Social Networking in Libraries

In many ways becoming a 21st-century librarian seems to be as much about proficiency with social technology as anything else. Among our tasks for this class, we're asked to subscribe to various professional blogs and podcasts through an RSS feeder, monitor the class on twitter, set up our websites and maintain blogs of our own. While Facebook has yet to be mentioned in the course, it's been an essential part of our initiation into library school from the moment we received our acceptance emails. The classmates we're connecting with now will be our colleagues in the very near future.

A lot of these social technologies are pretty new to me. I never bothered with MySpace, and I spent several months contemplating the merits of Facebook before deciding to join. I've blogged a little but never had a blog of my own, and RSS feeds somehow never quite seemed essential. Twitter is completely foreign to me. Still, as I begin to play with them, to "test the Web 2.0 waters" in Funk's words (2009), I see the potential for their use within an individual library and their absolute necessity in connecting to new generations of library users, as well as keeping up with the general library community. Our lives are so deeply intertwined online that it makes little sense for libraries to ignore the trends and technologies that are out there and in heavy use by potential "library members", to use Lankes' terminology (2011). (I'm so used to calling them patrons.)

Perhaps the biggest challenge I've already had is determining the life span of a blog, or wiki, or other piece of social technology. Some of the suggested blogs have migrated since they were added to the list while others have been (temporarily?) abandoned; the same is true of podcasts and wikis. As socially networked as we're becoming, why aren't we better at catching these gaps in information? Should we be?

Funk, Mark E. (2009). "Testing the web 2.0 waters". American Libraries. January/February 40(1/2), 48-51.

Lankes, R. David. (2011). The Atlas of New Librarianship (pp.5-6). Cambridge: MIT Press.

About Me

My name is Katrina Schell, and I have recently begun graduate studies in library and information science at Syracuse University's iSchool. Although I've worked in Hamilton College's libraries for a combined total of eleven years (four as a student assistant in the media library, seven in Burke Library), I spent most of them resisting the idea of becoming a librarian. The last thing I wanted to become was a cranky, people-shushing stereotype, even if I do like to wear my hair up! With year eleven completed and twelve waiting in the wings, I begin my quest to become the very thing I resisted - with significant adaptations, of course. I am so thrilled to be starting this journey with so many creative, interesting people. Together we will rock the library world, I'm sure!

At work I am best known for taking shortcuts over the circulation counter and spontaneously erupting into snippets of song, as well as actually using the range in our staff lounge to fry up large hunks of meat for lunch. I am a lover of tea, dark chocolate, reasonably priced wines, really nice incense and well-executed rituals of just about any persuasion. When I am not working I enjoy gardening, cooking, chessing (yes, I know chess isn't a verb - yet), journaling and daydreaming. I cherish the idea of one day becoming a renowned storyteller and half-way decent mandolin picker in addition to becoming a librarian.