Session 1, 10:30-11:30

Where do the ideas come from?

• Look in mainstream tech media
• Look at mainstream companies and their content creation inc. social media marketing
• Have a group structure, so anyone can run with any idea

What are some kinds of librarian generated content?

• Blogs
• Podcasts
• Statistical documents
• Wikis: useful b/c they are content-mgmt systems
• Screencast
• Quizzes
• Flickr
• Delicious
• Widgets
  • Put it on their FB, Myspace profile
  • Widgets are little applications that provide extra functionality - you can add them to blogs, profiles, etc.
  • Can make them yourselves - Widget Box
  • If you have a blog, it's super easy to create your own - blidget - just paste RSS feed.
  • Can turn widgets into facebook applications - an interesting idea
  • Library catalog widget
• Interviews
  • We interview others, but why not each other?
  • The preference of people vs. technology
  • Make your own librarian trading card
  • Do we market ourselves as well as we market our collection?
  • Humanizing the librarians
• Polythinkers Blog
• Dowling Blog: The First Five Years
• Catalyst Quick Takes
• Metropolitan Museum of Art's Library Website
• Use non-proprietary things - gives you more freedom

Biggest challenges:

• Getting other staff to contribute - one librarian felt like she was the primary author and it's hard to get other librarians involved
• Coming up with new ideas
• Not used to blogging, new technology
• Hard to get people to write content
• Don't want to overmarket ourselves - bother people -but we want to get them aware
• $$$ - Tax money, tuition, etc.
• One person taking all the responsibility
  • Team work helps with this
  • Not everyone understands the value
  • Some lack the expertise or interest

Resistance

• IT: potential obstacle
• Should frame things as marketing tool
• Outreach on web - if things aren't visually appealing enough, and are too text-heavy, hard to attract them

How to gauge success of content:

• #s rising
• Comments
• Increased awareness

How to increase interest in our services?

• Put link on email signature

Popular

• Need to find out what students are interested in
• Built-in audiences: students: help with traffic
• Ask for help with what we are doing:
  • Identifying photos in our archives
• Making our products interacitve

Is it worth saving?

• Should we archive?

A different skill-set for librarians?

• Another way to organize information
• Technology is necessary to do our job

Trainings

• Web 2.0 Outreach
• Information literacy
• Instruction from the Met Library