#22 Library 2.0 and the future of libraries

I have been looking at the David Lee King blog about social media in libraries suggested by Rob Coers on 23 dingen. There are a few home truths there I think for all librarians trying to use Library 2.0 efficiently.
What we have to do I think is attract "friends" to us librarians who are using social media. (In the first place I mean professionally). So the following points I find especially relevant:

• Avoid only connecting with colleagues in your own organisation or in other libraries. We should be targeting our own public.
• Find friends from the library and through people you meet through the library i.e. users or potential users.
• Use twitter and facebook to keep these people informed about what is happening in the library in particular. But don't forget that you - a person - are doing the informing not the library organisation
• Be personal. People interact with people not organisations.
• Inform regularly (and try) and be interesting!
• React to as many people who want to communicate with you - well that's fairly obvious.
• And finally remember to connect facebook to twitter to your blog to the library website etc. and publicise in person in the library itself. In a nutshell: connect as much as you can.

If we can manage this then perhaps the library has a better future. It's necessary to communicate with our (potential) public and the social media are at this moment probably the best ways of succeeding.
And now two great artists performing a terrific song by Hugo Wolf: Der Feuerreiter op tekst van Eduard Mörike

#6,#7,#8 Flickr

I felt that I've spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what Flickr is about. I'm not a very visually oriented person. Nevertheless we live in a visually dominant culture and as a librarian it's something not to forget. Libraries tend to be focussed on texts - as is Google by the way - sometimes to the detriment of the visual. If we are looking for pictures or video we can only find them through words (tags or otherwise) used for description.
So tags are very important - more opportunities for librarians!? It is one of the special features of Flickr to stimulate the user to add tags.

If we accept the premise that the visual is very important in our contemporary culture then using Flickr to connect to our public seems to me essential.

A number (50!!) of ways we can make Flickr work in our library is linked to on the 23dingen website. Give a virtual tour, Share event photos, Share history, just to mention three are obvious really - but which libraries use Flickr in this way?
Slideshows made by public and/or personnel via Flickr can easily be shown in the library next to "normal" foto exhibitions and also on the library website of course. Slideshows of past activities and those coming up could be amazing promotion.

So what have I done with Flickr? Much more than I can show here that's for sure. First of all a mini slideshow and then a picture postcard transformation thanks to Picnik. Then a link to a mashup with the maps application. This is a very attractive way of linking pictures and places. It's a pity that you can't put your map from Flickr directly on to the blog in the same way as photos. Which is the easiest way of doing this?



Before and after Picnik



It's a shame that you can't transfer the map application directly from Flickr to a blog so I've linked it here or Hugo Wolf's Birthplace in Slovenia

And now it's only three days before the 200th birthday of Robert Schumann.

#Ding 2 Richt je eigen weblog in en plaats je eerste bericht

This is my first blog for the 23things Web 2.0 course. I've been using Blogger for a more than a year now for the library music weblog Biebsounds. So blogging is not that new for me. It is very easy to start a blog with Blogger and most of the time Blogger is also user friendly.
The biggest problem for me until now with posting blogs on the weblog was when I import texts from third parties. Often there are (hidden) HTML codes which affect the lay out of the text that you are not aware of until it's published. But you can always rework blogs which have been posted so actually there is no man overboard.
Finally a clip from You Tube.