online communities

Recently, Darren Rowse at ProBlogger posted Five Reasons Why Mom Blogs Are the Blogs to Watch. Darren says “Mom blogs are poised to become the next big “It” when it comes to the internet–they’re gathering power like no other blogging niche and will only get bigger and better.” Then he lists some reasons why – go read the article to get that list.

And now, a thought (that I’m swiping from more than one presenter at PLA) that continues to swirl through my head weeks after PLA is over: what local community blogs are you reading? Sure – you read 800 library technology blogs, and another 500 non-library tech blogs (no, I don’t read that many blogs). But how about some local blogs?

The gist of what I heard at PLA goes something like this: subscribe to some blogs in your local community and start participating on them via commenting. What does that look like? Here are some initial thoughts:

answer questions they ask – even link to library content in your comment
answer those questions they needed to ask, but didn’t – you know what I mean…
Make normal, interested-sounding comments… that is, if you’re really interested
Supply useful additional details when you see them – again, linking to the library’s stuff in the process
Friend some locals on twitter/facebook/myspace/etc
Set up some vanity searches in technorati and Google alerts, and thank people when they mention your library! How cool would that be?

So yes – this is a bit more “active” than what librarians tend to be used to… but if you want to make an impact in your local [digital] community, you need to be participating. Because if you aren’t participating, you don’t exist.

Tagged as: blogosphere, commenting, comments, community management, digital community, online communities

16 comments

Integrating Libraries & Communities Online, Glenn Peterson, Marilyn Turner

Marilyn Turner

bookspace.org – they made this. It’s cool. It brings together book lists, author lists, librarian tips, etc… many genre guides

it’s only focused on books – so it still has the traditional librarian bias to content

they include a librarian’s blog on each genre page

assign 2 people per genre pages

not volunteer activities – instead, they say it’s part of your job. Part of performance expectation! Awesome! Web Services Manager works with other managers to make sure web content is part of review process

Glenn Peterson:

Customer Contributed Content

user comments on books and other titles

harry potter and the deathly hallows – 234 comments! wow. they had 60 comments while the book was still on order – talking about how the stroy line would go. neat.

social features:
user comments
blogs
book lists
browse a list of recent comments
user profiles
name, about me, reading interests – that’s neat. theya’re looking at librarything’s profile for ideas
they have a wall-of-books – images of book jackets to see what books each user has checked out…

wanting to do: users wo are reading X are reading Y

wanting to create a friend’s list, a facebook-like wall

challenges – control issues – what can people leave on their profile

John Blyberg:

The Social Catalog

why bring social tools to the catalog?

three social catalogs:
pseudo-social – authority presented as collaborative (ie., Innovative’s ncore)
Syndicated social – third party data (librarything)
individually social – user-direct (hennepin, sopac)

il2007