David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

Actual Work Using Facebook

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Just a small aside… but I’ve been doing real live work the last two days using facebook (go friend me – David Lee King at facebook)!

Michael Porter, my writing buddy, is to blame for some of it… 🙂 We write the Internet Spotlight column in Public Libraries Magazine together, and he posted a question to his facebook friends. The plan is to incorporate some of those responses, some he’d gotten via email, etc into a cool article [status: article almost done, and IS cool].

So part of the work was copying/pasting quotes and contacting the quotees to get job titles, etc. Whew!

But that has spawned a whole host of facebook emailing back and forth, getting new information, thinking “out loud” via facebook email about library innovation in other areas, and even making a few new facebook friends.

So – real live library work in facebook. It can be done! Anyone else want to pony up? How do you use facebook to do actual work (or do you?).

Wanting Your Opinions about Blog Comments and City Attorneys

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A new Facebook friend just asked me a question, and I thought I’d share it with y’all – in hopes of garnering him some more input, or “ammunition” if you will…

Here’s the deal:

“Maybe you can answer a question that our City attorney needs clarified? She seems to think that if we [a public library] have a blog we can’t restrict commenting (at all) because it’s a public forum (the City recently even got rid of the Mayor’s bulletin board because of this). From my own Internet research it seems that this is the case from a legal standpoint. How are other libraries dealing with this? If this is the case it seems that it’s only a matter of time before some library gets sued over this.”

“Do you know of any libraries getting sued for removing comments, or where to find any pro blog justification for libraries from a legal standpoint? Blogging is obviously a good thing for a library to do, but the City is deathly afraid of lawsuits… Even the chance of a lawsuit and they won’t go out on a limb to disrupt the homeostasis. My municipality is very conservative in this regard.”

As an aside – good the for the city attorney for recognizing blog comments as a form of public forum (because it is).

Now, obviously I’m no lawyer, but I told my fine facebook friend that as long as the library has a policy in place that covers how the library handles comments, they should be covered (certainly anyone CAN sue… but probably not successfully?). And that policy is probably already there in some form of patron behavior clause.

And – I’m pretty certain there are some libraries that really DON’T remove comments – they show the bad AND the good, and just filter a short list of “naughty” words. So that might meet the city attorney’s requirement, too.

So… what do you think? How does your library handle website/blog/myspace/facebook/youtube/etc comments? Do you moderate? Do you block words? Do you remove the nasty comments altogether? And do you have a policy or guideline in place for commenting?

Valuing Users by Allowing Comments

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Casey Bisson said this during his Internet Librarian 2007 presentation: “sites that allow comments value their users.” When he said that, my mind started making connections… what a great way to illustrate why the ability to comment is such an amazing thing to include on a website! So riffing off that quote, here are some thoughts (and I encourage you to continue riffing and see what more you come up with – if it rocks, I’ll add it to my list).

When you allow comments by users/customers/patrons, you are valuing them:

  • You are validating their voices: By offering a way to let customers comment, the library becomes an enabler for conversation. You are saying the library cares about customers, and the library wants to hear from customers. And any voice or thought is valid – praise and criticism, complaints and suggestions.
  • You are saying you want to listen: no cold shoulders! How many companies actually want to hear you? Have you ever hunted for hours for a 1-800 number for eBay or gone through their complaint/get-your-money-back process? I have – and I came away with the feeling that eBay, cool business that it is, didn’t really want to listen, and was more interested in getting my money than in helping me have a successful selling/buying experience.
  • You are asking them to participate: opening up the possibility to comment is a form of invitation to participate. It allows actual interaction with real, live people. it also sets up a type of digital town hall meeting where someone’s expressed opinion can be heard, discussed, debated, and distilled by others within earshot (ie., other readers)
  • Users can add value to website content: Libraries hire smart people. Your customers are ALSO smart people, and libraries are just starting to use those amazing customer brains to add to the value of library content. Some libraries do this by allowing customers to create book reviews. Others allow customers to comment on blog posts or on wiki pages. A few libraries allow customers to add relevant content and notes to local history projects (ie., seeing an old photo and telling others who is in the photo, etc).
  • You are valuing their time: In my eBay example above, I wasted a lot of time trying to find that 1-800 number. By allowing comments on most pages of a website, you are saving the time of your users. They no longer have to hunt for a single online comment box or find the “contact us” page to find the phone number. Instead, they can leave their comment or question right there, right then – in a place that makes sense (the page where the question or comment came up)
  • You are adding value to their words: By not hiding a customer’s words, thoughts, questions, or comments, you are getting more bang for the buck – you are adding value to the content on that page. Value is added by giving the customer a digital megaphone – since the comment fits contextually on the same page as the comment, and might even visually use the same colors and font sizes, you have just given the customer’s comment the same weight as the website content. Words that before the web might have been said in a private phone conversation or in a private letter now have been given the added benefit of reaching a much larger audience (potentially a global audience).
  • You are adding value to their experience: You improve the customer’s experience by allowing comments in as many places as possible. Steve Krug’s book says “don’t make me think” many times. When the customer has easy-to-reach comment boxes on every page of a blog or a website, they don’t have to think about website functionality or about how to find a way to contact the organization – that part is done. Instead, it frees the customer up to think about what’s REALLY on his/her mind. And that creates a positive experience for the user.

Again, some thoughts. Do you have any to add?

IL2007, Day 1: Integrating Libraries & Communities Online

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Integrating Libraries & Communities Online, Glenn Peterson, Marilyn Turner

Marilyn Turner

bookspace.org – they made this. It’s cool. It brings together book lists, author lists, librarian tips, etc… many genre guides

it’s only focused on books – so it still has the traditional librarian bias to content

they include a librarian’s blog on each genre page

assign 2 people per genre pages

not volunteer activities – instead, they say it’s part of your job. Part of performance expectation! Awesome! Web Services Manager works with other managers to make sure web content is part of review process

Glenn Peterson:

Customer Contributed Content

user comments on books and other titles

harry potter and the deathly hallows – 234 comments! wow. they had 60 comments while the book was still on order – talking about how the stroy line would go. neat.

social features:
user comments
blogs
book lists
browse a list of recent comments
user profiles
name, about me, reading interests – that’s neat. theya’re looking at librarything’s profile for ideas
they have a wall-of-books – images of book jackets to see what books each user has checked out…

wanting to do: users wo are reading X are reading Y

wanting to create a friend’s list, a facebook-like wall

challenges – control issues – what can people leave on their profile

John Blyberg:

The Social Catalog

why bring social tools to the catalog?

three social catalogs:
pseudo-social – authority presented as collaborative (ie., Innovative’s ncore)
Syndicated social – third party data (librarything)
individually social – user-direct (hennepin, sopac)

Another Twittering Library

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From my comments on this post… try this on for a cool way to use Twitter. Here’s what the library is doing, to the best of my knowledge (Julie, correct me if I get it wrong, please!):

  • posting real-time reference questions to twitter.com/askusnow
  • using the Twitter feed to update “the ‘currently being asked’ section of our internal AskUsNow! staff website.”

Is that a cool use of twitter, or what? Going just a little further out from that, why not post those questions on the public website? They’d be anonymous, so that shouldn’t be an issue. But I’m thinking posting real-time questions in your library’s digital space is a great way to show real live conversations taking place. Those tweets might just start more conversation, etc etc.

Cool service – thanks Julie for mentioning it!