A rant on institutional Facebook pages...

Something just set me off. It's not that rare that that happens, but it is rare that it annoys me enough to post here (not that I've abandoned this blog, I just use it mainly as a place to occasionally weigh in on topics of interest to me, not a regular publication.)

There is a hullabaloo going on at MPOW. The school has hired a firm to redesign our school logo, and put up a Facebook poll to allow students, faculty and staff to vote on the designs. I'm not going to put the pics up here, because this post is not about the redesign, the vote, or the wisdom of paying for a design firm to come in and do something you could have had your students do for next to nothing while simultaneously freezing/cutting the budget of almost every other department on campus. ::ahem:: Nope, not about that.

What it's about is this comment from the institution, posted on their Facebook wall, in response to the widely negative comments and criticism from users:

"We’re pleased to receive so much feedback – that’s why we’ve engaged you in this process. But this is a serious process, and an important institutional initiative. Please engage in your feedback in a constructive and professional manner."

This entire logo campaign is being run on Facebook. The poll is only available there (it's also flash-based and requires you to authorize an app to vote, but let's leave that alone for now...) I feel like we, as an institution, are coming into a place originally built for students, asking for their attention, asking for their patronage, asking to be allowed into their online space, and then telling them how they should interact with us there. That's not fair, imho.

If we, as institutions and companies, want to go out and "be where the users are", we have to accept that we can't always define the rules of interaction there. One of the first things I learned about online communities is that they all have their own (though often unspoken) codes of conduct. You don't get to communicate with people in what is generally an informal space, and then ask them to be formal. If you want to reach them there, you have to accept that there may be unfortunate consequences. People may be immature and unproductive. (Seriously, if you post a video on YouTube, people will say stupid and immature things about it eventually. Get over it. If you don't want to deal with that, don't use these platforms.)

Ok, I'm done ranting. For now.

Ennui, setting in...

I know I don't post much here anymore (and I know that the "why I haven't been posting lately" post is one of the blogosphere's most popular refrains), but I'm truly uncertain as to why this poor blog is experiencing such a dry spell. It certainly isn't from a lack of ideas. I think of topics to blog on all the time. In fact, I often compose eloquent (read:verbose) posts in my head while on the way home from work, or while trying to fall asleep at night. There's certainly a lot to talk about in the world of information, and I do a ton of professional reading, but for some reason once I'm in front of a computer, all my inspiration just peters out.

It's true that I've been extremely busy at work, but that's really no excuse either, seeing as I seem to find the time to check Facebook, IM with my peeps and read about a hundred rss feeds a day...

Maybe it is the echo chamber that is the library and tech blogging worlds, making me feel like I just don't have anything unique to say, or maybe it's the frustration of constantly defending the continued existence of my profession making me feel like i don't have anything interesting to say, or maybe, just maybe (and this is probably the most likely excuse) I am simply just too lazy to try and make sense of the sad mish-mash of triage efforts that my job has become.

At some point you become very disillusioned with all the wonderful, helpful things you could be doing for your patrons, because you are too busy trying to be all things to all people. That is the sad life of an 'Information Services' librarian. I mean, what *are* information services anyway? Pretty much only everything that goes on in a library. Sometimes doing a little bit of everything is a great way to keep from getting bored with your career, and sometimes it is just a recipe for feeling like you are constantly trying to move forward in all directions at once, a feat not easily accomplished, and sure to leave you exhausted on a fairly consistent basis.

OK, now I'm just griping, I know. So I guess you should just be thankful for my lack of posting, shouldn't you? I'm sure you have better things to do than listen to me complain... like checking your Facebook.

Why My Library Should Invest in Overhauling Its Online Presence

How is it that, in today's technological atmosphere, where users expect to be able to access virtually everything online (no pun intended, but a good one nonetheless, haha...) it is such a struggle to get the administration to realize the importance of our website? Why am I practically begging for them to at least provide me some support in my effort to streamline and enhance our digital presence, and to see our website as a branch of the library, offering all services the physical branch offers?

My justification to them for such an expense? Here goes...

First and foremost, the library’s website is long overdue for an update, ideally including a redesign. Although the redesign of any website inherently carries some risks, probably the most notable of which is making major changes to a resource that is already familiar to its users, the ever-evolving nature of the internet and the emergence of web 2.0[1] concepts makes an update desirable, if not necessary. Website success can often be traced back to several important concepts, including simplicity in design, logical organization and navigation, media richness, and interactivity[2]. In that vein, the new site should be more intuitive to navigate, and organized to facilitate ease of finding information for all levels of user experience. There should be a focus on technologies enabling communication and interactivity throughout the site, and access to resources and services should be seamless[3].

The chief goals of the new site would be:

- Optimize space on homepage
- Improve navigation
- Integrate web 2.0 technology (interactability)
- Clean up content
- Improve access to resources and services

These changes would make the site more intuitive to navigate, and support users of varying levels of expertise:

- Guided navigation for new users (on homepage only)
- Logical hierarchical navigation for normal users (on left-hand side of each page)
- Quicklinks – direct to resources – for expert users (on top right of every page)

The site would also make better use of web 2.0 technology, featuring a news blog to relay important information about the library and information resources in general. The blog would be updated regularly and be featured on the library’s homepage.

A library blog can be a very useful tool for reaching all of the academic community, not just regular library users. It can be used to draw attention to information about library services and resources that might otherwise be buried in the library’s regular website content. It will also act as a witness to how active and necessary the library is, and can promote the role of the library as an information source and guide even to those not currently using “traditional” library services, by also focusing on general web resources, services and applications. In other words, the blog will seek to make the library visible to faculty and students who have “forgotten” about it.

To better reach the students, care must be taken to keep current on what technologies they are currently using, and to integrate those technologies into library services. For example, instant messaging (IM) could be for reference, and social networking software (such as Facebook and Myspace) can be used for outreach and promotion.

Some guiding questions for integrating technology into library services:

- What technologies are the students and professors already using? Let’s bring the library to them (without investing in new technology just because it’s “new and cool”)…
- Can we find a way for professors to create course/subject pages with important links, or a way for professors to contribute to our “resources by discipline” (since they are the subject-specialists)
- Is there some way to allow users in general to identify relevant resources?

Another important issue is online access to library resources and services. The library currently uses a proxy server to authenticate off-campus users, and users also have to register with the library (with their student ID number) to receive a PIN to access certain services. Ideally, they could log in with their username and password and that would provide seamless access to all library resources and services.

[1] McFedries, P. (2006). The Web, Take Two. IEEE Spectrum, 43(6), 68-68. Retrieved April 2007 from the IEEE database.

[2] Palmer, J. (2002). Web Site Usability, Design, and Performance Metrics. Information Systems Research, 13(2), 151-167. Retrieved April 2007 from the Business Source Premier database.

[3] See ACRLog: Formula for Academic Library Success (http://acrlblog.org/2007/05/14/formula-for-academic-library-success/academic-library-success/academic-library-success/)

For my super-awesome powerpoint presentation for this proposal click here.

cyber schizophrenia

Managing my online identities has been a bit of a challenge for me lately. With all these cool web 2.0 apps out there, I really am finding it hard to keep track of it all... I find that just keeping up on my rss feeds and checking out all my social networking profiles is eating up a more and more significant portion of my day.

And as if that's not enough, the other day I had a bit of drama that had me back-tracking my internet steps for about an hour. Now, being the forward-thinking librarian that I am, I try to maintain a "professional" presence online (through this blog, as well as Myspace and Facebook pages, among other things.) But I also have a personal life online, and I work with members of the general population who I do not want knowing everything about me on such a personal level as some of my online entities allow. I generally try very hard to make sure there are as few as possible linkages between my professional and personal online personas. (Obviously I realize that a savvy user can track me down if they really want to, but still, I do my best to maintain a distance between the two...)

So the other day I decided to start writing a new library-related blog (which would allow me to speak as myself, instead of being the "royal we" of my library's blog that I maintain). All was fine until I foolishly went into my Technorati account and claimed my new blog under my old username (which I had used to claim my [very] personal blog). Duh. Super-duh. Because you see, I had included a link in this new blog to my work blog. Now when you looked up my work blog in Technorati, it showed that this new blog linked to it, and when you clicked on the author of this new blog, you saw it was also the author of my [very] personal blog (wow, that was a mouthful, huh?). So I spent the next hour unclaiming and unfavoriting blogs in Technorati so as to destroy the chain of association. Oh yeah, and I had to go into del.icio.us and un-share all my personal links, because this blog links to my blogroll through del.icio.us.

Is it me, or has my online life become incredibly more complicated than my real one?! I mean, I used to be one of those people who didn't really care that I was putting so much out there on the internet, because, really, who the heck was paying all that much attention to little old me? But then you read stories like this, and, little by little, paranoia starts to creep in.

At least I'm not the only one with web 2.0 fever... (And just in case YOU haven't caught it yet, check out The Cool Librarian's Social Software page, it's a great intro to some of the more popular 2.0 apps out there.) Oh, and speaking of cool web 2.0 stuff, if you haven't already seen this video, you NEED to check it out: