Taking the Social Web to the Next Level

Breeding, Marshall, Computers in Libraries

One of the ideas that I have been cultivating for the last few years involves taking the investment that libraries have made in social networking and other Web 2.0 technologies to a more sophisticated and mature stage. It's clear that social network concepts have taken strong hold throughout so many aspects of our world. Facebook and Twitter have propelled far beyond their narrow niche of tech- or media-savvy enthusiasts to the mainstream of society. From its early beginnings as a service for students from a few ivy-league universities, today, Facebook finds use by more than 400 million individuals, spanning all generations (www.facebook.com/press/info.php7statistics). Twitter claims about one-fourth as many users and pervades a wide range of interests from popular culture to big business. LinkedIn and hundreds of web destinations likewise bring together communities of individuals with common interests. Social networking isn't a passing fad--it now ranks as a fundamental characteristic of successful technologies. We're at a time when libraries need to move beyond ad hoc and informal uses of social technologies and make them an essential element of the way that libraries implement technology.

Toward Strategic Social Network Involvement

Since the emergence of the Web 2.0 trend, libraries have found many ways to use social networking to their advantage. It's great to see so many libraries offering blogs, creating Facebook pages and Twitter feeds, and providing myriad other activities that spark higher levels of engagement with their users. These methods have become part of the standard repertoire of almost any organization that seeks to promote its message, products, or services today. I think that libraries gain an enormous amount of positive exposure through these channels. Library outreach and public relations initiatives rightly include social networking as key promotional tools.

As a component of their …

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Publication information: Article title: Taking the Social Web to the Next Level. Contributors: Breeding, Marshall - Author. Magazine title: Computers in Libraries. Volume: 30. Issue: 7 Publication date: September 2010. Page number: 28+. © 2008 Information Today, Inc. COPYRIGHT 2010 Gale Group.

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