Brian Matthers, a reference librarian at Georgia Tech has released the preliminary results of an experiment in using student blogs to find library patrons. From his blog:
“Essentially, the paper describes a proactive approach toward interacting with college students. While the library world has just discovered blogs, these students have been keeping online journals for years. They use services like LiveJournal and Xanga, and even MySpace and Facebook to interact×often providing insight and commentary on their hectic lives. My interest was mining this data for educational opportunities.”
What he did was read his students’ blogs and looked for opportunities to respond via comments giving them assistance and guiding them to library resources. The four-page summary is something every librarian must read. (There’s also a screencast available.)
Michael Sauers is the Technology Manager for Do Space in Omaha, NE. After earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany's School of Information Science and Policy Michael spent his first 20 years as a librarian training other librarians in technology along with time as a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, a technology consultant, and a bookseller. He has written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and has published 14 books ranging from library technology, blogging, Web design, and an index to a popular horror magazine. In his spare time, he blogs at TravelinLibrarian.info, runs The Collector's Guide to Dean Koontz website at CollectingKoontz.com, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
View all posts by Michael Sauers
One Reply to “Library 2.OMG, if this ain’t it, nothing is.”
I’ve done this just recently. I came across a blog that was bemoaning the fact that she couldn’t get books from DPL (her blog didn’t say where she was located), so I left a comment on her site, telling her how she could get books from DPL.
I’ve done this just recently. I came across a blog that was bemoaning the fact that she couldn’t get books from DPL (her blog didn’t say where she was located), so I left a comment on her site, telling her how she could get books from DPL.