Welcome to this month’s edition of the Libfocus link-out, an
assemblage of library-related things we have found informative, educational, thought-provoking
and insightful on the Web over the past while.
US Library
Survey 2022 Navigating the New Normal. Since 2010, Ithaka S+R has conducted the Library Survey on a
triennial basis with the overarching goal of tracking the perspectives,
priorities, and leadership strategies of library deans and directors at
four-year academic institutions. The results of their latest survey are now
out.
How
to get people to come to your library events. We've all been there. We've spent a lot of time and energy
organising our event, our workshop, our training session. And nobody or
virtually nobody turns up. This great short video from Angela Hursh offers some
simple advice to make sure this doesn't happen to you again.
In the latest episode of the podcast, Noelle
Knows Nothing, titled 'Yes, please touch the 500-year-old book, Noelle speaks
to John Overholt, Curator of the Donald and Mary Hyde Collection of Dr. Samuel
Johnson and Early Books and Manuscripts about life as a rare books librarian at
Harvard Library.
In The
Librarians are Not Okay, Xochitl Gonzalez speaks to librarians in the
United States about new laws that challenge what books librarians can buy and
put on shelves, for fear of facing personal litigation.
AI
in Higher Education: The Librarians’ Perspectives. An interesting survey of 125 academic librarians exploring
attitudes to the growing development of Artificial Intelligence Technologies;
whether to embrace or ban them and the effect they may have on students'
ability to think critically. Using ChatGPT to help write a paper and reference
software to automate citations, is this the new norm?
ChatGPT:
Implications for academic libraries. A brief study of the implications of AI tools for academic
libraries. We learn the rise of AI tools might lead us to an arms race as
Google and Microsoft add ChatGPT into their tools. Will academic discovery
tools do the same? An interesting thought is introduced – perhaps ChatGPT could
help speed up the development of OER textbooks and reduce the cost of education
for students?
Europeana
re-use - be inspired. This article highlights the creative ways artists, poets,
educators and researchers reuse Europeana’s digital cultural heritage. The
material on Europeana's site has inspired everything from educational videos,
problem-solving challenges created through the gamification of digital
material, robotic sea monster designs, poetic responses to artwork to collages
for greeting cards.
Building
the future intelligent campus. This guide from JISC looks at how many universities are
developing intelligent campuses in an effort to use data collection to improve
the student experience, business efficiencies and environmental performance. It
explores the benefits of this development, looking at how it is helping the
third-level education sector make better use of resources and facilities,
deliver more personalised services to students and improve their campus
experience. The guide also looks at the ethical concerns around data collection
and the questions that have and should be asked about how the data might be
used.
Guest post from Louise O'Shea. Louise is a Senior Library Assistant within Reader Services at the University of Limerick. Louise manages the library’s Instagram page and regularly contributes to the Glucksman Library's other Social Media platforms. Louise manages both the Every Seat Counts desk clearing campaign and The ARC (automated storage and retrieval system), the first of its kind onsite in a library setting, in Europe! Louise has presented on The ARC at the CONUL Conference and Innovation Day, and regularly presents to visiting groups. Louise is responsible for the employment of students and recognises their importance within successful library campaigns.
CONUL’s Training & Development Group in conjunction with CONUL’s Communications & Outreach Group devised a 1-day training programme called Making an Impact with your Library’s Social Media. The course was delivered by Cian Corbett in UCC on January 25th and was aimed at staff involved with or interested in the potential of social media to enhance their library services and users’ experiences.
The event saw over 50 delegates from Irish libraries spend a day in UCC Library’s Creative Zone in the Boole Library, discussing the impact social media can have for libraries.
The trainer’s opening gambit of the day discovered that about half the group LOVE Social Media but a handful also admitted to HATING it, citing reasons such as it being a “time thief” and it being a highly critical environment where even a misplaced comma can get you unwelcome criticism online.
In the first of the day’s group activities attendees were asked to list WHY brands use social media. An interesting discussion ensued, with a nice prize for the winning table. The benefits of Social Media Marketing were shown in one of Cian’s slides and it is not difficult to translate each of these to a library setting:
From Presentation
Increasing exposure by having an online presence in the same places as your audiences/customers i.e. on one of the contemporary student networks
Drive more traffic to your services e.g. your library website or LibGuides by generating awareness and visibility
Developing loyal fans by building a rapport with your clients and regularly talking to them on social media so that when you need to ask students’ opinion on something they are more likely to ‘know who you are’
Learn what your audience is interested in or wants to know more about by having a presence on a network where they want to chat
You can generate leads for your business i.e. get a student to attend one of your workshops by pushing your messages out to them regularly
Improve your search rankings by appearing on a range of platforms
Grow opportunities for collaboration with academics by relaying interesting library projects on your social networks
Put out your library views on topics relevant to your audience, placing you in an informed position relating to important matters
Improve sales of the things that your library sells e.g. the Cite it Right guide to referencing that UL Library sells in the library
Instead of a print-based (expensive) marketing campaign consider targeting your message to key audiences using a much cheaper social media marketing campaign.
The day was split in to four distinct sessions, each one dealing with a different social media platform. We began with Facebook, which owns WhatsApp and Instagram and the worlds top Social / Messaging platform.
From Presentation
The key takeaway from the Facebook session was the difference between paid versus organic content.
Only about 2% of your content will be seen by your followers unless you choose to do some form of paid advertising. Cian likened this to going in to an almost empty room to deliver your message. Many of the audience were stunned with this stat, our colleagues in the National Library of Ireland have done some paid advertising on Facebook and have seen some positive results from that. In addition to having a paid element to your Facebook advertising, Cian also told us that we need to create ‘thumb stopping’ content so that people will actually be entertained, educated or inspired, by library posts. About 14% of people have ad blockers enabled and this is partly because of the standard of content that appears on social media and the irritant that it poses for users. We are competing for the attention of busy people so our content has to be compelling and must either MOVE our viewer, TEACH them something new or REWARD them in some way.
From Presentation
Cian cited New York Public Library as a good example of how to use Facebook well for driving footfall to their library through their events. Their use of high quality imagery is also very good.
This brought us nicely to the highly visual Instagram platform. Photos have to be of good quality and as Cian pointed out, a photo should be able to talk for itself. You should experiment with different Instagram formats, such as adding multiple pictures you can scroll across like a panorama; creating Stories or be brave and give IGTV a go and consider doing polls to engage your users. You can use Buffer to prepare an Instagram story in advance, and it’s free Try putting borders on your photos to make them better. The Regram App allows you to share pictures seen on other IG posts but be sure to ask permission first and credit the creator. Cian highlighted some wonderful posts on the British Library Instagram page. It is well worth a follow.
When talking about Twitter Cian provided a comparative description between Facebook and Twitter Facebook are the people you know, Twitter are the people you’d like to know. Most people use Twitter because they’re looking for something to talk about, Twitter is the 'Now Network'. News breaks and spreads really quickly on Twitter making it an invaluable current affairs source. Twitter is also a very valuable research tool; for searching, problem solving and generating new business by getting new followers. It is also a useful way of gauging ‘sentiment’ - seeing what people like/dislike about you.
A question that Cian is frequently asked is how do I grow my Twitter followers? Here are some tips:
Follow people, they will follow you back – balance your ratio of followers 60/40
Get involved in conversations by looking up hashtags around a conversation
Do a Retweet and Follow competition on Twitter – gets you exposure and new followers.
Cian recommended that libraries emulate the @UofGlasgow on their Twitter feed where they are currently doing ‘reactive content’ around the film Mary Queen of Scots. He commented also that their use of Emojis was good too, semiotics being a great visual method of communicating. The lifetime of a Tweet is about 90 minutes; so if your resources allow it you could tweet once every 90 minutes to continuously appear in people’s newsfeeds. Anyone that finds themselves tight for resources to do social media work should consider using Buffer or one of the productivity tools; e.g. Hootsuite, that will allow you to schedule content in advance.
The final platform that Cian address was Snapchat. Snapchat is ephemeral, of the moment, content that disappears soon after being posted. Snapchat began as a youth movement and continues to be the most heavily used social network in Ireland by young people, perhaps because their parents don’t use it. While other social networks are used with sound turned off, Snapchat users consume content with the sound on. Snapchat is a closed network with over 150m daily users sending 9,000 snaps per second!
If your library is fortunate enough to have students or staff or if you have a regular Snapchat user, ask them to show you how to use it or read up on becomeablogger.com to find out more about Snapchatting. UL Library and Maynooth University are both using Snapchat to communicate with students.
The closing part of the day was all about how people define their vision for social media; devising a Social Media Strategy. Decide your overarching goal i.e. let your users know that the library is a place of refuge instead of telling them about the opening hours all the time. Add in an emotional element to your content. Cian recommended we marry our online metrics with your offline ones; see if your social media campaigns increase visitors to the building. Cian advocated for setting ambitious goals for your library’s social media.
The trainer gave a comprehensive overview of the social media landscape and provided easy to use take-home guidelines. Having completed this 1-day course, attendees should have enough information to allow them to devise social media plans for their own libraries. Cian asserted that the days of free social media are finished for advertising and reaching the correct audiences with our messages so in order to have impact he recommended careful use of a marketing budget to boost specific campaigns and have a team, don’t rely on one person fulfilling your library's Social Media requirements. If you are thinking of paying for advertising, it’s worth remembering that Twitter can be more expensive compared to Facebook or Instagram.
And finally, Cian recommended writing a tone of voice document for your institutional Twitter account and if your institution has a set of guidelines or a policy for social media you should use or adapt these.
Recommended resources:
Social Media Examiner is a US site that’s a great resource for checking trends, stats and content ideas
Erik Qualman produces interesting videos that are worth watching Social Media Revolution video
In 2011 Agder University Library (AUL) began our research support project. We saw that research support was carried out in different ways and was very dependent upon the liaison librarians. Also, the different faculties had different cultures when it came to use of the library. Our project’s main goal was to offer the same research support to all staff members in the university. Therefore, we decided that we shall contact all new academic staff members within a period of four weeks after they start working at the university. One of our ways of marketing this was making posters of each research librarian with bullet points of what they could ask the library, or the librarian about. This idea was inspired by an Erasmus stay at the Glucksman library at the University of Limerick in 2013. The posters were spread to new staff and displayed in the faculties and in the library.
Our research support project was successful, and most researchers know what the library can offer. However, our user survey showed us that few students knew about our subject guides, or that there was in fact a liaison research librarian supporting their subject. We decided to market ourselves again. This time with a younger, more whimsical approach to engage the students. We had avatars of the research librarians made and displayed these in the library shelves. The avatars are holding a poster with their names and the web address for the subject guides. As we are a small library with a limited number of staff, we try to make the students self-sufficient and decided to market the subject guides more than putting up contact information to the librarians. However, the website informs students that they can meet a research librarian in the help desk every day between 10 AM and 2 PM. We are excited to see if this will generate more use of our subject guides, and are also thinking about campaigns we could use the avatars for, like selfies/shelfies with your librarian, find your librarian etc.
Michelle Breen is a librarian at the University of Limerick. Michelle manages the library’s communications, conducts a range of assessment activities and performs research linked to customer service and quality initiatives in an academic library. Michelle has presented widely on information management and assessment topics and has had her work published in peer reviewed journals, conference proceedings and LIS practitioner literature. Michelle is an active member of the LAI, advocating for CPD for library staff and she acts as a moderator and content creator for the RudaÃ23 MOOC.
Picture courtesy of Elaine Harrington
The Chair of the Rare Books Group David Meehan of DCU welcomed an enthusiastic group of librarians and archivists to the Chester Beatty library on November 24th. The delegates from all over Ireland’s museums, archives and libraries, (academic special and public) discussed how to bring new audiences to Special Collections.
I am a member of the LAI and treasurer of the Western Regional Section so I know first hand the value of the contributions of the various sections within the LAI but I must confess this was my first Rare Books Group event. It won’t be my last.
I am also a member of CONUL’s Communications & Outreach group and I am very interested in Outreach and how libraries can become better at it.
I won’t repeat here all of the topics and talk titles from the programme, you can view a summary on Twitter at #RBGseminar17 or view the speaker details on the programme. What I found most interesting on the day was the different successful approaches to outreach that are being practiced in Irish libraries and archives.
Outreach is defined as "an organization's involvement in the community," so libraries who provide services to their external audiences are ticking one particular type of outreach box. However, outreach to traditional audiences could be considered a declining business. The traditional scholarly or academic community is moving online because that is where they expect to find the material they want for their research. Inreach, (which is outreach inside your organisation) could therefore become a significant strand in your library’s activities, engaging your most loyal supporters, already key stakeholders, in your collections and what you are trying to achieve through them.
Perhaps you’ve lost the outreach opportunity to the family historian with the growing dominance of Ancestry. But there are new audiences out there; children, teenagers, and young people for whom there is a resurgent interest in the past. Is it the 1916 factor? The public has an insatiable demand for history at present. Giving teachers, learners, senior citizens, and occasional users a helping hand in our libraries is crucial for libraries. With community impact highlighted through funding agencies such as the Wellcome Trust it is smart to think about outreach to these new audiences.
Picture courtesy of Elaine Harrington
How do we ‘do’ Outreach?
Doing outreach is hard when there are physical barriers in the way of your collections. The very thing you want to show off is under lock and key, so consider your audiences as if they were going to be guests in your home. Send them an invitation, make the environment welcoming, provide a hot or cold drink, give them Wi-Fi and access to the bathrooms. They are your guests!
Run a lunchtime lecture, don’t be afraid that only 5 people will turn up, they WILL tell their friends, and you will get more people the next time. Consider carefully where you host your event, the hard to access parts of your campus or building or town might provide mystery and intrigue to your audiences and they might be thrilled to be there. Do good signage, promise them coffee and they will come. Plan your event carefully and you will naturally find the collaborators you need.
If you are in the glorious position of being able to design a seminar space, like the beautiful seminar room in Chester Beatty Library, then ask your audiences what they’d like to see in there. Make it clear what you can offer them, what they are getting when they come. If you are ever in need of advice about Outreach and how to do it well I recommend you tap in to the expertise of the Rare Books Group of the LAI. I am sure that their chairperson David Meehan can steer you in the right direction or you can ‘reach out’ to them through their Twitter account or their webpage.
Keep up the good work everyone at LAI RBG! Go raibh maith agaibh.
Michelle Breen is a librarian at the University of Limerick. Michelle manages the library’s social and digital communications channels, conducts a range of assessment activities and performs research linked to customer service and quality initiatives in an academic library. Michelle is also responsible for liaison with university alumni and corporate library members.
Michelle has presented widely on information management and assessment topics and has had her work published in conference proceedings, LIS practitioner literature and in the ISI journal, PORTAL; Libraries and the academy.
Data from IPSOS MRBI indicates that Snapchat is the highest daily used social messaging platform in Ireland. A large percentage of incoming third-level students will already be Snapchat users and this presents our libraries with an open communications channel on which to engage with this most important student group.
The University of Limerick’s Communications & Marketing division uses Snapchat in a targeted way to engage prospective students and reach new students arriving on campus. Emulating UL’s model the Glucksman Library began using Snapchat in the academic year 2016/17. A student posted updates several times a day on behalf of the library. The content was themed and the librarian responsible for communications guided the student regarding tone and message.
Universities use Snapchat as part of their communications strategy and a growing number of libraries are using Snapchat for student communications. The Glucksman Library’s Snapchat account added an extra dimension to the library’s communications and was used to highlight specific library services and to proactively address questions received on the online query service (QuestionPoint). Students were invited to screenshot certain snaps that contained detailed information, that they could continue to use from their own phones e.g. how to change a password and Study Skills and Time Management information. Snapchat was also used to advertise ‘Citing & Referencing’ classes and ‘How to be Smart Online’ classes run by UL’s Student Engagement & Success Librarian, Michael Smalle. When exams were approaching students were told about additional study spaces on campus and the details of the desk clearing campaign (Every Seat Counts) were explained in detail via this very student-friendly mobile app.
Concurrent information campaigns ran on Facebook and Instagram but students at the Glucksman Library really welcomed the updates via Snapchat. Feedback from students about the library’s Snapchat was that it was informative, yet witty, which made them want to keep up to date with what was going on. Information and support was provided in a helpful but engaging tone. A LibQual comment in 2016 said that the Snapchat account was appropriate in its tone; “Excellent service, great staff and hilarious snapchats!! Some students snapped back to say thanks for posting certain content or for highlighting services that the library provided. Within the University’s Social Media Community there was a good deal of interest in how the library was using Snapchat. The UL Social Media Officer complimented the library’s use of Snapchat and remarked that the tone was appropriate and there was an impressive level of interaction on it. The usefulness of Facebook posts aimed at students is currently under review at the Glucksman Library while Instagram and Twitter both have strategic focus areas also.
Snapchat is an emerging, mobile only platform and as such has constraints such as limited analytics and the need to create live content which disappears after 24 hours. Although Instagram and Facebook now have elements of the ‘story’ in their apps the content from Snapchat is not usually suitable for cross platform sharing.
Snapchat can give your library a direct and relevant communications channel with your students. If you decide to introduce Snapchat in your libraries I’d recommend that you try and maintain an informal yet helpful tone in your Snaps. This seems to be what students liked about it at the Glucksman Library. If you can, use a peer voice on your Snapchat account. In our case we were targeting undergraduates so we used an undergraduate student to run the account on our behalf. Despite media reports about Snapchat being on the wane, I believe there is untapped potential for it as a communications medium in academic libraries. By growing your Snapchat followers and even scheduling Q&A sessions via Snapchat you can have real engagement with your incoming students this year.
Below is a verbatim account of one side of a debate which proposed that 'This house believes that invisible librarians have contributed to the post-truth era'.
Ladies and Gentlemen, fellow debater, moderator and distinguished guests I am here to convince the house that invisible librarians have contributed to the post-truth era.
When it comes to invisible librarians, I can literally say ‘I wrote the book’ which is on sale tonight at a bargain price, come and talk to me later – sales pitch over!
I feel I need to clear up a few concepts here. Invisible meaning ‘not seen’. Post-truth era meaning circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. The president of Harvard University Drew Faust described it just last month as an era when “evidence, critical thinking, and analysis are pushed aside in favour of emotion and intuition as bases for action and judgment”. Much talk of fake news has amplified the fear around a post-truth era. We are living in unprecedented times where there have been significant social and political upsets, in the USA a president was elected with no previous political experience or political position. He is, in the words of Noam Chomsky “a showman”. In the UK the people voted to leave the European Union.
Both upsets are linked to fake news, where the ultimate headline ‘We send the EU £350m-a-week let’s fund our NHS instead, vote leave’ was everywhere and was believed to be true. Such headlines gave people hope and people vote for hope. Some people and some politicians are opportunists and they have always lied and will continue to lie. Post-truth, misinformation, disinformation and propaganda have fuelled many political campaigns, however the difference today is that the Digital Age we are living in has allowed the news and the story to be amplified. Fake news is churned out as fast as it is retracted, but nobody reads the retractions. One exception to this is a French newspaper, Le Canard Enchaine, whose editor refuses to make the paper digitally accessible.
The editor argued that when the Internet came along other newspapers made content available online and pushed out alternative facts only to retract them later. They found that it was the only way to keep sales figures up, by selling fake news. Le Canard continues to be only available in print. This is in a country which values freedom, equality and democracy. A country which brought us the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789, a fundamental document in the history of human and civil rights with a major impact on freedom and democracy.
Last year at a health conference I heard a professor of organisational behaviour and a leadership thinker (Gianpiero Petriglieri) state the following: “Whoever controls the story, controls the people”. If we take democracy to be an acceptable and equitable way that people have a say in how they are controlled, by casting their vote and by electing a government to represent them, then what we all need to ask is “who is controlling the story?"
Professions in academia and in the press are exercised about the post-truth era. Why? Because it is touches our values. What has any of this got to do with librarians? We share values with scholarship and the press – the value of intellectual honesty – in other words - truthfulness and we have a social responsibility to uphold our values.
“We are living in a time of universal defeat when telling the truth is a revolutionary act” (G. Orwell). Librarians have largely been invisible and apart from the fact that it is leading to the demise of the profession, it is also leading to the distortion of the truth. The truth is something that cuts to the core of our profession. Veritas is our raison d’être. Librarians are defenders of intellectual freedom, of rational decision making and of democratic values. We are defenders of the truth. If we remain invisible, and if we remain neutral, arguably so will the truth.
We are invisible in the following ways: by remaining neutral, through staffless libraries, by having low social media presence and by continuing to market the ‘library’ over the ‘librarian’.
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT… NEUTRALITY. There is nothing neutral about librarianship, as Wendy Newman a Senior Fellow at the University of Toronto has said ‘Librarians are anchored in values’ and our values are democratic, not neutral. She says librarians are rooted in timeless values. I agree with David Lankes, Director of the School of Library and Information Science at University of South Carolina when he says "Good librarians aren't neutral: they are principled". The underlying principles of both journalism and librarianship are to be truthful. According to the IFLA Code of Ethics, we have a social responsibility to society and to individuals to assist people in finding information, factual information, peer-reviewed research.
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT… SOCIAL MEDIA. Many Librarians in Ireland are invisible on social media. I can count on one hand how many health librarians are on Twitter. My esteemed colleague and immediate past president of the LAI is equally invisible on Twitter. I found a Philip Cohen intern but I don’t think that was you. There is no excuse left in the book for librarians to remain invisible on Twitter, believe me I have heard them all.
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT… STAFFLESS LIBRARIES. Let’s be clear that a library without any visible staff is a reading room. Equally a digital library without any visible librarians is just a gateway. The link is not being made in the general public or among the majority of library users/non-users about what it is that librarians do and the library – be it physical or digital. Our skills are largely un-communicated, misunderstood and invisible. We need new service models where the visibility of staff and staff skills are clear for all to see and to understand. It is not just our skills but our values and we need a revolutionary act to start communicating what these are.
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT... MARKETING. Why we continue to market the library over the librarian is beyond me. Certainly in the case of public libraries I can see a rationale, but not for other types of libraries. Yes I’m talking about academic libraries, yes I’m talking about special libraries, yes I’m talking about health libraries. The shift in emphasis needs to move from ‘library’ to ‘librarian’ otherwise our profession and the values that we hold high will remain invisible. We need to guide people to the truth through education and empowerment. Information literacy is one of our core skills, we need to start telling people this is what we are about. The ALA defines IL as “The ability to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information." This is where we add value, this is part of our social responsibility, this is most likely one of the reasons we became librarians in the first place. If people don’t know about what it is that we do, if they can’t see it, they won’t value it. And we want people to value the truth don’t we? And we want people to value librarians, don’t we?
Michael Moorewho brought us the film ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ said ‘I didn’t realize librarians were, you know, such a dangerous group. They are subversive. You think they’re just sitting there at the desk, all quiet and everything. They’re like plotting the revolution, man”.
Our revolution is to hold our values high, to take part in revolutionary acts, in this time of deceit and to rebel against untruths and most important of all, to be visible.
CLOSING ARGUMENT We need to market our skills, talk about our value, become highly visible and defend the truth. We must empower people with the skills to critically appraise information and give them the confidence not to believe everything that they read.
We have heard about grey areas, but the truth is not grey. It can be ugly and it can be beautiful, but it is never grey. The truth illuminates, the truth is worth defending and upholding. As librarians we have a unique position in society to speak the truth, to uphold the truth, to defend the truth and ultimately to control the story.
If you Google a concert venue or search for it on Google Maps it will display information about the venue in a Knowledge Graph card. Aside from basic information like contact details, opening hours and location the most useful cards also include information on upcoming events. Libraries have the potential to do the same. You can look up the example of the New York Public Library.
Making event listings available to Google is low-hanging fruit in terms of library marketing. Libraries are prolific when it comes to event hosting. You could go to see the Ruzbihan Qur’an exhibition at the Chester Beatty Library, join a chess club in Cork or practice Tai Chi in Dún Laoghaire. If libraries supplied authoritative, structured linked data about their events, much in the same way that they do about their collections, it may well improve the discoverability of a hugely important service.
There are three ways that you can mark up event listings:
1. Rely on a ticketing service, e.g. Ticketmaster (which is not always going to be an option)
2. Embed event data type markup directly to the event listings
3. Use a markup-compatible events plugin or widget on your website
Regardless of the surface approach the basic activity is the same: you are feeding Google structured data that it can use. Google recommends JSON-LD. JSON-LD tags the parts of the website that are important to Google’s Knowledge Graph. With JSON-LD the markup is placed inside a script tag in the head of the HTML page, which makes it relatively easy for humans to use. The script tag looks like the outline presented here.
A week ago I published a post on the effects of sharing research on social media. Now, one week after, I have taken a new look at the downloads to see the duration of the effect, my assumption is that it will diminish quite fast...
For the first article which started off with a low number of downloads, but with the most impressing increase, 900%, there was another 2 dowloads during the second week. A small number but still a 50% increase from the original number of downloads for the first 8 weeks. For the second article, which had a bigger number of downloads already after the first 8 weeks, there was a more "modest" increase in downloads during the first week of sharing, 258%, there hasn't been any new downloads at all the second week.
My reflection is that the effect of sharing research on social media is quite limited in time. Already after a week it has "disappeared" in the flow of information if no actions is taken. My recommendation is that if you as a researcher, or as a librarian, share OA articles on social media you can expect a real effect in number of downloads, but it will be short-term. Therfore there is an opportunity to duplicate or rephrase your post after a month or so. But do not overdo with the risk of beeing repetitive!
As a part of my blogposts on "reflective librarianship" I have now focused my interest on testing if my own social media apperance "BusinessLib" influence, and if so to what extent, the research communication of OA published research articles in our digital repository DiVA.
First I selected two different articles published by researchers from JIBS in DiVA. The two articles where published as OA in mid April and the difference between the two was that the first one had nearly none (4 downloads) after 8 weeks and the second one had have a more successful start (26 downloads) after 8 weeks.
My experiment was to see if I published information about the articles (article title, hashtags, a photo of the authors and link to the fulltext) on my "BusinessLib" social media channels (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) would that effect the number of downloads for the articles one week afterwards?
Actually, I was a little suprised! It seems that my action had a real impact on the diffusion of the research articles. The first article moved from 4 downloads 8 weeks after publishing in DiVA to 36 dowloads (+ 900%) in DiVA just one week after my publishing on social media. The second one which started out on higher level moved from 26 downloads 8 weeks after it has been published in DiVA to 67 downloads (+ 258%) only one week after I had shared it on my social media channels.
My thoughts on this:
Social media increases the impact of research results
Hashtags and a link to fulltext gets downloads
Research communication is an important part of a researchers work
As a librarian I can be part of the diffusion of research
What is your thoughts on this small and simple experiment?
“We really need curated content. We need curators. And this is where DJs like our John Peels’ Dave Fannings’ and Dave Couses’ come into play. They listen to the music. They decide what they like. They play it. We listen. And hopefully learn and branch out and educate ourselves from there.”
This struck a chord with me (no pun intended) as at the start of March, I launched a collaborative blog called BALLYROAN READS which features book reviews written by library staff, as well as posts about new and forthcoming books, and entries highlighting individual books with categories such as #brilliantbooktitles. Blogs, as Thomsett-Scott (2014) states “are one of the most established social tools on the web and are still incredibly valuable for marketing and outreach” (p.12). It is in this vein that each book reviewed or mentioned is linked back, where possible, to our librarycatalogue so that if the post has caught the reader’s attention, they can reserve a copy with ease.
Since starting it, I’ve received a lot of feedback from patrons, delighted that such a thing exists. I’ve also gotten a lot of posts from different countries, most notably the US, which is great in terms of expanding our library’s reach. As such, I’ve received a lot of comments, and have interacted with every single one, where possible starting (and maintaining) a conversation directly with our patrons and providing a reference/recommendation service to those outside of our catchment area, building on Rossman & Young’s assertion that social media offers “the opportunity to listen to users, to engage at point-of-need, and to build community” (2015, p. 541).
What’s important, and marketable, is the notion of library staff as curator. We already fulfil such a role – we decide which books to buy, to put on display, to shelve in closed stacks, or to wear out, however, we can make this more visible to our patrons by undertaking another role as curator; the critic. Library staff are always asked their opinions on books (“Have you read it? What kind of books do you read? Can you recommend me something to bring with me on holiday?) so this is a good way to put this knowledge and expertise into a concrete format. Importantly, the blog stems from the notion that we are reviewing books we actually read, no matter what they are, leading to a great variety of reviews, from cookbooks to history books to film books to poetry collections, from romance novels to graphic novels to literary fiction. Staff have also enjoyed letting their creative (and critical) side out with some happily stating that it encourages them to read more.
The blog, however, was designed with staff’s busy workload in mind. As such, each staff member, of whom eight contribute, writes a 250 word review per month, which for comparison in this post was about halfway through the fourth paragraph, with myself manning the other posts and the feedback. What strikes me is how easily replicable this format would be, and how beneficial that would be to both patrons, who are always looking for something good to read, and library staff, who are also always looking for new ways to market their stock.
Guest post by John West . John is a Customer Services Champion at Brunel University and has worked in Libraries of one sort or another since 1986. His interests include listening to long playing gramophone records and doing weird stuff in libraries.
It’s a cold, dark November night in 1978. Four unpretentiously dressed young men take to the stage in the Kingdom Room at Brunel University and start up a gloomy, industrial motoric as morose and unwelcoming as the winter weather outside. The audience bristles with discomfort at this strange new post-punk noise. There’s a bit of truculent booing. A few people even start, as was the custom of the day, to spit at the musicians on stage. The band and the audience endure this charade for about five songs and then all seem to arrive at the same conclusion simultaneously, and the boys grudgingly call it a day.
To add insult to injury, as the musicians are making their ignominious way from the stage, the drummer trips over a cable and falls flat on his face to yet more derisive laughter and abuse. "I see you are not educated down south..." comes the defiant Mancunian farewell from the slightly crazed looking, hollow-eyed skeleton of a figure who’s been trying to sound like David Bowie impersonating the singer from The Doors all evening whilst dancing around like an epileptic. His name is Ian Curtis and his band is called Joy Division.
That same night, if you’d stuck around, you could also have seen two other bands; Derry’s The Undertones, and Glaswegian new wavers The Rezillos who had recently stormed the charts with an insanely catchy song called ‘Top of the Pops’. The passage of time has probably turned that bill upside down: headliners The Rezillos were ultimately little more than one hit wonders whereas the poorly received opening act have achieved near legendary status down the years. All in all, not a bad night out for £1.20.
This is just one example among many fabulous music nights that have taken place here at Brunel over the last 50 years. From the epic late sixties all-nighters booked by our students union at such prestigious London venues as the Roundhouse and the Royal Albert Hall, through the anarchy of punk and the heyday of the ‘do-it-yourself’ pub rock ethos, all the way down to the likes of the Stone Roses, the University has been a magnet to some of the biggest names in rock and pop history. Fleetwood Mac, Deep Purple, Elton John, The Kinks, The Stranglers, The Sex Pistols, The Specials, UB40, The Pretenders…that’s just a short list from the top of my head of the kind of bands who were part of the student experience way back when. And many of them *didn’t* get booed off!
As part of the University’s 50th birthday celebrations, Brunel Library and Media Services staff have been working with the current students union and a handful of former students to compile as complete a history of Brunel’s unique musical heritage as we can. We’ve set up a blog and a Facebook page to document the work we’ve done so far. The Facebook page in particular has provided a fabulous outreach opportunity and through it we’ve been able to incorporate a lot of eyewitness accounts into our history which will hopefully make for a really unique social document.
Our aim is to have a fairly complete timeline of who performed where and when ready for the summer. Then, in early July, the University will be playing host to a large gathering of alumni during the main anniversary celebrations and we’ll be helping to stage an event called ‘Brunel Rocks’. There we’ll be presenting the research we’ve done and hosting a discussion about Brunel’s live music scene with those who made it happen – we’re hoping there might even be one or two well-known names there to join the reminiscences and maybe even perform a couple of numbers too. We’re ultimately hoping that over time we can make the blog a resource that’s searchable by date and artist and one that can become a lasting record of our University’s rich musical legacy.
This was an article I wrote for "Global Focus - The EFMD Business Magazine" about major changes for business school libraries, the librarians working there and what the future might bring.
The article was divided into four different themes:
1. Collections
I have a discussion about the library as an place for printed books but also e-books and the pros and cons for the different formats which I think will complement each other for still some time. There is also some thoughts on the development of collections based on the librarians competence (subject specific), cooperation with researchers or teachers and new acquisitions models such as PDA (evidence based acqusitions).
2. Technology
Very much based on the technology shift from printed source to e-resources but also discovery tools, subject guides, OpenURLs and remote access to resources 24/7 from all over the world.
3. Services
Here I talk about the social library and the importance of getting connected through different networks. Even though users have remote acces you can't let go of personalized services such as specific services towards researchers, learning environments for students and social media.
4. The librarian
My thoughts here gives examples on how to strenghten end develop the librarian profession. Closer cooperation with researchers, more strongly integrate user education with subject courses, using paper.li to be able to move from directing towards sources and instead create Daily's with interesting content that promote knowledge sharing.
If you want to read the whole article please click here.
In the United States the first-sale doctrine (also known as the right of first sale) limits the rights of the copyright and trademark owners, and protects the distribution chain, library lending, video rentals and secondary markets for copyrighted works (like used bookstores or used record stores) - by providing rights to the purchaser (and owner) of a physical copy of a work to distribute that physical copy as they see fit. However, the first-sale doctrine does not hold for digital objects because there is no transfer of a physical copy from the copyright owner to the purchaser.
Thus, the resale of ebooks does not have legal protections in the United States. So, Amazon's attempts at making a used ebook marketplace seems ambitious. A used ebook marketplace would require new interpretations of the doctrine of first sale, to allow ebook purchasers to become owners and resell their copies.
Amazon seems to be willing to provide the copyright owner a percentage of the sale, which may earn them support (or at least less ire) from publishing companies. Also, Amazon hopes to make ebooks more like print books by removing ebooks from the seller's inventory once the book has been sold, even though ebooks are copies of an original publisher-owned digital file. One could in theory continuously copy and disseminate an ebook over and again, retaining their file. Amazon's forceful removal of the copy from the seller's inventory might persuade copyright holders that some other individual or entity is not repeatedly profiting from the reproduction and sale of the ebook.
However Amazon manages (or doesn't) to set up its marketplace with the acquiescence of publisher and the support of the law, it will be interesting to watch how Amazon and its used ebook marketplace will challenge information policies. And I'm hopeful that I can clear out my Kindle library, and get a few cents for new books.
"eBooks can now be read on a large variety of devices" by Per Palmkvist Knudsen, CC BY-SA 3.0.
We are sort of just over half way through our term break and some of you might have spare time to tune into some of the upcoming webinars listed below. The suggested topics for August cover collection development, library user engagement, library advocacy strategies, and oral history services.
Collection Development Tips and Tools Thursday, 6th August, 19:00 – 20:00 IST
Join Library Journal, Ingram Content Group, and special guests for a lively discussion about Collection Development. We’ll have a dynamic discussion about the challenges Selectors face – from predicting popular titles in advance, to dealing with patron demands, to staying on top of titles in the media and much more. Our expert panelists will have some solutions for many of these challenges, and we hope you’ll join the discussion!
As an aside, JISC have just created a new email list to discuss collection management issues (shelving, stores, gifts, policies, relegation, CCM tools, etc.). See LIS-COLLECTION-MGMT for details.
Individual Programs: Anything but Passive Tuesday, 11th August, 22:30 – 23.30 IST (no registration required)
Individual programs have been called many things (self-led, passive, proactive, and more), but one thing remains the same – these are a great way for any library to encourage interaction from people who may not normally attend programs while using less library resources and staff time. Join us for an interactive webinar where you will help lead the discussion. Bring your questions, your previous successes, and even your failures to share with others! Learn how to give your patrons a voice and participate on their own time, regardless of the size of your location or budget (provided by the Colorado State Library).
Because Advocacy Never Stops: New Tools for Taking Action Thursday, 13th August, 19:00 – 20:00 IST
This webinar will highlight free, newly revised downloadable materials for public libraries distilled from landmark advocacy and awareness-building programs. Learn about two resources scheduled for release in summer 2015: updated curriculum from Turning the Page including tools, worksheets and training materials you can adapt locally to grow your team’s advocacy knowledge and abilities; and a new online guide that walks through each step of planning and carrying out a local library awareness campaign modelled after Geek the Library. Hear from library leaders who have put these ideas to work to build advocacy know-how, increase staff confidence, and engage more deeply with the community. Whether you are looking to get started, or seeking to maintain momentum following a recent advocacy effort, join us to discuss strategies to take your library to the next level.
Oral History @ Your Library: A Beginner’s Guide Monday, 31st August, 18:00 – 19:00 IST
Are you interested in fitting oral history into your library’s repertoire, but don’t know where to start? This one-hour webinar will provide an introduction to the ways in which libraries can use oral history for everything from collection development and programming to community engagement. We will begin with the basics — what is oral history? What does it contribute? — and also offer programming ideas for all ages, information about related technology (what type of equipment to use in which circumstances), and a wide range of resources for those who would like to follow up on the topic. At the end of the webinar, participants should have a better idea of how they might be able to utilise oral history in their libraries, and they will have a basic sense of what steps they would need to take to implement that vision.
"To be a librarian is not to be neutral, or passive, or waiting for a question. It is to be a radical positive change agent within your community.” ― R. David Lankes
When asked to write about radical librarianship, my mind naturally began thinking about how to approach the topic - should I sketch a history of radicalism in libraries, deliver a polemic on the value of professional radicalism, or showcase the wide variety of interpretations the term enjoys in libraries today? I was confronted by a nebulous topic - difficult to define, let alone espouse the various merits and demerits of - and ultimately came to the conclusion that a through-line was required from which to sally forth and return to as I wrote. Like many things, you see, radicalism exists on a spectrum of intensity along which you will find extremes of both imperceptible disobedience and full-scale revolution. Though they vary in their commitment, each point on the spectrum shares a common devotion - sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but always depending on who you ask about it - and that is a devotion to change. Radical librarianship is no different.
Firstly, what makes radical librarianship radical? What does radical mean? Briefly put, something described as radical can be characterised by its deliberate departure from convention - usually by way of vocal criticism and direct action. Radicalism is also usually positioned as reactionary and most often operates in direct opposition to an existing mode of operation - after all, something is only radical by comparison.
In the case of libraries, this radicalism can often manifest itself as an outspoken critique of current best practices and a call for the reform of some aspect of libraries, writ large, at the structural level. Examples of the issues radical librarians are most occupied with - though are not limited to discussing - include the increasing commodification of libraries, the ethics of classification and collection development, and the role libraries play in supporting or disintegrating communities. Outside the realm of mere debate, this kind of radicalism can also manifest itself as autonomous library projects, outreach programmes directed at fringe or countercultural communities, and the provision of information resources to activists.
Though many of these examples may seem misguided, scary or generally undesirable to you, your library or your community, it is important to focus on the principles guiding them when thinking about whether to adopt radical measures or not. Examine your mandate, your services, your collections, and your policies - are any of these either accidentally or deliberately exclusionary? Remember that discrimination doesn’t always come in neat, stereotypical packages - it can be subtle, pervasive and especially difficult to self-identify.
Examine your community and the groups operating in it as thoroughly as possible - open up a dialogue with these groups and listen to their feedback on the services you provide (and how you provide them). Examples of networks to concentrate on include migrant, homeless and LGBTQIA+ communities, labour movements, local artists, environmental groups, and advocacy groups for the elderly or disabled.
If you cannot affect change in your own library, consider other options for bridging the gap between what can be done and what needs to be done - offer your personal expertise to groups on any upcoming projects; volunteer at local events; start up your own research or information service or help out with an existing one; start up your own community archive or help out with an existing one; broadcast the services your library does offer and suggest ways for these groups to best use them.
I can speak in only basic terms to most of these issues, but thankfully smarter folks than I have given this a lot more time. While Ireland is sorely lacking a radical pedigree in the area of information politics - at least formally and to my admittedly-limited knowledge - much ground has been gained by librarians abroad looking to spread the Good Word. Here are some examples of players I have come across (again, in my nascent and West-centric experience) and what they’re about:
http://goitalonetogether.ca/2011/09/04/378/
United Kingdom
56a Infoshop- The 56a Infoshop is a volunteer-run, 100% unfunded DIY-run social centre in Walworth, South London.
We are a resource for local people, campaign groups and projects as well as selling books, zines, music and t-shirts. We have an extensive radical archive of international info with hundreds if not thousands of publications that we have saved over the last 16 years of being open.
We are part of a larger Social Centres Network in London and part of a global network of Infoshops, autonomous spaces, projects & people dreaming and working for a better world.
We share the space with Fareshares whole foods co-op and a free D.I.Y bicycle repair space. Stop by for a read, to fix your bike, buy some veg, to check the squatters' bulletin board or just for a cuppa.
Radical Librarians Collective- There is no central committee running RLC. The collective grew organically out of conversations between like-minded library workers, and its membership continues to be fluid and evolving. You don’t even have to be a library worker to be part of the collective, and you definitely don’t have to commit any time or labour to joining in.
For national gatherings, an open and temporary organising committee is created from those members who have the time and energy to take it on for the planning period. This group does not represent RLC and everything it does, this is simply a group of people who have volunteered (via an open invitation sent to the RLC mailing list)to help create the space that RLC will inhabit on the day of a gathering. Anyone can volunteer at any stage, and can take on as small a role as they’d like. We are actively trying to mitigate the formation of a ‘clique’ or hierarchy in RLC and welcome fresh input.
At the gathering itself, all attendees are welcome to suggest sessions and facilitate them, by no means just the organising committee. Equally, all attendees are expected to adhere to our Safer Spaces policy, and it’s all of our responsibilities to enforce it.
The horizontalist approach RLC aims to take is an ongoing process that we’re all learning from. If you have any thoughts or suggestions on how to make RLC as inclusive and effective possible, please join in and send us an email.
The Itinerant Poetry Library - We see libraries, and in particular, public libraries as the bedrock of world citizenship. We believe that nowhere else offers such information equity, trust and dialogue, between us as individuals, as communities, as cultures.
For when we enter a library we encounter each other: encountering each other we are revealed more to ourselves. Through such meetings we begin to understand how we are connected by our experiences of a shared world. Fundamentally, when we enter a library we are offered the opportunity to learn new things and thus, as individuals, as world citizens, to grow.
Thus, with this mission in mind, continuously since May 2006 The Itinerant Poetry Librarian has been travelling the world with a free public library, installing the library & librarian and archiving the sounds, poems and poetry of the cities, peoples and countries she meets.
United States of America
Bernard Zine Library- Barnard's zines are written by women, with an emphasis on zines by women of color. A woman's gender is self-defined. We also collect zines on feminism and femme identity by people of all genders. The zines are personal and political publications on activism, anarchism, body image, third-wave feminism, gender, parenting, queer community, riot grrrl, sexual assault, and other topics.
Radical Reference- Radical Reference is a collective of volunteer library workers who believe in social justice and equality. We support activist communities, progressive organizations, and independent journalists by providing professional research support, education and access to information. We work in a collaborative virtual setting and are dedicated to information activism to foster a more egalitarian society.
Radical reference originated as a service provided by volunteer library workers from all over the United States to assist demonstrators and activists at the convergence surrounding the Republican National Convention in New York City August 29-September 2, 2004.
Germany
Archiv der Jugendkulturen e.V. - [shamefully translated using Google] There are few places where mods alongside rockers, hippies can stand next to skinheads or punks Emos next without a snide remark, the flaps of a knife or spitting at his feet. But these so different and often entangled in fighting youth cultures, including Raver, Psychobillies, New Romantics, graffiti sprayer, Gothics and many others have found in the archives of the youth cultures a place of harmony, where they would escape in the real world. They continue to live here, forever young and stylish, politically and creatively, in a library that combines the last 70 years of youth culture. There you will find rarities such as Israeli punk fanzines, the first Bravo or American student newspapers from the 40s. The material ranges from books to videos, cassettes, posters, flyers to T-shirts and wristbands.
It may be for scientific research, journalists and filmmakers of importance. As a public library without fees, we are open to all.
http://freegovinfo.info/node/10018
Want to know more?
Further reading on the subject of radical or alternative librarianship can be found all over the internet - most radical librarianship blogs have extensive bibliographies, as well as lists of active libraries and archives in their area - but here are some recommendations to get you started:
● Tsang, C. Daniel (2004) “Taking a Stand.” Revolting Librarians Redux: Radical Librarians Speak Out. Edited by K.R Roberto and Jessamyn West. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 61-65.
● Bartel, Julie (2004) From A to Zine: Building a Winning Zine Collection in Your Library. Chicago: ALA Editions.
● Berman, Sanford (2008) “Introduction: Cataloging Reform, LC, and Me.” Radical Cataloging: Essays at the Front. Ed. K.R. Roberto. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. 5-11.
● Freedman, Jenna (2008) “AACR2-bendable but not flexible: cataloging zines at Barnard College.” Radical Cataloging: Essays at the Front. Ed. K.R. Roberto. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.
● Anderson, B. (1999). “The Other 90 Percent: What Your MLS Didn’t Teach You.“ Counterpoise Vol. 3, No. 3/4, July/October
● Marinko, R. A., & Gerhard, K. H. (1998). “Representations of the alternative press in academic library collections.” College and Research Libraries, 59(4), 363-377.
● Lawson, S, Sanders, K, Smith, L. (2015). "Commodification of the Information Profession: A Critique of Higher Education Under Neoliberalism". Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication 3(1):eP1182.
● Mai, J-E. (2013) "Ethics, values, and morality in contemporary library classifications". Knowledge Organization, 40 (3): 242-253. 2013.
● Highby, W. (2004). "The ethics of academic collection development in a politically contentious era". Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services, 28(4): 465-472.
I don't tune in to night time radio very often but the other night I caught a listen of Dave Couse on Today FM He is a a DJ I like listening to and I rebuke myself for not listening to him more often. I like his show because his set list is completely eclectic and random. I can never be sure what is coming up next. But invariably it is a track I like. He plays much that I am delighted to hear: current tracks I'm hearing for the first time and classic tracks that I love and enjoy listening to again. And some are classic golden oldies I have never heard before.
That night he played one of the best tracks I have heard in a very long time. It was a track I don't remember having heard before - The Unguarded Moment by 1980s Australian rock band The Church
And I don't think I'm being facetious, (though I may be thinking it too much,) but as the song faded out I lighbulbed thought - DJs are actually like librarians. Or to be more precise - night time DJs are a lot like librarians.
We both of us curate material.
We introduce people to the 'best' of what's out there in a particular field.
We try to make that field comprehensible and manageable to our listener / user.
We do the work of sorting through the noise so that our listeners / users don't have to.
DJs help people discover music. Librarians help people locate information.
We try to educate people - our goal ought to be "we provide the music or information and people learn," We provide the building blocks and they start from there.
We both help people navigate our particular sea - whether that be music or information.
I think back to the DJs I listened to as part of my teenage music education. DJs such as John Peel, and Dave Fanning, I think back to how they sorted through all the dross - and it being the 80s there was a lot of it. And they pointed us towards the gems. I remember how they would advocate for particular artists and genres and say you really need to listen to these guys. They actually had access to all this music that they would listen to, make decisions on, and then serve up to us. We as fans would never have been able to do that. We could read our chosen fave of the music mag triad Melody Maker, N.M.E or Sounds. But we didn't have a place to listen to the music the journalists wrote about. This is where Dave and John came into it. They had access to the goods and they opened that access to us. On their advice I would spend my hard earned money and buy the record. They made me the music fan I am today.
I think back to when I used my local library as a child and how the librarians would guide me towards particular books, genres and authors. And how this early grounding has guided my reading habits ever since. I think back to when I was an undergrad and postgrad and how college librarians would guide me through the info sphere. All helped make me the info literate / digitally literate person I am today.
And in todays streamed world of Spotify, Pandora, Deezer, Google Play Music and numerous other legal streaming options we are literally drowning in music and in choice of music. We really need curated content. We need curators. And this is where DJs like our John Peels' Dave Fannings' and Dave Couses' come into play, They listen to the music. They decide what they like. They play it. We listen. And hopefully learn and branch out and educate ourselves from there.
And in todays hyper informational and multiplatformed world of Subscription databases, catalogues, Google, Repositories, Social Media sites et al we are literally drowning in information. We really need curated content. We need Librarians. We sort the information. We decide what are good sources. The best places to find information for particular needs. And we teach our users. And hopefully they learn, branch out and educate themselves from there.
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