Social Media Frenzy (1)

I'm busy looking into various social media tools for International School Librarians for my next assignment.  And at the same time, I'm trying to resolve for myself what works and what doesn't to manage my own ever-increasing flow of information.  Over the next few posts I'll introduce each new tools I've found and give a link to what I've done with it.

I'll start with what I consider to be the most successful result - using paper.li to curate information flow from Twitter.  Now I must admit, that prior to doing my research I was pretty agnostic about Twitter.  I didn't really "get" it.  I didn't want a constant flow of information and my weekly updates were exhausting to look through, even if it was only 140 characters a post.  And, I think Brain Pickings tweets too much so I had a ton of stuff from them.

Then, I saw, according to the social savvy librarians in my survey, that Twitter was the highest ranked social media for professional use, and in the explanations, I was led to the hashtag #TLChat.  But then when I went to Twitter, I couldn't find a way to follow #TLChat.  So, Joyce Valenza to the rescue, as always.  She had a blogpost on how to feed twitter tags into a curated newspaper using paper.li - it's already 2 years old, but it still works perfectly - just goes to show how badly I didn't get Twitter.

Anyway, it works a treat, and here is the newspaper I made combining the hashtags for #TLChat, #EdChat and some other bits and pieces.  Now I need to make it all mobile and download onto my ipad.

Livin' and learnin'

A Dutch Village libary

Here are some pictures from the local village library in Bergen op Zoom where we are staying for the Christmas vacation.  The library fits into the street scene and yet it has a very modern facade - which in fact created quite a controversy between the local government and the conservation movement in town. From the outside it looks more like a modern office or shop than a library.   On entering you immediately see that the shelving has been placed on large industrial wheels which creates a multi-purpose space.

Further along, in the next space, the books are on more traditional shelving, however the fiction section has been sorted by genre as well as having a part still by alphabet.  There are large icons on the walls, which are echoed later in the shelving to show where magazines, DVD's, Books, CDs etc are located.

Library 2.0

ACTIVITY

View this YouTube video called 'Building Academic Library 2.0'. This is part of a symposium sponsored by Librarians Association of the University of California, Berkeley Division in 2007. While this presentation is over one (1) hour in duration, there are a number of key points raised by a number of speakers, including the keynote speaker Meredith Farkas, that relate to any library or information agency that is trying to transform their library into a 2.0 Library.

Consider advice provided by one or more of the speakers in terms of a library and information agency that you know (as an employee or user). Select five (5) key pieces of advice from these speakers, and consider how these may be applied to your library to help it embrace a Library 2.0 ethos. Write up your findings as a post (of no more than 350 words in your OLJ).

Although the library I am working in can be considered to have embraced Library 2.0 in all of its aspects, that doesn't mean that there isn't a possibility for improvement.  After listening to the talk, the following 5 points struck a chord with me.

1.  Use of microblogging to communicate within areas of the library - since our campus has two libraries and the college has a sister college who we co-operate closely with, also with two libraries setting up some kind of professional micro-blogging knowledge exchange would have potential benefit.  
2.  The fact that current students often turn to their parents as their first port of call.  I think we could be much more proactive in involving parents in understanding how the library can help the academic success of their children.  A few sessions aimed at parents explaining how libguides work, how the catalogue works and how to search academic articles through our journal databases and a bit on citation and social/academic bookmarking would be very helpful and possibly lead to a higher take-up.
3.  "Go where the user is" - we have started greater co-operation with subject teachers through creating LibGuides with help of their input. It would be useful to also have subject specific Diigo accounts where students, teachers and the library can all tag useful links to articles and information.
4. How do we classify? We have already separated out parts of the collection, such as playscripts, biographies, graphic books, poetry.  We are also creating special areas for the IB subjects where we keep multiple copies of "hot reads" where books are no longer purely in the Dewey System. I can only think this process will continue, perhaps to the fiction area where genres are separated out.
5. Time taken to implement.  A number of times the talk mentioned that take-up time for any technology could be in the region of 18 months.  I think we have a bit of a mentality that "build it and they will come" and perhaps we need to spend even more time on user education and encouragement to use the wonderful tools we have created.

Here is a link to a summary of the talk.


References:

Farkas, M. (2007). Building Academic Library 2.0 [YouTube]. Retrieved January 30, 2014, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_uOKFhoznI

University of California Berkeley Library. (2007). Academic Libraries 2.0 Keynote - Meredith Farkas [Blog]. Retrieved January 30, 2014, from http://blogs.lib.berkeley.edu/newdirections.php/academic_libraries_2_0_keynote_meredith_

RSS

Activity

Now that you have explored some examples of how libraries and the media make use of RSS to deliver updated information and the applications that can tailor and aggregate feeds for specific users, find two (2) additional examples of 'RSS in action', and develop a 350 word post to your OLJ on how RSS can enhance a library or information service’s ability to meet the information needs of its users.

In the library I currently work in we have a number of uses for the RSS feeds.  Particularly these are used to link the "physical" world to the "virtual" world.  

In the first instance, we have created a number of LibGuides for the International Baccalaureate students who are about to commence research for their Extended Essays.  Each guide has a number of sections, including books, journals, online resources etc.  The books section, makes reference to our physical shelf collection.  Then on our shelves we have created subject specific areas, clearly demarcated with shelf-signage, and on the signage is a QR code which leads back to the LibGuide of that specific subject. Here is a picture of the Development Economics section which leads back to the Development Economics LibGuide.

  

The second area where QR codes are used is to lead students from either a poster or a place-holder on the library shelf back to the library catalogue.  The picture shown is a large (i.e. 1m x 2m) poster which shows some books recommended for Grade 6 reading. The poster may be in the library or in the classroom or the grade corridor.  The QR codes will take the student back to the library catalogue where they can see whether the book is on-hand or out and make a reservation if necessary.  The books on the poster are also place in a separate shelf in the library, where the behind the multiple copies, the same picture and QR code appears, so if the books are all check-out, students can place a hold.

There are other uses as well, for example we have posters of books which have been turned into movies, and the QR code with a picture of the movie poster, will lead to the movie trailer on the one hand, and on the picture of the book to the library catalogue on the other.

Dewey didn't do Geography

Series

There's been quite a bit of chatter about the "de-dewification" of the library, if that's the way to write it. Of course that all started way back, when people pulled their fiction out of the 800's and sorted it by author, but the trickle seems to be turning into a flow.

Graphic book Section

While I was on the Singapore Study Visit, Ngee Ann Poly was one of the many libraries who have moved towards a bookstore concept for their lifestyle books.  Library Grits wrote about the topic this week, referring to the AASL13. Where I work, in Secondary, we've pulled out Biography, Playscripts, Graphic Books, and Poetry.   In primary, we've got boxes for series and have pulled out Graphic Books.When I did my Libguide for Development Economics, and we wanted to link the physical to the virtual, we were pulling books out of various sub-classifications and putting them together (in DDC order in the Economics section, but not in Economics order - if that makes sense!).  That was reasonably manageable and not to way out.

The Princess Book Section

But then last week I started work on the Geography Libguide.  Boy o boy, Dewey didn't do Geography.  Or at least not in any form that a modern geographer or geography student would recognise it these days.  A complete aside, but Ms. Katie was then telling me why Geography is not such a big deal at American universities as it could be, or is in the rest of the world.  So, what did Dewey allow us?

910 Geography & travel 
911 Historical geography
912 Graphic representations of earth, atlases
913 Ancient world
914 Europe 
915 Asia 
916 Africa
917 North America 

918 South America
919 Other areas

And what do we need?  - This is a little topic list from our school's IB syllabus:

People on the move: Migration

Global Climate change: causes and consequences

Demography

Resource consumption and the environment: Making a difference

The big Blue: Ocean morphology and Climate Connections

Where land meets sea: coast

Resources and marine ecosystems

Urban Environments

The Melaka fieldtrip unit

IBiodiversity and tropical ecosystems

Soil resource management

Water on tap: water resource management

Development Disparities: Measuring the differences, disparities within communities and responses

Life on the edge: Hazard perception and vulnerability

Global Interactions: Globalization

So it looks like we're going to have to work with a separate shelf plus some kind of sticker identification on the spine of the books.

Anyone else there struggling with Geography?