Comments on: shinylib pondering

By: Friday Link Round Up « ellie <3 libraries

Friday Link Round Up « ellie <3 libraries — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:01:45 +0000

[...] shinylib pondering – Library Secrets marketing campaign [...]

By: caleb

caleb — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 03:10:30 +0000

So maybe what you are trying to do is tell stories about reference questions you answered that were interesting. Ellie sort of gets at the idea that the story doesn’t just have to be you – the patron is involved to.

The Swiss Army librarian is a good example: http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/tag/reference-question

In this way, if you get something worth writing/talking about you can just ask the patron, “this was really interesting, do you mind if I write about it on the library website? I won’t use your name. Unless you want me to use your name?”

Reference librarians everywhere should be doing this; its what we do, we should put it out there. Flex. And I think Walt Crawford is wrong, other people like to search as much as librarians do. Not all of them, maybe, but enough do that people want to hear stories about it.

I’m usually more of a sourpuss about this: Opt-in only! Publicizing reference questions may (MAY) discourage the freedom of inquiry! Do it the Right Way. But one thing I’ve noticed about privacy on PostSecret (http://postsecret.blogspot.com/) is that even if most people are sending their secrets because no one will find out who sent them, some people are sort of hoping that they’ll be found out. The gray areas are kind of fun to play in.

By: ellie

ellie — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 23:47:56 +0000

I kind of like the idea of doing a “what we learned” style thing – which would focus on how fun it is for librarians to figure things out with the students. I think that wouldn’t require permissions. If you got one that you thought wouldn’t work without the question you could always ask in the moment whether they’d mind you sharing it.

By: Jenn

Jenn — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:32:50 +0000

Thanks for the Library Secrets mention! I’m so glad you like it and that it’s inspired you to think of these great ideas!

I like the two examples that Caleb’s shared– especially the Oregon libraries method of posting transcripts that “may be of interest to Oregonians”– individual reference made global (or at least Oregonian!).

Capturing the face-to-face discoveries would also be pretty cool. I wonder, if you’re not using the questions, if privacy issues are an issue at all. I guess it depends on what you focus on. If it’s a kind of “Did you know…?” format, it would be quite hard for any individual to recognize their own question in the answer, I would think.

I hope you’re able to develop this– it could be a lot of fun to do and to share!

BTW: I got your IM through Meebo, but was slow to respond and missed you! Thank you for saying hi!

By: shinylib

shinylib — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 03:07:57 +0000

There’s also the added dimension of capturing the interesting f2f experiences as well. What I’m imagining is really informal and doesn’t involve the originator of the question at all.

But I like what you’re saying about attracting more attention and staying on my high horse by going for the explicit method.

What’s interesting is that both examples use the posting questions approach and I was thinking about posting answers (only?). Maybe there’s no use to an answer all by itself, or it’s only interesting to geeks who collect random blurbs anyway? Hm, still thinking on this…

By: caleb

caleb — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:16:05 +0000

you can do it either way. i think you can potentially attract more attention to yourself *and* take the moral high ground if you ask for explicit buy in. but you aren’t necessarily in the wrong to share the questions and answers, there are just stringent ways to do it and loose ways to do it.

don’t ask: http://bibliophagus.blogspot.com/

do ask: http://www.oregonlibraries.net/archive

for example instead of asking for permission to post the whole transcript from l-net (www.oregonlibraries.net/chat), how about a checkbox to include this or that question in our twitter feed?

but then, how do you ask people if you can blog or tweet their question if you have to explain it every time?