CLA 2006: Social Software (Michael Porter)

Michael  Porter started with a quote: "The growth of an online community takes time and effort.  Relationships must be initiated based on trust, and then carefully culminated."

What is social software?  Something that lets people connect online in a meaningful way.  Michael noted that there are a lot of tools that you can talk about with social software.  He emphasized that you don't have to know everything about all of them, but start slow and work with a few.

Amazon: It's been around for a long time.  Amazon's recommendations are great.  And it's fascinating how little libraries are doing with recommendations for books and other materials.  Michael encouraged all of us to write to our service providers and vendors and ask for recommendations, star systems, and review-writing features for our catalogs.  You can build lists (Listmania) where you build a list with your favorite items with a particular theme or subject.  Many libraries have created profiles and added their wishlists to Amazon showing the books they'd like to receive.  He also mentioned Amazon's library processing service.

Netflix: Netflix is a subscription DVD-library.  People who use Netflix really like the service and the website.  Why?  For a low fee, they get moveis delivered to them with no late fees.  They offer a free trial.  You can browse for movies by genre, and users like browsing (just like the library marketplace set-up).  They have an effective recommendation engine based on what you've selected and said you like using their star ranking system. You also get to develop a queue of things you want to "check out."  What if we had that kind of a model in our libraries?  Users would develop a queue of items, have library staff pull them and then either pick them up from the library or mailed to them.  You can set up Netflix friends on the site and see what your friends have recently watched.  They create quizzes about your friends too--where you get to guess to see how well you know the viewing-habits of your friends.  It's all about an experience, a connection amongst people.  Netflix also markets movies for sale with a recommendation engine that pushes different recommended DVD titles to each user. 

Pandora: It's free.  You create a "radio station" of an artist that you like.  Then they make recommendations.  And then you can give each song a thumbs up or a thumbs down to tell the system more about your listening preferences.  You can also click on a link for any song about why they chose that song for you, and they will give you a short definition of the characteristics of the song that made them pick it (electronica influences, mild rhythmic syncopation, a vocal-centric aesthetic, etc.).  You can also send you personalized radio station to your friends, who can then listen to your station as well as their own.  Michael wonders: what if a library could develop a relationship with Pandora and mount a Pandora station on their website? 

GPS: Geocaching (finding items that are hidden at a certain latitude or longitude, and adding your own items to the pile).  Michael stressed over and over again that playing with these tools and learning how to use them should be considered work time.  One audience participant noted that someone had used her library to stash a geocaching unit in a non-library hollowed out book.  Another audience member suggested that libraries could use this as a fundraising scavenger hunt tool.  Also, GPS devices are sometimes being connected to digital cameras, so that it can be recorded where you were when you took the photo and map it on Flickr.  Michale talked about Mologogo, related to GPS chips in cell phones.  If you can get your GPS chip turned on (which is apparently really, really hard).  You can view your friends' locations using this and talk to them at the same time.  Also, Navizon, which offers peer-to-peer wireless positioning.

del.icio.us: Web-based bookmark file where you can tag each different link.  You can see wha tyour friends are linking to, and which links they're adding.  Also offers RSS feeds so you can see your friend's updates automatically.  You can search for tags to do research, see people who are doing similar research projects, etc.

Blogs: Michael noted some of the library blogs that he recommends to keep up with what's going on.  Blogs are social software in their purest form.  You can use blogs to communicate all sorts of information.  Hennepin County Library has staff posts to the intranet blog, and then some of them are selected and shared on on the library's homepage with the public.  Blogs can be used to organize any type of information that is segmented out nicely into individual entries.  I suggest that libraries consider doing booklists via blogs--tag each entry with their genre or audience or whatever else.  Include a book jacket image and links into the catalog.  Easy booklists!  WesternSpringsHistory.org is also a blog, which has been used to organize local history information about houses and other buildings in the community and the history surrounding them.

Wikis: Wikipedia is probably the best-known wiki.  They can afford an environment for collaboration for staff members who may not be able to or want to meet in person to work on projects.  He pointed out the Library Success Wiki, and suggests pbwiki as a free wiki-creation tool.

LibraryThing: LibraryThing is a place where you self-catalog your items.  You get MARC records automatically, but you also get to tag your books with your own keywords as well.  Michael suggests that libraries should incorporate something like LibraryThing, by allowing users to customize their own profiles for their home libraries, and tie that to the library-library as well.  You get recommendations based on what you like and based on what other people have starred and said are good books.  They're also selling little scanners so you can scan items and have them added to your collection quickly.

Electronic Community Sites: This includes social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook as well as interest centered sites focused on commerce, hobbies, professions, and support groups.  About.com is a community based on interests with topical articles on various subjects.  Experts on different subjects become community/subject leaders and write content and answer user-submitted questions.  Friendster was the first real social networking site.  Why did MySpace succeed while Friendster failed?  MySpace trusted the user.  Friendster had many of the same features that MySpace did, but the difference was that MySpace allowed users to change the look and feel of their profiles--adding video, different colors, wallpapers, music, etc..  MySpace is being used heavily--and the average age of a MySpace user is 31--this is not just for kids and teens.  Libraries who create profiles get friends, other MySpace users, who label the library as their friend, which then shows up on their own MySpace pages.  He pointed out the Thomas Ford Memorial Library MySpace page as an example.  You can send out bulletins to all your friends--free, effective outreach and marketing!  There are also groups within MySpace that you can join to connect with more people.  Michael encouraged the audience to use the Perceptions of Libraries report from OCLC to back up the community needs of and ideas about libraries.  He spoke briefly about Facebook, which isn't currently open to institutions--only individuals.  But users can still add themselves as individual librarians and make their presence known through groups with themes and institutional information about their libraries.

WebJunction: Michael talked about WebJunction's tools and communities.  There are discussion forums, articles, planning documents, templates, training information. 

Flickr: Flickr allows you to upload photos, keep track of comments, leave comments, and add photos to groups: like Libraries & Librarians.  The psychology, the ability to connect with real people, regardless of geographic location is the strength of Flickr, the strength of social software as a whole.  The National Library of Australia partnered with Yahoo/Flickr to harvest photos from groups of current images of Australia and they put that into their national archive.  WOWSERS!

YouTube: A lot of people are using YouTube.  Libraries that have video content should upload them to YouTube, and use those pages as another way to advertise your library's services and website.  He talked a bit about viral marketing, how these videos spread through word of mouth so very quickly.  Libraries are using YouTube to post their screencasts, library tours, and orientations.

Second Life: Second Life is a 3D gaming environment where real people interact.  InfoIsland has a number of libraries, with reference services, collections, events, classes, and displays.  He showed us how you can use SecondLife for advertising (billboards, clothing) and events to connect people with other people.  Go to InfoIsland.org to learn more about the libraries in Second Life.