Week 2 - How do LIbraries use Social Media

Media Sharing

This week we will take a look at the range of media sharing social media sites that are available. Media Sharing is a popular choice for many organisations that utilise Social Media to promote their organisation.

Media Sharing sites are those that allow you to share videos, photos and audio with people over the Internet.

I have split these into 5 subcategories:

Photo sharing 

Sites that allow you to share photos with your "friends" or those that follow you on the site. i.e. Flickr.com.

https://www.flickr.com/

Video sharing

Sites that allow you to share video files - the first one that comes to everyone's mind would have to be YouTube.com.

https://www.youtube.com/

Audio Sharing

By audio sharing sites I mean sites that allow to upload and share audio files, not just streaming from the Internet. These are sites that allow you to share audio files or music with those within your network. Soundcloud is a good example of this.

https://soundcloud.com/

Multi-media

Photo and video sharing at the one site. Most of the photo sharing tools also allow you to share video - Flickr allows both photo and video sharing. Many have come and gone over the years as social media has taken off and social networking tools like Facebook allowing both photo and video sharing.

DropShots is one that I came across:

https://www.dropshots.com/

Mobile

Mobile specific media sharing apps. There are a range of mobile apps for smartphones that allow you to share media direct from your inbuilt camera. Some are mobile specific and image or video specific, others just allow you to link in with your preferred social networking site. Mobile social networking and file sharing is a massive growth area, as more people are connected to the Internet with their smartphones and/or tablets.

Instagram is one that come mind instantly, but there are heaps more with new ones entering the sector all the time.

This is what Instagram looks like on the iPhone.

 

Social Media and Websites

when you browse the web, you will notice that many websites have social media as an integral part of them.

Here are just a few examples - and these are the first ones that I came up with - ALL incorporated social media.

 

 

https://www.facebook.com/CaseyCardiniaLibraries/?fref=ts

 

Here is CCLC's Facebook page as an example.

 

 

CLASS ACTIVITY

Find 5 Library websites and answer the following:

• Do they incorporate Social Media on their website?
• What  tools do they use?
• Was their Social media easy to find on the website?

Choose 1 organisation and tool and find their recent posts

What sorts of things did they post?

Does it show their organisation in a positive light?

 

Share your findings with the class.

 

You may complete this task in pairs if you wish.

 

 

Week 1 - Libraries and Social Media

What is Web 2.0?

Dictionary.com defines Web 2.0 as:

"a second generation in the development of the World Wide Web, conceived as a combination of concepts, trends, and technologies that focus on user collaboration, sharing of user-generated content, and social networking."

23 Things

I mentioned this in last week's introduction and it goes by a variety of names. The 23 Things; 23 Things for Library; Library 2.0; Learning 2.0.

This shows how social media relates to libraries and how libraries responded to this new Technology and new way of sharing information.

The aim of the program was to introduce library staff to the range of Web 2.0 tools that were available on the WWW.

The 23 things concept was developed by developed by Helen Blowers, the technology director of the Charlotte Mecklenberg Library. It was based on an article by Stephen Abram titled “43 Things I (or You) might want to do this year”, which was published in Information Outlook in February 2006. The project was designed to encourage library staff to learn about the new technologies available on the Internet.

The objects of the project were to:

• encourage exploration of Web 2.0 and new technologies by the PLCMC (Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County)
• Provide staff with new tools (that are freely available on the Internet) to better support PLCMC's mission: Expanding minds, Empowering individuals, and enriching our community.
• reward staff for taking the initiative to complete 23 self-discovery exercises.

Some of the specific tools that were targeted in the original 23 Things may have folded and gone to Internet Heaven, but the concept of exploration is very much relevant today and there are many updated lists of "23 Things" available.

If you take out the specific web sites - the 23 Things program involved Reading and Writing Blogs; Image Sharing; RSS Feeds; Cloud applications for Image creation/manipulation and Marketing; Micro Blogs; collaboration and authoring;  Video Streaming. 

The original 23 Things consisted of:

1. Read a blog posting & find out about the program.

2. Discover a few pointers from lifelong learners and learn how to nurture your own learning process.

3. Set up your own blog and add your first post to track your progress.

4. Register your blog on the site to begin your Learn & Play journey.

5. Explore Flickr and learn about this popular image hosting site.

6. Have some Flickr fun and discover some Flickr mashups and third-party sites

7. Create a blog post about anything technology-related that interests you this week.

8. Learn about RSS feeds and setup your own Bloglines or Google Reader RSS account

9. Locate a few useful library related blogs and/or news feeds using a blog search engine.

10. Play around with an online image generator and create some library marketing fun.

11. Take a look at LibraryThing and catalog some of your favorite books.

12. Explore Twitter and post some tweets.

13. Learn about tagging and discover del.icio.us (a social bookmaking site).

14. Read a few perspectives on Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and the future of libraries, and blog your thoughts.

15. Learn about wikis and discover some innovative ways that libraries are using them.

16. Add an entry to the wiki sandbox.

17. Take a look at some online productivity (word processing, spreadsheet) tools.

18. Explore any site from the Web 2.0 awards list, play with it, and write a blog post about your findings.

19. Explore CML’s own Tool Box of great Web 2.0 tools.

20. Discover YouTube and a few other sites that allow users to upload and share videos.

21. Discover some useful search tools for locating podcasts.

22. Take a look at the titles available on MOLDI and learn how to download audiobooks.

23. Summarize your thoughts about this

Here is the link to the original program!!

http://plcmcl2-about.blogspot.com.au/

and the original list of 23 Things

http://plcmcl2-things.blogspot.com.au/

The updated version includes Mobile tools.

http://23mobilethings.net/wpress/

http://23mobilethingsmn.org/

https://anz23mobilethings.wordpress.com/

http://tametheweb.com/2013/05/01/23-mobile-things-join-the-australian-new-zealand-course/

http://librariesinteract.info/2013/04/12/23-mobile-things-join-the-australian-new-zealand-course/

Other Links including some Australian experiences with Library 2.0. If you are interested you can read these and find out more about various programs.


http://www.vala.org.au/vala2010/papers2010/VALA2010_93_Stephens_Final.pdf


http://conferences.alia.org.au/alia2012/Papers/14_Kate.Bunker.pdf

http://librariesinteract.info/


Here a recent variation on the original concept.

http://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/23researchthings/

Stephen Abrams

Here is the link to Stephen Abram's blog site. If you are looking for a site to follow that relates technology and libraries, then this is a good one.

http://stephenslighthouse.com/

CLASS ACTIVITY 1
Which (if any) activities have you completed from any of the above "23 Things" lists?

Are there any in particular that you would add to your own list of  "23 Things"?

Social Media

Definition from Wikipedia:

Social media refers to interaction among people in which they create, share, and/or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks.

Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content."

Furthermore, social media depend on mobile and web-based technologies to create highly interactive platforms through which individuals and communities share, co-create, discuss, and modify user-generated content. They introduce substantial and pervasive changes to communication between organizations, communities, and individuals.

Categories of Social Media.

The number and definition of categories of Social media vary from article to article and can be anything from 5 upwards.

There are lots of text based lists of categories, but I personally LOVE a great infographic.

Here are 2 variations plus 1 for fun:

 

This graphic shows that there can be MANY variations on the social media categories.

The above shows a Simplified version (maybe!)

and sometimes cats can just explain things better....