Anonymous Users and Lurkers

Allowing anonymous users and lurkers to access online communities is essential to the health of the community. Though the creators and moderators of online communities might be tempted to ban these folks from participating in the community, they ought to look beyond the convenient and the 'right now' of the community and look at how the decision will benefit the long term of the community.
Anonymous users, those who do not have an account through the community, should be allowed certain rights but be banned from others. If people cannot access certain features on the site, they are not likely to ever join. I have ventured onto sites of this sort, and I can attest to the fact that I have not once registered myself for one of these sites because I have no sense of what they are all about before I give over my personal information.
The next step in the hierarchy of creating a user base or community is allowing lurkers the freedom to stay silent but observant for as long as they need but also offering venues through which they can slowly begin to communicate and become involved. Most people can't jump into anything feet first much less an online community that has rules and expectations. Users must be given opportunities to introduce themselves, learn the guidelines, and converse with other 'newbies' in order to feel completely comfortable and at home.

Moderators might feel that they are saving themselves time and potential trouble by banning unregistered users or by ignoring the community of lurkers, but these are both essential groups to accommodate if the moderator is concerned about the overall health of the online community they have created.

Library Wikis

I believe so few libraries allow users to add to their collaborative wikis because of the extra effort that must inevitably go into screenng the additions and changes to ensure no abuse or misinformation has made its way onto the wiki (or any other user-generated content sites). Wikipedia has a system in place to trace accountability in the factual-ness of added content, and perhaps libraries wouldn't need to put so much effort into that aspect of it as much as making sure the wiki is being used for the purpose for which it was intended. Spam easily finds its way onto those kinds of group sites. Since libraries are representative of the entire community, they must make sure no inappropriate content is in place to keep themselves trustworthy in the eyes of the guardians of the community good.
If a library is already struggling to staff according to a growing workload and a shrinking budget, I believe one of the last things they should be spending time doing is monitoring a library wiki--and if a library has a wiki, they certainly ought to monitor it. It's all a matter of priorities, and I personally don't see a wiki as a priority.

de.lic.ious

My experience using various tagging and searching features on delicious was a positive one. I have had little experience with the tagging site prior to this class, so the things I did to fulfill the exercise requirements were all new to me. The interface is fairly straightforward after messing around with it for a few minutes. Most everything a person would want to do is accessible various ways from their personal main page. I enjoyed seeing so many fellow classmates' tags listed under the same tag as mine. It appeared that I tagged many of the same things as the others in my class and in other sections of the class probably due to the nature of google searching keywords to find material for the assignment.
While social tagging might seem to one person as a fun tool to help him or her stay organized, it is concealed well, as the main purpose is to connect people to each other through shared interests and discoveries. Delicious does a fantastic job of making either of these objectives possible.

Wikis

Question: Which of the library wiki examples did you consider most effective and why?

As I looked through the eight library wikis given to us as examples, I found the Ohio University’s Biz Wiki
to be most effective in terms of content, organization, and interface. The Ohio University Business librarian, Chad Boeninger, put a video of himself introducing the wiki and its content as the first thing one sees upon entering the site. I like the mix of media as well as the friendliness of the video aspect to draw a user into the site. The organization of his wiki is well done. The main links are at the top, quick links are at the bottom, contact information is on the left sidebar, and a meebo chat widget is made available for anyone who needs immediate assistance. The presence of the meebo widget shows that that the Mr. Boeninger is open and available to answer questions. The site even has a sidebar with tweets from all concerning the university library.

Marketing Critique: Multnomah County Library

The Multnomah County Library system in Portland, Oregon, which consists of 19 libraries, has a vast web presence that includes pages on Facebook and MySpace, a Twitter feed, and a readers’ blog.  They market themselves quite well on the web by using each of the primary social networking tools available. Instead of focusing on one or two of the sites, they have a well developed presence on each of them through which they are surely reaching many users.

The main Facebook page has 11,487 people who ‘like’ them. They post at least once a day and sometimes as much as two or three times. Their posts include photos, information about events, links to newspaper articles that would be of interest to users, and book or author suggestions. The info tab includes the main phone number and a link to the official social software policy; also included on a separate tab is an RSS aggregator to the blog. Many of their posts get comments, and when a user directs a comment to them, the library is quick to give an answer to the specific question asked. Users feel free to post photos to the library page, and the whole feel is very warm and quite like a community linking each of the individual branches.

The MySpace page seems a bit lacking with only 258 friends. Granted, MySpace is aimed at a younger audience, so fewer people would be likely to ‘friend’ an entity such as a library on MySpace. The last login to their MySpace page was over a week ago, the last blog post was in April 2010, and the last status update was in December 2009. There is great room for the Multnomah library to improve in the MySpace arena, though there are a number of helpful things present on the page, such as a link to contact information for reference questions, a link to subscribe to the e-newsletter, and general contact information. If the library were to devote more time to the MySpace page by reaching out and marketing events, conversing with friends, and updating photos, the page could be revived. In fact, the same things that are being posted on the Facebook page could easily transfer to the MySpace page for those users who prefer the latter venue.

The Multnomah County library’s Twitter feed is being followed by 1,892 people, which is an about average figure for an organization on Twitter. The feed is updated regularly throughout the day; today, for example, there have been five updates. Three of those five tweets were event notifications, one was a link to an article posted by the local newspaper, and one was a reply to a user that advertising their “ask MCL” service. The library is using a good mixture of ways to promote their brand through short tweets on Twitter, and they’re using it often. They dialogue with fellow tweeters consistently and answer questions. Their tweets are often retweeted, and despite the number of followers being on the small side compared to Facebook, they are doing a great job keeping up with their brand on Twitter.

The library has a blog that is unique but underdeveloped. I discovered the link by searching the website for ‘blog.’ As a follower of the library on Twitter and Facebook, I had not heard of the blog before I looked for it. The blog is called “An Embarrassment of Riches,” and it consists of short writings about materials the library has as written by library staff and guest bloggers. Blogs were posted six times in the month of September. There is a link to staff bios, and it appears that any person can blog whenever he or she feels so inclined. Most blogs have no comments, but a few have up to two comments per post. I think the idea of the Multnomah County blog is a solid and beneficial one, but the layout of the blog caused me great confusion. I found myself searching extensively for some sort of explanation for how the blog was organized and only found it when I scrolled down through the first page and into the second; once there, I found a short ‘about’ link that gave me little information about how the blog was run. Underneath the ‘about’ section is a link to a short ‘guidelines and disclaimer’ section that I think is a great addition to the page as it helps readers to know what is expected of the bloggers and commenters. It also links to the full Multnomah County Library’s social software policy statement.

The social software policy statement is brief but informative. It states that the library’s use of social software is “intended to create a welcoming and inviting online space where library users will find useful and entertaining information and can interact with library staff and other library users” (Social Software Policy, 2008). They have also smartly listed the things that will be removed if found in comments, including spam, threats, and images.

Overall, the Multnomah County Library has developed a strong online presence, but there is room for improvement. If I were hired as a social media marketing consultant, there are two things I would suggest they improve. The first area is in their MySpace presence, which is seldom updated and has few connections to friends. Perhaps they feel they do not have time to keep up with both Facebook and MySpace, the former being the one of the two that is done remarkably well, but I believe there would be nothing wrong with duplicating information from one site to the other. Users might overlap, but for the most part, I have found that people either prefer one site or the other, so most would not be irritated by the information being repeated twice. The second area for improvement is in the blog, which is a good idea but has not been marketed or organized well. The interface is confusing for something such as me who expects a typical blog layout. Advertising the blog posts through tweets and Facebook and MySpace status updates would go a long way in spreading the word about the great things being written there.

"Social Software Policy for Users." Multnomah County Library. 05 Sept. 2008. http://www.multcolib.org/about/pol-socsoft.html.

Libraries in Social Networking

Question: Do you think libraries should be building presence and providing services in MySpace and/or Facebook?
My answer: Absolutely!...given the circumstances of the site.

I believe that facebook has a great venue for libraries to build web presence and provide services through answering questions or connecting with users' concerns. Myspace, on the other hand, doesn't have me as convinced as a proper place to build a library presence. This is an example of what I think of as a bad, might-as-well-not-even-be-there-because-you're-embarrassing-yourself myspace page as built by a library. They have clearly used the features available to them, but in my opinion, that's not saying a lot. Myspace has not evolved to a place that is easy to personalize; shouldn't libraries be able to create a page as an organization as they can on facebook? To have to put an age, relationship status, and whether you smoke or drink is quite silly to me. I don't really know enough about myspace to say whether these features can be modified and this library simply didn't do it, but I do not think libraries have the proper venue to connect via myspace.
One could argue that any place users are present, libraries should be there as well. I would say this is false. If there is not an easy way for a library to look organized and respectable, they probably should not try to make their presence known on that site.
Facebook, on the other hand, allows libraries to make a page that is different from the ones individuals create for themselves. In this example, the Multnomah County Library does a great job of looking professional, organized, and giving contact information, photos, and status updates about events.
If myspace were to evolve and develop some of its features to be more organization friendly, it could go a long way in allowing libraries to be where their users are, but for now, stick to facebook all you libraries of the world.