Category Archives: INF506

Module 3.6 Dialogue for improvements – customer reviews

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“Oh Central City Library, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. 

Your massive selection, that can be pre-reserved online and sent to any library of your choosing. 

Your efficient self checkout kiosks that let me check out up to 10 books in one go. 

Your cheerful atmosphere and very helpful staff. ”~ Neera J on Yelp (2015). 

What a response and what a review. The same library is reviewed by a different customer, SuriSun on TripAdvisor, speaks about the workshops and classes offered at the library (2014). Both positive reviews and on each site the Central City Library of Auckland is given very high ratings. Does it even matter, especially when each site only had a handful of reviews about these libraries?

More people are in the habit of turning to review sites to make purchases of products and services (Anderson, 2014). Review sites such as TripAdvisor and Yelp offer a very different dialogue for customers. They use them to give their opinion about products and services. Their posts are often more targeted and pointed, especially when they do not like some part of their experience, the anonymity of the forum can allow such brutal honesty (Derysh, 2013). Yet these very customer reviews can be the feedback needed to improve the services offered.

Businesses are being encouraged to not only read their online reviews but to actively engage with the customers, thanking them for good reviews and seeking to address complaints and frustrations for the customers with a negative experience (Olenski, 2015). This way the review becomes a dialogue and other potential customers can see how the business is responding to criticism.

The reviews posted about Central City library were for the most part very positive, friendly staff, great wi-fi, comfortable areas, children’s programmes. Neither Yelp nor TripAdvisor seemed to have a place for the library to publicly comment though private comments were available.  How would a Teacher Librarian go about getting this kind of dialogue going within a school library? Having some anonymity would be helpful for students and staff who wanted to post negative reviews and it would be helpful to have public dialogues going. There are tools available to provide ways to canvas and collect customer feedback, a simple Google search will provide some good options.

Our patrons are our customers and the opportunity to enter into discussion with them about their experience in our libraries could very well lead to new ideas and improved services.

References

Anderson, M. (2014, July 1). Local consumer review survey 2014. Retrieved from https://www.brightlocal.com/2014/07/01/local-consumer-review-survey-2014/

Derysh, I. (2013, July 31). Why customer reviews crush social media marketing [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.desk.com/blog/social-media-marketing/

Neera J. (2015, September 27). Central City Library [Online forum post]. Retrieved from Yelp website: http://www.yelp.com/biz/central-city-library-auckland?page_src=best_of_yelp

Olenski, S. (2015, June 12). 5 ways to make customer reviews work to your advantage. Retrieved December 6, 2015, from http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/steve-olenski/2015-06-12/5-ways-make-customer-reviews-work-your-advantage

SuriSun. (2014, August 24). Central City Library, Auckland region [Online forum post]. Retrieved from TripAdvisor website: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g1811027-d2526230-Reviews-Central_City_Library-Auckland_Region_North_Island.html

 

Module 3.2 Good short things – tweets and twitter

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#iicsreads

#iicsreads

“Good things, when short, are twice as good.” Baltasar Gracian #twitterquotes (Collins, 2009)

 While I do follow some useful Twitter accounts I find the hashtags are the most useful way to follow events or broadcast to a group of people with similar interests. During conferences I tweet using the official conference hashtag. I often read back using the hashtag to see what my colleagues have noted or commented on. A hashtag can connect you with  a group of like minded professional such as #tlchat which Teacher Librarians (TL) around the world use (Valenza, 2010). This particular hashtag not only collates posts from some leading TLs but it is now used for regular monthly discussions on topics with one session ‘live’ (TLChat Live, 2015). There are many blog posts giving TLs guidance on how to tune in to valuable discussion about their work  (Rodriguez, 2014).

At the moment our Professional Learning Community (PLC) is focusing on how to buld a school culture of independent reading and our hashtag is #iicsreads. Not only do we tweet articles and photos to that hashtag as members of the PLC our students are using noticeboards with that hashtag to write up their reading quotes and tweets by hand.

occupygezi_3_0

(Kayabali, 2013)

 One twitter hashtag my colleagues and I followed throughout the months of May and June in 2013 in Istanbul was #occupygezi. We all lived within a five minute walk of Gezi Park and Isitklal Cadessi. Both these areas saw clashes between protesters and riot police. There were clouds of tear gas, fireworks used as weapons and many people were injured. Each day we would follow the hashtag to see what protests were planned, see photos and video footage. We would decide on the safest route to walk home from the bus and alert each other as to what might be happening on our own streets next. Twitter was used as a way for the protesters to communicate with one another.

I do of course follow some key people, Joyce Valenza, Jude O’Connell and Ewan McIntosh are a few people I have had the privilege of hearing speak at conferences (a great source of people to follow). School Library Journal, Mashable, Scholastic, Awesome stories all constitute great sources of tweets. Then there are your favourite authors – many of whom are on twitter now as well.

At first I was worried about missing someone’s important tweet – the twitter sphere is very noisy at times. Then I was introduced to paperli. Paperli is a free web tool which uses the twitter content you are interested in and creates a daily paper  (Paperli, n.d.). I have created my own daily paperli called “Librarybond” which curates my entire twitter feed. This year I created a new paperli for middle students following current events “News and Current Events Daily”.

Follow, hashtag, curate and retweet – twitter is a way to stay up date with breaking news in your neighbourhood and trends in your professional life.

References

Collins, T. (2009, June 5). “Good things, when short, are twice as good.” Baltasar Gracian #twitterquotes [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/TheLittleBookOf

Kayabali, Y. (2013, July 31). [Gezi park protest twitter bird]. Retrieved from http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2013/july/protest-art-in-real-time/

Paperli. (n.d.). Save Time and Money. Retrieved December 1, 2015, from http://paper.li/learn-more.html

Rodriguez, M. (2014, May 27). Top Twitter Hashtags for Librarians. Retrieved from http://hacklibraryschool.com/2014/05/27/hashtags/

TLChat Live. (2015, November 10). https://twitter.com/TLChat [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/TLChat

Valenza, J. (2010, December 30). For newbies: Just Heart the (#) Hashtag! [Blog post]. Retrieved from Never ending Search website: http://blogs.slj.com/neverendingsearch/2010/12/30/for-newbies-just-heart-the-hashtag/

Module 2.1 Web 2.0 the era of the amateur

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Web 2.0 seems to be a way to try to differentiate between the first series of Internet tools and environments and the more recent ones. It uses the software update numbering method to try to show an improved and enhanced internet (“Web 2.0,” 2015).

Web 1.0  describes the first generation of web-based environments. These environments were mostly static and provided ways for people to find out information (Todd & Gordon, 2009). They were also, for the most part, produced by experts and professionals. Website developers and information architects were the people designing the websites for clients who provided the content.

Web 2.0 was first spoken of in 2004 as a way of describing a new generation of web-based services which emphasized sharing and collaboration.   In particular sites would share user developed content, collect it, and distribute it to others  (Darwish & Lakhtaria, 2011, p. 205). While the term Web 2.0 was coined to show the participatory nature of the next generation of Internet tools and environments the founder of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee, rejects the whole idea of Web 2.0 saying that Web 1.0 was all about connecting people, “that was what the Web was supposed to be all along,” (2006). With connection and participation being the original intention of the Internet it seems that Web 2.0 is a term that is used to describe a broader and deeper used of the Internet to share information, opinions and ideas globally.

Regardless of whether the term Web 2.0 is valid or not the participatory nature of the Internet as it exists right now is undeniable.  Web 2.0 is era of the amateur (Koltay, 2010, p. 2). So with web 2.0 anyone can create websites, blog posts, publish opinions and observations to the Internet and their work is available to the public at large.

This era of the amateur poses a huge challenge to Teacher Librarians when teaching information literacy skills to students. Not only do students need to discern the source and validity of the information they can access through the Web 2.0 environment they need to develop a wider range of literacies than the traditional ones of reading and writing. In fact other literacies considered essential for this century include; visual, critical, media, tool and digital (Churchill, 2009). As well as being consumers of information available on the Web students themselves are producers of information and that in itself carries new sets of skills and responsibilities.

References

Berners-Lee, T. (2006, July 28). Where we’ve come, and the challenges and opportunities ahead (Interview by S. Laningham) [Transcript]. Retrieved November 28, 2015, from https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/podcast/dwi/cm-int082206.txt

Churchill, D. (2009, June 12). New literacy in the Web 2.0 world [Powerpoint]. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/zvezdan/new-literacy-in-the-web-20-world

Darwish, A., & Lakhtaria, K. I. (2011). The impact of the new web 2.0 technologies in communication, development, and revolutions of societies. Journal of Advances in Information Technology, 2(4). Retrieved from ProQuest database.

Koltay, T. (2010). Library 2.0, information and digital literacies in the light of the contradictory nature of Web 2.0. Webology, 7(2), 1-12. Retrieved from ProQuest database.

Todd, R., Dr, & Gordon, C., Dr. (2009, June). Powering Up Minds and Powering Up Machines: Guided Inquiry, Reading, and Web 2.0 [Microsoft Powerpoint]. Retrieved from http://slideplayer.com/slide/4810867/

Web 2.0. (2015). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://school.eb.co.uk/levels/advanced/article/438358

 

Social networking – beginning INF506

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Social Networking
Social networking is about sharing. On social networks people can come together and share ideas, information, stories, photos, videos. Social networking is about people connecting with others through digital tools.

Networking technologies most frequently used

Facebook I try to keep Facebook for my personal life; however, many of my friends are also my colleagues. My timeline is filled with articles about libraries and technology in between friends’ family and travel photos. I post library information on our school Facebook page as it is used by our parents.

Twitter I use Twitter as a professional learning tool, following note worthy colleagues. I discovered Paperli a website takes your twitter feed and turns it into a daily newspaper. I can scan the headlines, read what I am interested in without feeling like I might miss something important. This year I created a current events paperli as a trial for our middle school students.

Diigo I save websites and articles on this bookmarking website daily. We have been using Diigo with our debate teams as a research tool. All members of the team belong to the group and share articles and discuss them through Diigo. Our Professional Learning Community is now using this tool to share websites and articles.

Youtube I have been creating i-movies to showcase visiting authors, battle of the books and aspects of learning in our library. This year I have been using Screencastomatic to show students how to use Noodletools, EBSCO and our online catalogue Destiny.  I post these videos to Youtube.

 Google We are a Google school and use almost the entire Google suite of tools for collaboration and organisation.

Good Reads and LibraryThing Our Istanbul Librarians’ Network has a monthly book chat meeting and we record all the books we chat about on our group page. Our February book chat meeting was held on Google Hangouts due to a snow storm. We recorded it and posted it to the group page. I use Librarything to record all the books I read so I can remember titles when I am recommending books to students.

 

Learning in INF506
I would like to learn how to harness social network technologies to promote the work of our library. I want to let our community know about the great resources we have in the library and how they can access them. I think social networking is a way to achieve these goals.