Web 2.0 CE - Week 3: Social Networking

I was excited to see that the topic for Week 3 is social networking. I personally think that social networking is one of the most fun 2.0 tools! There are many opportunities to integrate or promote library services and resources into social networking.

I have had a facebook profile for a few years now and have experimented with adding many applications, friends, and events. With facebook, I really like to be able to connect with people I've lost touch with to see what they're up to. I also like all of the applications (although I've learned to use them in moderation) and can only imagine how many more library related applications could be developed in the future. I had heard of, but never joined LinkedIn. I like that LinkedIn provides opportunities for professional and career networking. Not only did I find several fellow librarians on LinkedIn, but also professionals from other fields. As a librarian at an academic institution, something like LinkedIn could be used to describe, encourage, and facilitate collaborations with faculty in my liaison areas or with people from other professions.

The MSU Libraries currently has a facebook page (most of the fans are librarians here). We also very recently devoted a staff technology brown bag seminar to the topic of facebook / facebook applications. As an academic institution, we realize that many of our patrons are extremely comfortable with social networking sites like facebook and spend a lot of time on them. Therefore, many librarians at the MSU Libraries feel it's important to establish a presence on facebook so we're able to reach these students. We're still trying to determine how to best advertise and utilize our presence on facebook, an issue I'm sure other libraries are dealing with too.

There are certainly privacy issues when it comes to sites like myspace and facebook. I do feel, however, that individuals are responsible for the content they choose to display. People should only enter and display information they feel comfortable with others seeing. The social networking sites I'm familiar with allow users to choose from a multitude of privacy settings.

Web 2.0 CE - Week 2: Wikis

This week, we learned about, created, and contributed to wikis. I created a wiki that was designed to help me communicate with the many College of Nursing Scholarly Project Groups I work with here at MSU. I therefore named it the MSU CON Scholarly Project Groups wiki. I wanted my wiki to be a place students could sign up to meet with me, get searching tips and resources on nursing theory, receive help for printing their posters, and provide feedback about their interactions with me and their experiences with the Scholarly Projects in general.

I added my blog and wiki to the MLA Web 2.0 CE course lists and also contributed content to Virginia Bender's Information Literacy for Health Sciences wiki. I also added the course wiki and blog lists to my blog.

There are several differences between a blog and a wiki. A blog is ideal for posting news or noteworthy items. Wikis are ideal for group collaboration. While the content in blogs tends to remain constant (besides the addition of new items), the content in wikis can constantly be rearranged and changed. Blogs are usually from the viewpoint of one person or group. Wikis encourage many different people to contribute their ideas and expertise.

We currently use several wikis at the MSU Libraries. We have a training wiki that librarians can contribute to in order to help new librarians learn the ropes. We also will soon be putting our Bibliographer manual into a wiki format so people with certain areas of expertise can contribute and keep it current. This will also be helpful for new librarians.

Web 2.0 CE - Week 1

The assignment for week one of the Web 2.0 CE course was to create a blog, set up an RSS reader, and subscribe to 5 RSS feeds. I had already been using Google's reader to subscribe to several RSS feeds for quite some time, so I decided to add 5 new ones. I added the two feeds related to this course (the blog feed and the comments feed) and one to NPR's Health & Science News. To fulfill the last two requirements, I subscribed to Evidence-Based Nursing's table of contents feed and a PubMed search on therapeutic touch and breast cancer.

I use RSS feeds for several reasons. First, it's so nice to log into my Google account each morning and have news items and blog posts that are of interest to me all in one place. RSS feeds are incredibly easy to set up and use. Finally, RSS feeds help me remain current and educated in both my liaison areas (nursing and osteopathic medicine) and health sciences librarianship. I subscribe to several journal TOCs and also receive search updates.

The MSU Libraries already uses blogs and RSS feeds quite a bit. For example, on our Libraries' homepage, students, staff and faculty can subscribe to RSS feeds from various blogs covering library news, website changes, trial electronic resources, and tools & toys. This allows our patrons to remain informed about what's going on in the Libraries without even visiting the website! Many of the MSU Libraries' patrons also use RSS feeds to receive journal TOCs or database search updates. Librarians involved with liaison and instruction work have started to really advertise the ease and convenience of RSS to our patrons. They're a great tool for keeping current in subject areas that are of interest to faculty and students. As I mentioned in the paragraph above, they're popular because setting them up is so easy!

The Health Sciences Group at the MSU Libraries is almost ready to launch a Health Sciences Digital Library website (our health sciences collections are mainly in MSU's Main Library; we don't have a separate health sciences Library). This website will have a blog that posts relevant health sciences news and information. Patrons in our Health Sciences departments and colleges will be able to subscribe to the blog's feed. This week's assignment has made me think of other ways we could use RSS feeds on our website. If we wanted to pull information from other relevant websites, it would be very easy to do!

Welcome to my Blog!

Although I've been thinking of creating a blog for a while now, it took me signing up for the Medical Library Association's 8 week, online, Web 2.0 CE course to finally follow through!

Over the next several weeks, this blog will primarily feature comments and reactions to the various assignments of the Web 2.0 CE Course. Once the course is complete, you can expect to see more posts about health sciences librarianship or my experiences as a new academic librarian.