Time
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
To be held at METRO. Directions
Agenda
- Presentation by Shannon Kealey (Librarian for Digital Educational Initiatives, NYU Ehrman Medical Library) on library uses of social networks (esp. Facebook and MySpace)
- Discussion on how reference services might operate in social networks
- Set date and topic for next meeting (early 2008)
Recommended Reading
Abram, Stephen. "Facebook Reference." Stephen's Lighthouse. 9 April 2007.
http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/archives/2007/04/facebook_refere.html
Blog post by Stephen Abrams about efforts by a librarian at the Univ. of Alberta to use Facebook for reference.
Belmont University. "Ask us."
http://lib.belmont.edu/Reference/askus.html
On this library's ask a librarian page, note the inclusion of Facebook among reference service options.
Chapman, Suzanne. "Facebook Users Prefer In-Person Library Interactions." userslib.com. 12 July 2007.
http://userslib.com/?p=74
Blog post reporting the results of an informal survey by Univ. of Michigan librarians in which students were asked about their "preferred way of getting research help from librarians."
Czerniak, Brad. "For Librarians." hawidu. 2007.
http://hawidu.com/projects/facebook-librarian/for-librarians/
Details a Facebook application designed by Czerniak for libraries that want to establish a presence in Facebook.
Deschamps, Ryan. "Facebook and Rapport." The Other Librarian. 10 September 2007.
http://otherlibrarian.wordpress.com/2007/09/10/facebook-and-rapport/
Argues that library applications designed for Facebook need to work within the ethos of Facebook users.
University of Souther Indiana Libraries. "Facebook - David L. Rice Library." 2007.
http://www.usi.edu/library/facebook07.asp
This page from the University of Southern Indiana's library web site promotes the Facebook reference services of Susan Metcalf, USI’s Instructional Services Librarian.
Notes from the Meeting
We had a record number of attendees at this meeting: somewhere between 26 and 30.
Welcome and introductions
Scott Johnston from the CUNY Grad Center welcomed everyone to the meeting and asked everyone to introduce themselves one-by-one. As Stephen Francoeur's request, everyone mentioned not just what institution they were affiliated with but also whether they used social networks personally or their institutions did.
Picking a topic for the next meeting
Stephen Francoeur polled attendees about what the next topic should be. Using the list of future discussion topics mentioned in a spring survey of VR SIG members, it was agreed that we should next talk about using knowledge bases and FAQs for reference services. The date of the next meeting will likely be in January or February 2008
Presentation by Shannon Kealey
Shannon gave a 20-minute introduction to Facebook (hereafter abbreviated as FB) and how librarians at NYU have been using FB. What follows below are Stephen Francoeur's rough notes from the presentation:
Intro to Facebook
becoming more like MySpace, more commercial
a social space, a social utility, like going to a student lounge
you can now create institutional pages in Facebook (new this month)
Facebook vs. MySpace
Facebook good for college, MySpace for public libraries; Facebook good where your users have an institutional affiliation
as you register in Facebook, it puts you into that network (if you use a nyu.edu address, you are automatically added to the NYU network in Facebook; MySpace doesn't work this way)
FB has greater privacy controls
controversy over FB
- are we in the students' space (do they want us there)
- most students are OK with it (no one is outright negative about it)
setting up a profile in FB
- left off relationship status (didn't want anyone to be put off by her motivations for being in FB)
news feeds in FB can be customized to some extent
FB has stringent anti-spam policies; don't like you to be sending messages to all your friends
- Shannon has had her account shut down
adding friends
- start with the students working in your library, then will be a viral, organic process
surveyed students about how their responded to her being on FB
- upper level students less interested than lower level students
useful features:
- events
- created a group that students can join if they want info about what they can do in the library; then sent them a flyer in FB for an event
- when you have an event, you can invite people, but they don't want you to spam people by sending an email to them all
everytime she taught a BI class, she asked them to add them (1 in 10 added her), but that only led to just 2 reference questions (but still was easy to do and worth doing)
flyers cost money in FB; they show up on every person's profile pages in your network
just this month you're able to set up institutional identities, but since FB is a social network for people, it's not clear how useful these library pages will be useful (students are on FB to connect with people, not institutions); the applications are for interpersonal activities (Super Poke, food fights, etc.)
joined a medical students' group in FB
initially, she joined a lot of groups thinking she could do outreach by joining the networks within the NYU network
Applications
this year, FB let 3rd parties create applications
Lots of libraries have done apps that let them search catalogs, but she's skeptical they'll get used. It's nice to experiment and for outreach, but it's not the next wave
FB reinforces relationships you already have and its a way to make new relationships
Chronicle of Higher Ed article about how librarian apps are frowned on in FB (July 5, 2007 "Facebook Shuns Some Library Search Tools")
the applications that get used a lot are the fun ones
- Sideflickr
- Notes
- Books iRead
- Movies
- Netflix movies
there's no way to create separate networks within a FB network
Discussion
Stephen Francoeur: privacy of ref questions asked on your wall in FB
Beth Evans: you get a lot of bulletins in MySpace on a daily basis if you have a lot of friends like the Brooklyn College library site does, but reference questions will surface there; Beth just happened to notice them but it's not reasonable to go through 250 bulletins a day; they do get individual questions but often they're not from Brooklyn College (e.g., people who want to know about the college more generally; the kind of questions that admissions might want to answer); If someone friends them who is a filmmaker, Beth will send them info about the film program at Brooklyn (an unasked for responsibility for Beth); hasn't been put into the workflow for ref services
Charles Livermore: students have a totally different view of privacy these days; they have a lack of awareness
Shannon Kealey: if you delete a question, that doesn't get it off the servers of the service you're using (Meebo, IM, FB, etc.); you need to have a disclaimer for your users that explains things are not private
Charles Livermore: are there any measures to gauge success for library use of social networks?
Stephen Francoeur: how many friends, how many messages, how many wall posts; surveys, focus groups, etc.
Shannon Kealey: well how do you measure success from attending social events; so frame to administrators that it is equivalent to going to a student event
Janice Dunham: are students getting message about how FB profiles may affect future employment opportunities
Beth Evans: privacy issues with tagging in catalogs; library blogs with comments; web 2.0 is not protecting anyone's privacy
? - anyone using it for outreach to faculty?
Beth Evans: some faculty are using MySpace for their classes, such as English professors
Second Life is too old to be as clunky as it is
Brooklyn College has a collection development. policy for adding friends to its MySpace page.
Stephen Francoeur: If you want to get an academically rigorous perspective on why people use social networks like Facebook or MySpace, you should be reading Danah Boyd's work. She's a PhD student at UC Berkeley and takes an anthropological perspective on social networks. Her main web site is at
danah.org
Links to Sites Discussed
(Please help turn this list into actual links)
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