LIS 9763

I’m in total agreement about how quickly this semester has flown by – shocking! Hard to believe this is my final blog post…but here we go with answers to the lucky 7 questions:
 
1.      Has your view of social software changed since starting this course? If so, how?
 

This week’s readings and case studies shed some valuable light on how libraries should be engaging their users through the use of familiar technologies. This topic came up in previous weeks when we touched upon things like Facebook, but there were many underlying issues with these types of technologies that prevented libraries from incorporating them into their organization. Thankfully, this is not so much the case with media sharing tools like Flickr and

So I was talking with my supervisor at work the other day and she asked me what this week’s topic was in my distance course. When I told her it was media sharing, she immediately wanted to know the following: Is this a good thing for libraries? This question caused a long pause in the conversation because, unlike with other social software tools, I didn’t have a definite answer at hand. Frankly, I’m not entirely convinced.

Media sharing is becoming an important part of libraries. As internet connections became faster, information was increasingly found in digital format, and people have gradually became used to experiencing knowledge and entertainment through the computer.

Perhaps I'm coming at this slightly biased, especially considering I've been deep in the thick of media sharing, but I think these types of tools have the potential to revolutionize librarian. I'm going to withhold mentioning my concerns about content quality as we address that in our project this week; but I do want to talk about how the tools themselves can be used.

According to Good  the biggest bonus of YouTube would appear to be promotion: YouTube is another area to connect with users, and let them know what we have available. There’s no question that our users are on it: the number one media sharing service to date, YouTube is practically a household name, much in the same vein as Google and ipod.

This week’s topic is one that I have only dabbled in before now.  I don’t have a Flickr account and I only go on to YouTube to watch videos, I have never uploaded anything.  Because of this I found it difficult to imagine how a library could use these applications to better promote itself.  After reading the articles especially the ones by Michael Stephens, Paula Webb and