Libraries and Technology:
Impact of Social Networking
Software and Search Engines on
Librarianship
Darlene Fichter
University of Saskatchewan
November 15, 2006
About me
• Interested in social software for a long
time
– Founder and President of our local Free-net in the
mid-1990’s
– Started using instant messaging in 1998
• Always thinking about how libraries can
use new technologies to achieve our
mission
Outline
Social Software
Exploring
Group Activity
Zoom In
Library Opportunities
Over to You
Outline
.
The eyes only see what the mind
comprehends
Confocal micrograph by
Ludovic Collin
Prepare ourselves
“Chance favours the prepared mind”.
Louis Pasteur
What is social software?
• Enables people to rendezvous, connect or
collaborate … to form online communities
• Software that supports group interaction
Wikipedia
The Group Its Own Worst
Enemy by Clay Shirky
“Unsatisfying” definition
• Doesn’t point to one class of software
• Email
• Can support social patterns but also can be a broadcast
medium for spam
• Blogs
• Usually social but could have 200,000 readers turn off
comments etc. that’s closer to broadcast mode
• Facebook
• 5 classmates leaving notes on the “wall” and messaging,
then that’s social
Social web / Web 2.0
• Is a global distributed network that links
people, organizations, and concepts
• It’s about how people can interact to make
something greater than the sum of the parts
– “architecture of participation”
Wikipedia
Social Software
Exploring
Flickr search
Social networking sites
Slide: Tom Coates, Yahoo!
Photo by maqroll
So …
Social software/social web is as
A) As clear as mud
B) A bit fuzzy
C) Sounds boring
D) What’s the big deal
E) Crystal clear
Seth Godin
Web 1.0
“The first version of the Web was about using
computers to assemble clues.”
Web 2.0
“The second version of the Web is about
enabling people to share meaning.”
By now …
Next …
Tim 0’Reilly – What is Web 2.0?
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
Theme songs ?
I am a rock
I am an island
Photo: thoth92
Some rights reserved.
Theme song ?
Your
space
Together
MySpace
So happy together
Is social software a fad?
• Watch what people do, not what they say
Peter Drucker
management visionary of the modern age
Blogs – just hype or ?
http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2006/02/07/technorati_blogosphere_balloo
ning_12_million_posts_a_day/
Instant messaging
• 42% of adults (53 million) in the U.S. use
IM regularly
• 24% of adults use IM more than email
• IM is even more popular with teens and
college age students
•Pew Internet and American Life survey on Instant Messaging
Social software sites
•
has over 100 million video
views a day
– Partners with Warner music videos
– Not only post, but “remix”
MySpace
• 4th most popular English language site
• 100,000,000th member signed up on August
9, 2006 (started in 2003)
• 500,000 new members each week
• 300 employees
Or ?
"The future is here. It's just not evenly
distributed yet." William Gibson
Social Software
Exploring
Group Activity
Characteristics
Characteristic #1
Web 1.0 - “Information Consumer”
Dial up modems
Email
Message boards
Images took forever to download
Static Pages
HTML
HOME PAGE
Web 2.0 - The web now
“Information Participant”
(cc) Photo by Stablio Ross
See my home page
Read / comment / post / digg /
trackback … my blog
Read / Write Web
Example: Harnessing participation
• Bookstore
• Analyzing transactions and contributions to
improve discovery
Amazon & participation
Ask ourselves
• Do library catalogs get better automatically
the more people use them?
• What about library web sites?
• If not , why not?
• What might that be like?
Characteristic #2
“Professional” amateurs
"Passionate amateurs, empowered by
technology and linked to one another, are
reshaping business, politics, science, and
culture.’’
Change Agents With The Balls: The Rise Of The Amateur
Professionals, Prosumers, Pro-Ams
http://www.masternewmedia.org/2005/06/16/change_agents_
with_the_balls.htm
Citizen journalism
Response: deny … embrace
Nothing to do with libraries?
• Google Answers
• Yahoo! Answers
People &
answers
People &
questions
rise of “amateur” librarian/researcher
Photographer
• Mark Harmel, a freelance photographer,
$300 - $400 / stock photo
• iStockphoto –$1 to $5 / photo
• Technological advances broke down the
barrier between professionals and
amateurs
Traditional stock photo companies
• At first, aligned against “micro players”
• Then Getty, the largest stock photo
company, purchased iStockphoto for $50
million
“If someone’s going to cannibalize your business,
better it be one of your other businesses,” says
Getty CEO Jonathan Klein
The Rise of Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe
Characteristic #3
Search meets social
Search +Social = Social Discovery
•
•
Going beyond algorithms to meaning
No one best book/site/page on
“astrophysics”
For every reader, his or her book.
For every book, its reader.
What “business” do search engines
think they are in?
• To organize the world's information and
make it universally accessible and useful.
– Mission statement Google
• Is Google “social” or “algorithmic” or both?
Google harnesses social patterns - PageRank
What “business” do search engines
think they are in?
FUSE
To enable people to
– Find,
– Use,
– Share, and
– Expand all human knowledge.
Vision statement for Yahoo Search
What “business” do the search
engines think they are in?
• Get answers, ask questions, find
information
– Yahoo Answers!
Where do we fit in the discovery
ecosystem?
Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources, OCLC, 2005
How would our users like us to fit?
Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources, OCLC, 2005
“Social” Discovery
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Flock
Technorati
Rollyo
Squidoo
Prefound
Stumbleupon
BlueDot
Digg
Social bookmarking sites
It’s all about human filters + trust
What My
Buddies
Rated/
Found
Photo by ycc2106
Social Software
Exploring
Group Activity
Characteristics
Library Opportunities
Social software and libraries
Libraries are in an ideal position.
•
•
•
•
Collections
Communities
Conversation
Connections
People and books
People who are looking
for a good book to read
People who dying to share
the great book they just read.
Questions & answers
People &
answers
People &
questions
g
Maintain our focus
Photo by tanakawho
What’s our focus?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Books are for use.
For every reader, his or her book.
For every book, its reader.
Save the time of the reader.
A library is a growing organism.
S.R.Ranganathan
Getting started
• Start small and dream big
• Get experience
– Was this part of your curriculum?
• Gentle art of online conversation
• Fostering the architecture of participation
Enable participation
Lists
Labels
LikeItorNOTs
Beth Jeffersion
PennTags
http://tags.library.upenn.edu/
Harness user contributions
• Virtual return shelf
User participation
• Enable conversations / content
• Sum is greater than the parts
Be an IM buddy
Photo by Darren Chase
Foster conversation
Ann Arbor: Director’s Blog
http://www.aadl.org/taxonomy/term/86
Dream big
• What if ….
– Lists, labels, LikeItorNots
– Rate, comment and review
– Choose to share what you’ve read
– Choose to share wishlists
– Have conversations (IM or form a group)
– “Reading” circles with “taste” twins
– Build this with lots of libraries
Social software is an opportunity to:
• Cater to the needs of online library users
• Foster social discovery on library web sites
• Move from an “information
management/consumer” paradigm to
“knowledge eco-system”
“A library is a growing organism.”
“Social” library
Social
library
Photo by ycc2106
Thank you
• Darlene Fichter
– darlene.fichter@usask.ca
– library2.usask.ca/~fichter/