Brown & Durgid's text The Social Life of Information offers some great take-aways for libraries regarding the use of blogging and other social software. The title of the text alone suggests that information is becoming more and more an interactive, "group effort" so to speak. I've listed a couple more specific thoughts below:
Technology, while offering valuable new paths to information access, is and always must be seen as a means to an end. Without librarians to help guide the process and assist users with the technology, the social software itself would just get in the way. Some might raise the argument that a library blog takes the place of a face-to-face conversation with a librarian--but they would be seeing through a narrow lens. Librarians use blogs as one of many ways to do what they do best--provide information.
That said, it is important for libraries to be deliberate in what technology and social software they choose to implement, and how they choose to use it. Used without a plan or clear goal, they can indeed seem to just get in the way of the user-librarian interaction.
Blogs and other social software have a lot to offer libraries. But the bottom line for implementation really needs to be "proceed with caution" to eliminate misunderstandings and confusion about the intent and purpose of these tools.
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2 comments:
The status quo in the information field, is whenever we are faced with a problem the solution lies always in a new gadget, software program or some digitalization of some sort. What I like about “The social life of information” is the critical look at technology. It’s a reality check for information professionals.
I agree... the technology can provide a different medium for communication, but cannot fully replace people's need for the 3-D face-to-face experience with its multitude of subtle cues relating to context and body language. I was just reading Laura H's blog and she was saying that a benefit of technology is for "enhancing and extending social relationships", which I thought sums it up nicely.
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