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.

Overall, I found this week’s readings to be very helpful. Throughout the term, we’ve read and talked a lot about the different types of social software tools can benefit libraries. But this doesn’t mean that libraries should just go ahead and create accounts in every social software tool currently known to man. We need to have a PLAN. This is something that I think many libraries (and other non-profits) often forget. Before spending the time to create profiles and upload content, librarians need to sit down and clearly define what it is they want t

One thing I caught on with many of the readings, particularly Karin Coombs and Michael Sauers is that part of the marketing we need to do isn’t just towards our user base: we need to market any web 2.0 technology we wish to implement to our staff, and in a way I can’t help but think this may be harder to do than market to our users.

Web 2.0 applications allow for new ways of marketing. However, unlike traditional forms of marketing, it has a greater possibility of hitting large, geographically-scattered people rather than focusing on your target market.

Libraries are places that people frequent for learning and pleasure reading.  Many visit libraries as a way of continuing their education once they have completed formal schooling.  As learning facilities we need to ensure that we are equipped with the staff and learning tools to meet the expectations of our customers, as well as make them aware of what we have to offer them.

The marketing and evaluation of library services is definitely a challenging responsibility. As librarians, we are full of great ideas, and the enthusiasm to see them through to fruition. The tough part often comes in getting users to take advantage of our efforts, and this includes the introduction of Web 2.0 technologies into libraries. Unfortunately, simply creating a blog announcing new programs or a Facebook profile with links to various library services is not enough to maintain our relevance with users.

 Marketing and Evaluation - two topics that many of us struggle with in our positions.  We like to think that if we build these really cool 2.0 services that we "know" the younger generation of students are using - that they will indeed come.  Let's think about it - if the students are on facebook all day long - why wouldn't they use a library facebook presence to interact with us?

With week 12, we have "officially" finished looking at the actual tools of web 2.0, and we're moving on to reading/thinking about and discussing some of the issues around implementing these tools in libraries and information organizations. Many of you have already unearthed some of these issues over the past 11 weeks and discussed them in your blog posts. This week, I'd like you to take a step back and think about how you might market new 2.0 services and evaluate their effectiveness in an information organization.

I think that the biggest reason for libraries to be aware of and be active in social networking was reported just this Monday.  On Monday, Nielsen Online reported that blogs and social networking are consuming more online time than checking and writing personal email.  Ok, this does not have to be a large deal, but it does show that there is a large amount of people participating in social networking.  This environment is also free and fairly easy for libraries to insert themselves into as show by our case studies.  Social networking sites such as Facebook and myspace mo