photographs more accessible to the public. So, you know, they have a regular website where they're providing, you know, where they have all of their, you know, digital collections and whatnot. But they've also put their historical photos on Flickr so that people can find these stuff more easily. Because of a lot, Flickr is, you know, a major social photosharing site. And a lot of people who would be interested in historical photos of NCSU probably would never think to visit the special collection site. So, this makes it more accessible. You see that they added this photo, tell these different pools of photos on Flickr to pull the photos of Raleigh, North Carolina, of historic and old photos. And one thing I really like about this example is that someone actually asked a question about the location of this photo. And based on that question, they--the special collection staff actually realized that they had misidentified the photo, which is just, you know, that's exactly what you want participatory media for. What a great way to, you know, add context and information to your photos, put them on Flickr and have people, you know, comments on them, and add information. I know, you know, the Library of Congress has put tons and tons of historical photos on Flickr. And I saw one about the Japanese interment. It was a picture of a Japanese interment camp. And people had all written just dozens of comments on this. You know, it was really fascinating to see people's reactions to people links to other historical documents. So, I think this is a great way of people discovering your photos. But also adding additional information and context. This is a screenshot from the University of Alberta library's website. And what they have are RSS feeds for their new books by subject. So, if you're interested, say, in American History, you can subscribe to the RSS feed of American history. And as soon as a new book is cataloged in their, in their ILS, that you'll get information about it. And the nice thing about RSS is people can subscribe to it however they want. They can get it via, you know, My Yahoo or iGoogle. They can get it by a text message, email, through an RSS reader, through their email client like Exchange, like Outlook. And I just think that's such a great way for people to really keep up with the new content that's coming into the library especially for faculty and graduate students who're probably gonna be particularly interested in the collections in their area. So, whether we like it or not, all students pretty much are going to be using the Wikipedia to some extent. I mean, frankly, I use it quite a lot. I find often the links at the bottom of an entry incredibly useful for finding primary source documents and other more scholarly pieces on that subject. For example, I was looking at the Cold War page recently when I was teaching a history class that was on the Cold War. And yeah, I saw all of these great primary source collections there. So, what the University of Washington did, here's a screenshot of the bottom of this Tacoma Narrows Bridge entry. The University of Washington Libraries, they posted a link to their digital collections on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse in the list of links in the Wikipedia. I think this is completely brilliant. Because, you know, you picture a high school student doing research on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse, and they're going to think, "Wow, I wonder if the University of Washington Libraries has a digital collection on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse." That's highly unlikely. But instead, they're probably going to go to the Wikipedia and look at what's available there. And in this case, they're going to stumble upon a link to the University of Washington's digital collections. That's brilliant. It's just such a great idea. And they've posted links to lots in lots of other Wikipedia pages that are relevant to their digital collections. So, if we have these great unique digital collections and they're related to certain articles in Wikipedia, it makes sense to post links to those collections to make them more visible. We can also create community around our collections. Get people talking about them and having interesting conversations. BookSpace is an online community for book lovers at the Hennepin County Public Library. This is one of my absolute favorite online communities that was created by a library. They--this is basically just a community for book lovers where people can comment, people can create book lists. I mean most of our libraries, you know, this looks like a typical catalog entry. But unlike in most catalogs, you'll see here that there's a place where people can comment. And so if you're interested in a specific book, it would be great to see what other people thought about it before you really invest the time in getting the book out of the library and reading it. And in addition, you can also post your own comments. If you have strong feelings about a book, either you loved it or you absolutely hated it, this is a great space to provide that information. So, the community in this sense is really providing sort of the readers advisory service. In addition, they can create lists here. So, you'll see these are readers list where any member of the community can create an annotative list of books on any subject they're interested. It could just be--it's sort of like Amazons Listmania. You know, it could just be my favorite books or books my toddler likes. This one here is on baseball. And you'll see for each--after each description that it comes with the call number of the books so that people can easily find it if they're interested in it. So, you know, at public libraries, people are always providing readers advisory services. And I certainly did it when I worked in a public library. But I wasn't knowledgeable about every single genre that's out there. You know, I know very little about, for example, mysteries. But there were patrons who knew tons, who just read them like they're going out of style. And for them to be able to create lists like this, they're basically doing readers' advisory, our readers' advisory work for us where everyone can benefit from their knowledge about that genre. Another way that libraries can use social software is to collect and disseminate knowledge. And this is actually, probably the other, probably tied from my favorite online community created by a library. And actually Vicki, the creator, the community manager of SkokieNet is gonna be our--Vicki's in my other Web 2.0 class. The community manager is actually gonna be speaking to our class next week. So, you're gonna hear a lot more about SkokieNet. This is an online community created by the Skokie Public Library. They actually use Drupal which is an open source content management system to create this site. It's actually also the same thing that I use to create my classroom for my San Jose State class. But this is basically just a community information site where anyone can add information. They can add things about events, or about you know there you have people here writing stories about what Skokie was like, you know, 50 years ago and their remembrance is. They have different communities for ethnic groups where people can post information and ideas. >> And anyone can post this information. You'll see here there's a very easy interface for creating a story. And, you know, it's not like it's gonna go up immediately. So, if somebody is writing something propane, it's gonna show up on the site, it does have some moderation. Somebody looks at it and then approves it. But this is such an easy way from members of the community basically to create this huge bulletin board and knowledge base online, which is making the library really the online hub of their community. And I'm frankly surprised that more public libraries aren't doing something like this because it's such a great way to make the library more relevant in the lives of the text savvy members of the population who are interested in online content. PennTags is basically like Delicious. It's a social bookmarking site that was created specifically for use by students, faculty, and staff at the University of Pennsylvania. So, members of the UPenn community can add websites. They can add books from the catalog to their collection of research materials so that they have all of their stuff collected in one place. And you'll see here that you can collect things into sort of projects or, in this case, a bibliography where you can have all of your research on a specific topic in one place. And this is one that's on video games and violence. Now, when somebody bookmarks an actual book from the catalog in PennTags, you'll see that in the catalog entry towards the bottom of it, it will show that this research has been posted in PennTags. It will give the annotation, which is a nice little of summary of the book. I'll show the tags that the person used to describe the book, and show the link to the project to that video games and violence bibliography. So, if somebody is doing research on video games and violence someone later on, this is going to be an incredibly useful find obviously because that person basically did the research for that. Now, we're often creating, you know, research guides, subject guides, course guides, but it's kind of rare that we get so granular that we're actually going to be creating one on video games and violence. So, I think it's great that something like this exist that really allows sort of the patrons to, you know, just like with BookSpace, they're doing the work of the librarians in providing readers' advisory services. In these, they're kind of creating a research guides for us, which is, you know, just such a great way to capitalize on the knowledge of our users, why have all that research be wasted. I know there was this OCLC study maybe two--two and half years ago that had shown that use of most websites was way up especially obviously social networking sites. And one of the only types of sites that they found that was down with the library in terms of visits was the library website. People simply are not going to the library website. They don't think there's anything there that would be useful to them. So, we need to find ways to put our content, our services, our information where users are. And that means going wherever they happen to congregate. And one great place online is Facebook. I mean there a lot of libraries providing services in Facebook these days. This is one of my favorites, the Manchester Library and Information Services page. This is the library--out of the UK. And I love it. They provide information, interesting and useful information very regularly on this page. And then they have another page where they've used their web design skills to actually make it look like a regular website where people can actually search the catalog. There are links to other services. Some libraries even have Meebo widgets that are for instant messaging that are sitting inside of Facebook, or when you click on it, a widget is gonna popup where you can chat with a librarian. I just think this is such an important way for us to be providing outreach. It's not like we're recreating our website, but we are sort of providing these little hooks in--to bring them back to our website, so that they can do a search and go into our catalog. So that they can see what we have to offer and then link back to that. Another place and you guys certainly know this quite well I'm sure as distance learners, another great place to be providing outreach as librarians is within the course management system. And this is something we take very seriously at Norwich. I used to be the distance learning librarian, and then now that I'm head of instruction, but when I started as a distance learning librarian, I was very convinced that we had to put the--to create a library web presence specifically for distance learners that lived inside of the course management system. So this was basically a portal to library services, everything that a distance learner needed that was specifically designed for them and lived inside this--the course management system. And I think that's incredibly important. Because basically, ANGEL or, you know, in this case, it WebCT, that is there--their online home. You know, this is your online campus. And to ask you, oh, what type of CMS does Norwich use. We use this WebCT extra. This is kind of an old screenshot 'cause I couldn't get a good of ANGEL, but we do use ANGEL now just like you guys do. And we're much happier with it than we were with WebCT. So, oh god what was I saying. Yes. So, it's that--you know, if the CMS is your, you know, basically your online campus, asking you to leave and go to a different site to use a library, I always think that that's kind of like asking for me to drive across town to go use the library. You know, it's just another barrier. So, why not put the library right where your users are and specifically the services that they need. It's also important to have transparent conversations with our users. And Virginia Commonwealth University does such a brilliant job with this. This is the library suggestion blog that they have. And instead of, you know, just having a comment box where people can, you know, post a comment and then it, you know, somebody looks--somebody in the library staff looks at it, they actually post those comments that users give whether good or bad. And then a relevant staff member ends up answering them. And I think that is such a great idea. Because, you know, just I know I would never provide a comment to one of those web forms 'cause who knows what's gonna happen with if. You feel like, when you're typing it and sending it, it's just gonna disappear into a black hole. You don't know what's--if any one's even gonna respond or make a change base on it. By making this so public, I feel like they're really having this great transparent conversations with their users, and they're putting their money where their mouth is or saying we really care about your feedback. We want to make the library reflect to your needs, and we're going to answer every comment or criticism that we get. I love that. Ann Arbor District Library also does a great job with communicating with their users in a transparent way. They have tons and tons of different blogs. This is a screenshot from the Director's blog where their director, Josie Parker, talks about sort of the larger macro issues of the library. And the great thing about her blog is that the comments are open. And the Ann Arbor District Library blogs get lots of comments. They were like 20-some comments on that specific post. And what I really like is that you'll see that she actually answers every single comment. She responds to it whether positive or negative. And I think that's really nice because so many library blogs, even when they do get comments, they don't know how to handle them really well. And to have the director responding to every comment really makes patrons feel like the library cares about them. So, I think also, you know, not just--sorry. Social software is not just great for, you know, patrons using application, it's also amazingly useful for improving internal knowledge sharing among staff. This is something we tend to be really bad about libraries. I've found--this is one of my favorite sort of knowledge sharing tools for staff, and this is the reference at Newman Library blog at Baruch College. And they, you know, I know at my library the way we share information at the Reference Desk is sometimes we'll send emails, sometimes we'll put posted notes at the desk. But those things disappear, you know. And then you'll get the same--you'll get the same assignment next year and you won't remember what resources were useful. >> With the blog like this, they post all sorts of content that, you know, all of the members of the reference staff would find useful. Like for example, toner is needed at ref desk computer. Like we just had a problem with the printer the other day, and I called IT and what I found out that another reference librarian had already called about it. It might have been nice to know that before I had called. So, you know, they provide all that sort of information. They talk about different resources, database trials they have, all sorts of information. The nice thing about this, it's not like emails where you're gonna delete it. All of that content is archived where you can easily search for it and find the information on that assignment that came up two years ago that really stamped to guys in what resources you ended up using. Another great tool, obviously, for sharing knowledge is a wiki. And this is not a very pretty wiki, but this is a wiki from Antioch University New England Libraries. And they use this, basically, as basically, a front desk manual for anyone working at the circulation desk. And this is information on anything someone could need working at the desk from, you know, troubleshooting, the photocopiers and the Xerox machine, to in this case, adding a patron to their catalog. And I think this is nice because I know we have a lot of work study students who work at our circulation desk. And, you know, they get a training, but they're not gonna get trained in every minute thing that can possibly come up when they're at the desk. So, sometimes, things are gonna come up that they're not trained for. And isn't it great to have a resource like this that provides all of that information easily at their fingertips. And you also benefit from this [inaudible] to wiki, and you can collect knowledge from all members of the staff because we all have different areas of expertise. And all members of the staff can update this and add information, and add the stuff that they really know about. We can also use social software to communicate with users at the point of need. One of my favorite blogs for that is the business blog at Ohio University Libraries, Chad Boeninger. I've had--he--I'm a huge fan of his. I've had him as a guest speaker several times for the different events that I've done and different classes. He's a business librarian at Ohio University Library. And he has a great relationship with the faculty at the University in his area and knows when refinements are coming up. And rather with them waiting for, you know, 20 or 30 students to come to the desk with the exact same question and answering it over and over and over again, he basically provides reference instruction right here at the point of need, giving them useful advice and tips on the blog when he knows about an assignment coming up. And I just think that such a fantastic idea especially because for every patron who does, you know, come to the desk, there are probably two or three others who never asked the questions and who struggle on their own with this. So, to provide that sort of proactive reference instruction, I think is a fantastic idea. This is another--this is something I really like which I think all library catalogs should have. We don't have this in ours and I really think we should. When you get a zero result in the catalog, in a library catalog, you often don't know what to do next. You know, a lot of people just sort of give up. This is the catalog from the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library. And when you do a search and misspelled something or whatever in their catalog and you don't find anything, you see a link that says, "Ask Now". When you click on that, if pops open that little window there that ask a library window where you can immediately, as long as it's base online, can immediately start chatting with the librarian and asks them, you know, why did nothing come up when I typed this in and maybe find out that it was a misspelling or that you should try this different keyword. And having that right there at the point of need I think makes it more likely that someone is going to ask for help there. So, here are some, a couple of basic strategies for implementing social software. This is a screenshot that I love because it's about, you know, the kind in the candy store. And this is sort of how I am with technology. You know, I get so excited about this stuff. I hear about this new technologies and I just get giddy and silly and stupid. And I just wanna, you know, use them up in my library. And I have to temper that with--and be pragmatic about technology implementation. You can't just say, "Oh my god, wikis are so awesome, I'm gonna start using them in library. Tomorrow I'm gonna find a cool use for them and do something with it." That's not how it works. You don't go--you don't, you know, walk around with the hammer looking for nails to put in. You know, you use the right tool for the right job and the need have to come first. If you have a need to better collect knowledge from your users or from faculty or from librarians, yeah, a wiki is a great tool. But the need has to come first. There's a tool for every need, and you know, that's and these tools are not just things to play with and to implement things that are just sort of frivolous. And I know a lot of librarians who've done that including me and it's a huge mistake. Things like that are never successful. So, it's important that we really know our users. And I think we often make a lot of assumptions that, "Oh, you know, I read this EDUCAUSE article about the net gen student, and now I know what my students are like at, you know, Norwich or wherever." And I don't think we can make assumptions like that. Every university, every public library, every school library has a different and unique user population. We need to understand what technologies do our users use? How--what kind of culture do they have with using those technologies? Will our users feel like that's going in Facebook is an invasion of their privacy or would they welcome the library being in that space. We need to understand how our users do research. This is a screenshot from surveying students, the undergraduate research project at the University of Rochester. This is a great study. It's freely available from ACRL, the eBook. And they actually did hire an anthropologist and did an ethnographic study of their users where instead of asking users what they think of library services, they actually observe students doing research, so how they use technologies and tools, so what process they went through to better understand how they could preserve their users and meet their users at sort of those pinpoints when the users actually needed help. Libraries also need to develop a risk tolerant culture. You know, for every success that I've had at my library, I've had at least one failure where I have tried something, experimented with something and it didn't workout. That every time I learn something valuable from that experience, I learn something about my student population, I learn something about a technology that maybe it just didn't work with that population. Maybe my population needs a different way of providing outreach. So, you know, a lot of libraries, they wanna create this like perfect service that isn't gonna fail. And you know what? Until we put something else, they will often not going to know exactly how something is gonna do. So it's important that we're willing to experiment with technologies. So, I am so lucky to have a director who is always open to trying new things and experimenting. As long as we can afterwards, if something does fail, you know, sort of debrief on it and figure out what we learn from that experience. 'Cause I think until you do fail, I think you often learn more from failing than from a success. We also need to develop a learning culture at our libraries. It's absolutely critical that not only, you know, the people with an MLS or the administrators or whatever, that not only those people have access to professional development funds or have time to learn about new technologies. That creates the situation where you have one group of staff who is very up on new track and trends in the profession, and another half of the population or more that has no clue about it. And we need to give people time to learn. We need to give them opportunities to learn. And we should make keeping up with trends in the profession and trends in technology apart as every librarian's job description. We shall also involve staff at all levels in planning. This is a big one. Because I think a lot of libraries often plan new technology projects with just the tech savvy stuff. You know, you get the people who are really into wikis and have been using them for years and those are the people who create the libraries' wiki. And I don't really personally think that's a good idea. I think it's important to involve staff who may be aren't into that technology, who maybe have never used a wiki or even not dent into technology in general. Because those people are going to see flaws that people who'd been using the technology for years never would, because after a while, you get tunnel vision with any technology. >> So, it's good to have people with different perspectives, you know, showing you some of the flaws in your ideas or different ways of looking at things. It's also important to capitalize on your network. I think that every librarian should spend sometime during their work day on Facebook or Twitter or something building a professional network. I don't think of this as something that's frivolous. I think it's critical to make friends with people who are knowledgeable about the subjects that you're interested in. Because I know, you know, I see Facebook as my professional Rolodex. And when I need expertise from someone maybe on wikis or on, you know, web 3.0 or whatever, I can ask someone who I know is knowledgeable about that and get help. I know when I was first starting to use Drupal at content management system, I asked my friend who knows about Drupal, a lot of questions, and he gave me a ton of help. So, you know, we can never be experts in everything. So, it's great to have a strong professional network that you can rely on when you need help. Finally, it's really important that administrators and libraries understand that time has to be devoted to these technologies. I think a lot of people think, oh, well, wikis are free, blogs are free, instant messaging is free to setup, you know, we don't have to devote any additional time to these new technologies", and that's why we have dozens and dozens and dozens of library blogs that haven't been updated in three, four, five, six years. Because people don't realize that you need to plan for these Web 2.0 technologies the same way you would for any technology you implement at a library. Blogs, you don't need maintenance. You have to upgrade the software periodically. People have to moderate the comments. You need to have a posting schedule, and you know, sort of like a reference schedule where you know that someone is going to be posting content each week so that, you know, the blog is regularly updated. All of these technologies require time. And you can't just say to someone who already has a super full 40-hour work schedule, "Well, now I want you to start creating a educational podcasts, and I'd like you to also start blogging for our users. And no, I'm not going to take away any of your duties." This just doesn't work. And I think this has been a huge problem with social software and libraries, is that people haven't taken it as seriously as they do to technologies that they pay for. So, I'll be happy to take any questions you might have right now about social software, or please feel free to contact me, email me, you know, whatever anytime. I'm more than happy to help. My sites are actually up at my presentation wiki as well, meridethfarkas.wetpaint.com. So, you can access them there as well. And yeah, I'm happy to take questions now. >> Meredith, thanks so much. It was an excellent presentation again. And now I'll clear the mic for questions. But thank you very much. >> I was interested in that wiki sort of stuff that you have for circulation staff. I was wondering if there was a particular application that you would recommend that it would be very easy for staff who are not that technological savvy to get going and using fairly quickly. >> Yes, in terms of wiki software, yeah, I definitely actually would not recommend the software that Antioch University New England uses. It's called FeedWiki [phonetic]. And I think it's one of the worst. In terms of user interface. I'm honestly surprised that anyone uses it. I think, you know, anyone that has a WYSIWYG editor is going to be ideal. I like, you know, what paint is good. PBworks, which used to be PBwiki is a nice option. I know a lot of people in K through 12 use Wikispaces, which I think is mainly because they were the first to take ads off of a wiki, a free wiki if you say that you're using it for educational use. Those are probably the three big ones that I find, that I think are the most user-friendly. But there are--there are so much wiki software out there. And those are just host ones. There are lots that you can actually install on your own server and actually run. I know in my library we have--we use wikis as our subject guides. And we actually use MediaWiki which is the same software that runs the Wikipedia. I don't recommend that for library staff that aren't tech savvy because it doesn't come with which we call a WYSIWYG editor. And I think without a WYSIWYG editor, it's going to be nearly impossible to get staff that isn't tech savvy to actually use it. But I'm a huge fan of MediaWiki software just for my own personal use definitely. Oh, I see another question. In your opinion, do you think it's important to teach Drupal in library science program? I think, you know, I think it's certainly a useful content management system. I think if someone--if people are interested in, you know, learning management systems and systems for building online communities, I think Drupal is an ideal thing to teach because it is just such a flexible technology. I mean there are people using Drupal for all sorts of sites. We actually use Drupal now for our newly redesigned library website for distance learners at Norwich. I use it for my classroom, for my classroom, for my Web 2.0 class. People--it was used for the online community at Skokie Public library. So, you know, I would love to see that getting taught more. I've really been wanting to actually teach a class specifically on online communities, and I think I would definitely teach Drupal in that. I guess the problem is, you know, you need somewhere to install it, and I guess probably the folks at the library school would have to support that which they might be less than thrilled of how kind of they support a lot of social technologies right now, so another one might be a bit overwhelming. [ Pause ] >> Okay, this is Jeremy Kemp. I think I might do the links a little bit different next time. Sorry for link spanning you there, but my question is about the delicate nature of online communities. You, it seems that you can't really push them. You kind of have to pull them and facilitate them. So, how do you get one started if there is nothing happening? How do you go about doing that? [ Pause ] >> Well, yeah that's really complicated and it honestly depends on the tool that you're using. I think sometimes you need to get out of the community, out of the online community and provide outreach where your users actually are congregating, you know, maybe you need to, you know, follow if your users are in Facebook and you're trying to get them to use some online community that's on your website. You need to start, you know, providing information at that space. Maybe have a contest in Facebook for people to, you know, design a logo for your online community. Get people involved in some way with the community so that they at least get their feet well with it. Also, you know, especially with public libraries and actually with any type of library, really, you know, maybe you need to get out of your library and visit people where they are and talk to them about the community and really get patrons involved in developing that community rather than the library building something. I think co-creating something with patrons is a really valuable thing, you know. We're actually going to be building a Facebook page finally at my library and we're going to enlist some of our work study students to help us develop it because I think there is--there is no better way to engage students than to actually have them help you create the community space. But I think it is, it is really, really hard to build, you know, an engaging community. And sometimes, honestly, I'd love to say that there's a magic, a magic bullet but sometimes it just depends on your population. I mean you see all this great stuff going on. It was like the Ann Arbor District Library where they're getting so many comments. Well, that is one of the most civically minded engaged populations in the country. And I think a lot of people saw what Ann Arbor District Library did, and thought, "Oh, I'm gonna create a lot of blogs. I'm gonna get all these conversations going," and it didn't happen. But you know, with blogs, I think it's just about posting really interesting content regularly. Just post boring news stuff is not going to engage your population. >> Yeah, there is no Facebook page for my library. You know, my director wasn't too keen on it for a while and now she is finally warmed up to the idea of us having a presence in that space. So you know, it's not, wasn't something I was going to push that strongly, you know. I wasn't going to force the issue. But now that she's warming up to the idea, I'm definitely gang hook on doing it, you know. And I don't think every technology--you know, we don't have a lot of things at our library, you know. It just depends on reaching the population that you worked with using the tools that they actually use. So, you know, different tools aren't gonna be right for every population. But for most schools, I would say a Facebook page is probably a pretty safe bet. >> Any last questions for Meredith? I guess I just wanna make a comment. Your blog is a community of its own, Meredith. If you haven't read information wants to be free, I've rarely seen a blog that gets readers so engaged that they--it starts and continues a conversation. And sometimes you'll have a posting that has 50 comments and you respond to those. And so you've created a really strong community just around your own blog. >> Yeah, I think, I think it's really important, I think, when building a blog community like you said to really post compelling content that's gonna get people talking. And it took me a long time as a blogger just sort of find my comfort zone with that because I do, I do tend towards, you know, revealing more personal stuff. I mean not, you know, intensely personal things, but personal things sort of to create a teachable moment to make a point that would be hopefully useful to other people like I use to--like I've written post on, you know, that I used to have performance anxiety and was just absolutely terrified of public speaking, and now I'm really comfortable with that, and sort of to try to inspire people who are afraid to do that. So I think--oh, thank you, Holly. So, I think, you know, it's really important to post things that, you know, maybe sometimes make you a little uncomfortable, maybe a little controversial, things that are gonna get people talking and discussing things rather than just sort of rehashing news. But I think it does take a while to find your own comfort zone with blogging where you can sort of get your personal voice out there without feeling like you're giving too much information that is personal. >> Meredith, you mentioned in your blog, thanks to Roy Tennant, and you also mentioned your director there and being open. What's the role of a mentor, and in your case, a mentee in a technology and community setting? So, how can you be a good mentee in that setting? >> Great question. Yeah I've been incredibly, incredibly lucky to have, you know, people like Roy Tennant who sort of took me under their wing, you know, early in my career and really encouraged me to try new things. You know, I think the role of a mentee is just to listen, listen to people's wisdom and be grateful for it, you know, and eventually to pay it forward, you know, as--I mean Roy is a great example, you know. I was not that confident about speaking, and especially, you know, when I actually started speaking and got a lot of, you know, people asking me to speak, I had a really hard time, you know, asking for money to give a talk. I find that just completely intimidating, and I didn't really know what I was worth. And to have somebody who sort of coach me on that and helped me feel more confident in myself was just great. So, as a mentee, I pretty much just listened and asked for help when I needed advice on something. You know, there were just a lot of things that came up in my life that I'd never experienced before, and just asking, you know, for advice on these things was just so amazingly helpful. But, you know, now in the position I'm in, I feel like I'm at a place where I can mentor other new librarians and give them advice and help along the way and the sort of encouragement that I got when I began. So, I think any mentee should, you know, always have an eye towards helping other people later on because, you know, very soon you'll be the experts and you'll be the ones who can offer your wisdom before you know it. It won't be--won't be 20 years from now, it will be just a couple of years. >> Any further questions for Meredith. Thanks again, Merdith. >> Thank you so much for having me everyone. I really enjoyed chatting with you all and take care. >> Okay, great. That segues into the second part of the conversation and Laurie's probably IM-ing, doing one of. But we definitely wanna answer your questions about the course. I apologize for not being at Laurie's session last week and it sounded like a great session. And I think I've heard that there are some followup questions, so let's get to it. If you're confused about any aspect of the course or you wanna know more, now is the time. The paper assignment did ask folks to ping Laurie and I today just a very quick email to describe your paper proposal. We're not gonna--I don't think we're gonna be penalizing anybody about that but please do send a quick email about your topic. And I'm sorry that's not the paper, that's the project or program. >> Anne, are you interested in--what type of libraries and what type of services are you interested in. If you're interested in like reference, you could do digital reference in general. You could do instant message reference, you could do text message reference, you could do, you know, video reference. Are you--if you're interested in teens, there's a bunch of different stuff you could do there. With the downloadable audio books, you know, you could do downloadable media. Some companies like OverDrive are allowing patrons to download video now. You could do digital imaging. And some of the new interactive stuff that's coming along with digital imaging collections where they create a community around them. Here is an example of a project where we created podcast. Those are--those are some ideas. Andrew, the paper--the paper is the same as the project. You write a proposal for a new service or an emerging trend you would like to see happen in your library. Ann, that's a great topic. And there's a lot going on with OverDrive right now, you know, the downloadable video. Also they have some smartphone applications. They are also working really closely with the Sony eReader so that somebody can check on their phone and get linked up with the closest library with content there. So there's, you know, a lot of different things you could do. I hope that helps a little bit. And then Andrew, yes the presentation is related to your project or paper. I also wanted to say, you know, if there is a lot happening in the mobile technology area and, you know, you're welcome to come to the conference tomorrow and Thursday for free. Even if you can't come and you wanna access the archives later, you can signup. You need to signup and then you'll have your log-in and access. We do have a speaker from OverDrive tomorrow too. >> We've also got a speaker from EBSCO. They're allowing access to databases on their--on your mobile phone, so those are some ideas too. >> So, just to clarify, I'll repeat that again. The paper which is the project proposal project, it's an 8 to 10-page paper about that, is due on the 24th and we were asking you just to send an email giving us a very quick overview of what you're looking at. And then that is due, that's due on the 24th. And then two months later, a month later, you're gonna be giving a presentation on that topic. So, and the presentations will be in times between the 12th of May and the 17th of May. So, the paper, the proposal there, the project is presented later on in the term. >> How many, I'm just curious, how many people who are here today right now were not at Laurie's session last week. So, it looks like there's about 5 or 6 of you that were not at Laurie's session last week talking about the difference and the timeline for participation in the forums as a leader, and also the development of the collections as a participant and a leader. So, and that will be good for us to go over that now. I wasn't there, but I think one of the key questions that was answered was can the forum discussions be done as a group. So, can all of you get together and decide which we're gonna be doing in leading the discussions for the seminar. And the answer to that as I understood it and it make sense is that the team is welcome to arrange the work however they would like. So, if everybody wants to post through a single speaker, in a sense, they could do that. Me, personally, if I were working on a team, I would want everybody to jump into the forum and everybody to contribute to it. But if you all agree and you tell us upfront, you can work on the discussions and the forum and lead them as a group. Does that sound alright, Laurie? >> Yes, that's exactly right. >> Another interesting feature about the collections is that the leaders are always stepping in to the collections once the participants are done. So, two-thirds of you are right now developing the collections in TVWorks, and then after your deadline is over, the leader step in and massage that contact. So, I think it's interesting the way that's arranged because it sort of nears what you would be doing in a regular library setting. You are working with user-generated content in terms of community contributions. Just like Meredith was talking about, people come in and contribute to, you know, the library community, and then the librarians come in to some degree and monitor and moderate that commentary. And that also the collections as well. So, you are moderating a user-generated content. That's an interesting feature of the course. >> Any other questions do you have for us this evening? >> You know, it's interesting--I don't wanna get too deep into it right now, but it's on the syllabus. So, the definition of Web 3.0, I think the strictest definition of Web 3.0 would be Semantic Web. Take a look at the video that started at the term. That's probably the strictest definition of Web 3.0. >> Okay, if you have any, any questions, please email us and we'll get right back to you. And we'll keep you up to date on when we make the lectures and things available in the seminars. Thanks for our great interactive session this evening.