LIS 9763

There are two intertwined elements relevant to marketing, evaluation and social software that stood out to me this week while doing the readings. Firstly, social software offers a wide variety of services we can offer users to meet their needs so long as we are cognizant of this “meeting their needs” goal and market and evaluate our initiatives accordingly. Secondly, social software provides us with an array of marketing and evaluation tools we can use to help us ensure we are indeed meeting this goal in all of the services we offer, virtually and in real life. Thus, any way you swing it, social software is a pretty handy addition to the librarian toolkit.

In regards to my first point, about the services we can now offer to users using the variety of tools we have discussed throughout this course (and the many we have not), marketing and evaluation are of pertinent importance. As Sauers points out, these things take a lot of time to produce, promote and maintain. Unfortunately, as many of the examples we have looked at this semester highlight, in the long run they do not always draw a lot of attention from users or the staff who are supposed to maintain them. Therefore, there are a number of preliminary steps that I think are important to consider taking before diving into a new 2.0 project aimed at attracting, assisting and engaging library users. They include:
 

• Drawing up a marketing plan that explains what you are doing, why you are doing, and how. This can help you communicate your ideas to co-workers and administrators and thus get them on board (which is very important, as Coombs highlights). This can also help you develop your goals so that you have something that you can measure your success against and can thus work towards (as Owyang points out). Furthermore, it can help you get your ideas in order should you be approached by a user or local media outlet who has questions about your new 2.0 service. (As an aside, at McMaster, our Marketing, Communications and Outreach librarian [a valuable asset to the library, I might add], held a meeting recently explaining how to do a marketing plan and emphasized that everyone should be drawing these up when implementing a new service. Such practices should be the norm at all libraries if they are to be a relevant, effective and efficient institution that does indeed meet users’ needs through their services offered.)
• Taking a close and critical look at the needs of your user population, and what other libraries have done using the same tool(s) you have in mind. Conduct a needs assessment survey among your target population, do a literature review of relevant popular, scholarly and professional literature, and contact librarians who have undertaken similar projects and ask for advice.  
• Starting out small. Once you have the support of staff and admin, try out your idea as a pilot project and closely monitor whether or not users are receptive to it after you have made efforts to promote and educate them about your initiative (through, for instance, library newsletters, press releases, posters, a training session if applicable, online social networking, etc.).
• Not going it alone. Managing an entire initiative can be taxing on one’s time and does not ensure the longevity of an initiative since people’s responsibilities, workloads and jobs themselves tend to change fairly often in the library world.
• Allowing flexibility and risk, but with given parameters. I support including “terms of use” on sites that allow users’ contributions that clearly state that the owners of the site have the right to delete any content that is deemed inappropriate given the purpose of the site itself. However, I also do not think that users should have to wait for their contributions to be approved, nor should they be heavily moderated (as seems to be the case in the policy Haskell lays out), since this can limit freedom of speech and creativity and may discourage people from becoming involved.
   

While there is a lot to consider as regards the marketing and evaluation of social software initiatives, the good thing is these tools cater to means of assessment rather nicely. Though you cannot necessarily physically observe something’s use, the fact that many social software tools allow users to leave comments means that there are great opportunities to ask them for their feedback. Furthermore, as Owyang mentioned, with many tools you can, for instance, track who has linked to your site, see how many visitors you have had and how many have contributed, construct and conduct surveys to get people’s opinions, and so on. These tools are thus not only helpful in the evaluation of social software and its uses by the library, but in the evaluation of all library services.