Blog Post Week 9

Ms. Purviance's presentation was a basic discussion on the meanings and inherent value of social media in a concerted marketing effort. The presentation discussed the basics of what exactly social media is, and also discussed major usage trends among the mainstream demographic audiences on the internet. She was also able to articulate within the presentation the advantages in engaging a user base through the use of social media, as well as how to measure the success of a social media marketing campaign. Measurement of a campaigns success could be reliably measured via conversion metrics such as the ratio of site views versus online transactions, and several others.

In general, I agree with Ms. Purviance's thoughts on social media; they are indeed effective and needed ways to drive interest in an organizations activities in a way that could potentially lead to a better bottom line. There is no doubt in my mind of this. In the 21st century, it is necessary to use social media to not just talk at your audience, but engage them in a genuine and meaningful way. People need to feel like they're a part of something in order to feel more motivated to actually contribute to your bottom line. As odd as it sounds, it's important to make them feel good about themselves as they spend their time and money on you and your brand.

What I find problematic about the use of social media tools is how to articulate the necessity of such things in a public library environment. Budgets are being tightened all the time, and social media, especially outside of the bay area, is perceived as still being a frivolous online activity. How does one go about explaining to government officials who are looking to cut your budget and look good to a cash-strapped public, why it is important to spend time and resources on things like facebook and twitter. It seems like a difficult perception to fight against in this case.

For marketing purposes, as I have stated in other posts, I do indeed feel that libraries would benefit most from facebook and twitter as a way to engage communities, and also extend library services beyond the reference desk. Doing so could prove to be the future and the key to libraries' survival in the years to come.

Marketing Critique Paper

Binh Tran

Marketing Critique – San Jose Public Library

For the survival and success of an organization, marketing is an integral component, regardless of its mission statement. The ability to advertise its existence, promote its agenda, and increase its value in regards to cultural currency can often prove to be key to the organization increasing its access to actual monetary currency as well. This can be achieved as a result of acquiring new sponsors, fund raising supporters, or even simply increased foot traffic as a result of an extensive marketing outreach campaign. In the non-profit world of public libraries, marketing is equally important, as doing so can increase patronage and thus not only achieve organizational goals, but also highlight specific operational needs and provide to city government officials a tangible need for additional funding.

In this sense, the San Jose Public Library system accomplishes this task with varying degrees of effectiveness. Beyond the use of name brand recognition, newspaper, and television, SJPL, based upon initial survey of its efforts, proves to be fairly effective in the use of the internet to promote its existence and agenda. SJPL's staff has clearly made significant progress in its efforts to use a wide variety of social media technologies to market itself as a community learning organization, with an emphasis on patron services and public participation.

In order to reach its patrons and the general populace of the City of San Jose, the San Jose Public Library has embarked on a fairly extensive online marketing campaign utilizing RSS Feeds, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and online video sites such as Blip. The library has devoted the largest amount of time and resources to marketing via Facebook, Twitter, and RSS Feeds. Both facebook and twitter have been used extensively to promote awareness of public events at SJPL's various library branches, as well as bring specific, but related issues to the attention of the SJPL's online followers. A number of these issues range from possible legislation potentially affecting libraries, to information on city hall meeting dates for budget hearings regarding the library. RSS Feeds have been used to not only bring information to patrons regarding any news about the library, but also information on any and all updates to the specific collections that are of interest. These collection specific RSS Feeds make it possible for patrons to stay abreast of the latest additions to the library's children's or non-fiction collections, for example. Virtually all major library functions have regularly updated RSS feeds to inform the public of anything going on at the library.

In addition to the largely informative marketing provided through the aforementioned Facebook, Twitter, and RSS Feeds, the library also engages in producing content for patron consumption as well. This content largely consists of pictures of events through Flickr, videos on Blip, and also podcasts. The production values of these efforts are largely amateur level, but they do possess a certain degree of personal charm, and are effective in highlighting specific activities and events at the library. The downside of this however is the fact that each of these efforts, largely driven by individual branches, feels a bit too personalized. The content reflects more of an individual library's interests than an overall content policy developed by the library system as a whole. It is difficult to note this as necessarily a negative, however. Despite the overly personal tone of each individual work, it is clear that these pieces of content do reflect the specific communities each library branch serves. While it may seem unprofessional and disjointed, it does also significant value in each branch's mission to serve their community.

Overall, the content and efforts produced by the San Jose Public Library System's online marketing campaign is effective in reaching the communities that are already aware of its existence and participate in its activities, but it may be seen in a more negative light to those that do not. The materials are largely aimed at those who are already active patrons, but do little to reach out to those who do not often go to the library, but may have a reason to want to do so. The overall tone of the library system's marketing makes it come off as friendly, but also somewhat idiosyncratic and even a bit cheesy. Due to the wide variety of content, there is a general lack of a strong brand identity, despite its name recognition.

As a general online brand, its identity is very weak as well; few are aware of the the San Jose Public Library System beyond the confines of the city itself. While this may seem outwardly unimportant, this is critical in the grant writing process. No outside organization is going to give money to a group that is largely unknown outside of its own small corner of the world, so to speak. Certainly at this point, the San Jose Public Library System does not get nearly as much online recognition as the New York Metropolitan System, or the Library of Congress. While those may seem unfair to compare to, it certainly does not mean that the SJPL should not at least try to strive for that kind of notoriety.

In order to achieve a stronger brand, greater efforts must first be made to make the San Jose Public Library's online image stronger and much more professional. An extensive overarching policy regarding content, including media formatting, resolution, and watermarks should be created. While all content should be unique from each other, the “window dressing” as it were should have similar traits, much like a company's standardized letterhead for official materials. In addition, it is recommended that the SJPL should hire a professional graphic designer and web master to reconstruct the system's various online pages (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) Proper graphic design adhering to a standardized aesthetic design is important to convey a strong, professional image that inspires confidence in the brand. Choosing a standardized color scheme, mascot, and logo is also very important in the construction of the library's identity, not only online, but offline.

Works Cited

San Jose Public Library Blip.tv Page - http://blip.tv/san-jose-public-library

San Jose Public Library Facebook Page - http://www.facebook.com/sanjoselibrary 

San Jose Public Library's Podcasts - http://sanjoselibrary.libsyn.com/ 

San Jose Public Library RSS Updates Page - http://www.sjpl.org/updates

San Jose Public Library Twitter Page - https://twitter.com/#!/sanjoselibrary

Week 8 Post

What are some of the possible barriers to internal collaboration in organizations? (Tags = blogpostwk8, blogpostwk8n1)

There are several possible barriers to internal collaboration within the structure of an organization. One of the first, is the general structure of an organization. Some organizations can be very fluid, with resources and personnel being moved around easily to meet the needs of a project, but most organizations tend to be more rigid. Organizations tend to be more compartmentalized, however. Resources tend to be limited to control under specific section heads and managers. The result is that attempts at cross-departmental internal collaboration require a lot of scheduling and agreements among managers. Communication is extremely important in this respect, but also somewhat difficult due to the requirements for organization.

Personal issues are also always a major barrier to internal collaboration as well. Though we ideally hope to have our personnel act in the most professional behavior at all times, sometimes reality sets in and it simply isn't possible. Personal issues and professional rivalries can and sometimes do get in the way of work.

Differing skill levels in various talents, most notably in regards to technology is also a major barrier to internal collaboration as well. The use of tools such as twitter, wikis, and sharepoints can prove to be great ways to share information and expertise. However, ut it can also be very challenging if staff members are not all equally capable in the use of technology, as it is the basic platform for most if not all forms of internal collaboration in the present age.

Blog Week 7

What are some of the weaknesses of tagging for making content more findable? (Tags = blogpostwk7, blogpostwk7n4)


The major weakness behind tagging content for findability is the fact that it is an ad-hoc action; unstructured and off the cuff. Categorization in the traditional sense was created to produce a logical, ordered, and consistent system of organizing and also finding data. Granted, anyone who's studied the history of librarianship knows that cataloging was not originally intended to be used for such things, but it's had hundreds of years to become that, so we'll ignore that part. Ultimately, cataloging is an effective, but somewhat slow means of organizing and retrieving data.

Tagging is fast and easy, but there's not as much thought put behind the work. It's a case of throwing it out there, and then letting the search engine do the rest of the work. That's fine and good in most cases, but when you're trying to build a consistent, professional database for storing materials, this just doesn't work. The more technical issues of aboutness become major issues; especially when you start splitting hairs over the intended meanings behind particular words. Sometimes those aren't universal, and you come up with a big mess in terms of organization.

That's not to say that tagging is bad, but it's important to consider what it's being used for. When tagging is used for personal photos among friends, blog posts (like this one), etc; then it's just fine. Your friends generally know what you mean when you mark something with a tag and they just go with it. But, when you're creating a database collection for a much larger group of people to use, you have to stop assuming everyone knows what you're talking about. Often in my opinion, tagging becomes overloaded with terms to represent its content when all it does is just create more confusion. Want a real life example? Website metatags during the early days of the browser wars between Netscape and Microsoft. Websites become overloaded with tags that often had nothing to do with the content of the page, and there was no rhyme or reason to it all. The result? No one could  find anything. You think search engines are bad now? Be glad you never had to use Hotbot or Alta Vista back in 1995.

Week 6 Post - My Space and Facebook

Do you think libraries should be building presence and providing services in MySpace and/or Facebook? Why or why not? (Tags = blogpostwk6, blogpostwk6n1)

In a short answer, yes. Most librarians and educators may not like it, but the fact of the matter is that the face to face point of interaction is dying with the physical book. People don't interact like that anymore when they're looking for something. They'd rather find the information online. People will always ask questions, and they will always look to someone or something for help, and google or any other search engine will never be good enough to answer all of those questions. That's why libraries need to build themselves online through websites, facebook, twitter, and myspace, or whatever other social media site is out there. That's how libraries will start to find ways to provide services. The medium of communication is changing and libraries need to change with it, or risk becoming obsolete. There is no point to having a library and the world's most extensive and reliable databases and archive systems if we can't get that information into the hands of those who need it.

Worse still, there are already online interactive reference services out there, but those are PAID services. The last thing the people need is to find that they have to PAY for the kind of services they used to get for free. This will serve to marginalize people who don't have the money even more than ever before. Our job as librarians is to defend and uphold the people's right to know; that has always been our mission. The internet and social media in particular is the new battlefield for our struggle, and if we lose, in the end, the people lose.

Week 5 Post - RSS

How can librarians get their patrons to use RSS and/or understand the benefits of it? (Tags = blogpostwk5,blogpostwk5n3)

One way is to start offering short classes in the use of internet appliances such as tablets, and use that as a platform for teaching patrons about RSS. Some libraries are starting to provide tablets that can be checked out at the desk for use in reading newspapers and periodicals. If personal account logins on the tablets could be set up, it might make it possible for patrons to set up personal RSS feeds to recover the information they're specifically interested in following, right on the tablets themselves. By doing this, you can highlight the benefits of a much more dynamic, simple, and efficient way of finding the news articles and points of interest that they are most concerned with. Once patrons recognize the benefits of this, it becomes easier for them to adopt RSS feeds as a means of following news.

Another way, and also one that will no only save money, but also time, would be to phase out physical periodicals whenever possible and get an institutional digital subscription to replace them. Patrons may complain at first, but once they realize there's little choice, they generally make the transition.

What's the use of twitter?

 How can you envision using Twitter in a library or other information organization? (Tags = blogpostwk4, blogpostwk4n2)

Twitter can be used as an excellent way to interact with patrons in terms of information queries. If a patron was to look for resources regarding a given subject, twitter can be highly effective in allowing a librarian to respond to the patron's question and provide possible resource titles, citations, and links. By doing this, a library can quickly and effectively meet patron reference needs in a way that is extremely convenient to modern day students, especially. Also, as twitter presents its information (posts) in a linear fashion, it makes it very easy to meet patron requests at a reasonably relaxed pace. In a time where resources are limited, twitter can prove to be a very useful tool for public and also academic librarians.

As is common among most organizations, twitter can also be used as a very effective way to promote events being held at public library institutions as well. Letting people know about what is going on and when, as well as leveraging the "retweet" function by having followers retweet the announcement posts in order to spread word of mouth can be extremely useful in ensuring a good turn out at events; something that can often prove key to justifying funding for the next fiscal year.

Addressing potentially controversial issues such as changes to circulation policies can also be a very useful function of twitter. In cases where libraries, in response to funding cuts, must cut back service hours, twitter can prove to be an excellent forum to discuss the hows and whys of the situation with the public. This can enable a constructive dialog regarding the issue with out the potentially heated tensions can can arise from face to face conversations. (Believe me, I would've loved to have had this back when I worked at the library!)

Twitter can also prove to be a great way to solicit suggestions for library programming and events. It does not simply have to be a solely self-directed activity driven by library staff; engaging the public by allowing them to constructively make suggestions and have their say is also important. People living in a web 2.0 society are used to not only receiving information, but also engaging it, and creating their own. If patrons feel they can make meaningful interactions and contributions to the library, then it makes the library all the more valuable to them. It's important to consider that especially in this case, librarians and staff must be careful of walking the fine line between being receptive to suggestions, and at the same time, avoiding the problem of over promising on every single idea that sounds halfway decent. While it is the patrons' library, in the end, the staff are the ones that have to run it, and implement any ideas or changes that may occur.