Library 2.0 is a way to describe a change in the way libraries use social media and web tools to interact with library users (Huvila, Holmberg, Kronqvist-Berg, Nivakoski, & Widen, 2013, p. 198). Istanbul International Community School (IICS) library caters for students age 3 – 18 years and their families. Web 2.0 tools offer IICS library an opportunity to meet the needs of its community. Using the ideas from the Berkeley seminar on building library 2.0 (UC Berkeley Events, 2007) there are five key pieces of advice that will help IICS library to go forward.
1. Know your patrons: Meredith Farkes counselled librarians to find out what their patrons are into and what they enjoy. Find ways of gathering information about them that are not simply answering our questions created by our own view of the world. Once a year IICS students, staff and families complete an anonymous feedback form about the school. A few questions about the library would be helpful with a comments box as well for further thoughts.
2. Plan: Shel Wagner spoke about understanding what people want and then creating a plan to accommodate it. At the moment there is an annual IICS library plan but it doesn’t include the use of web tools or technology to promote conversation with users. Developing a five year plan that includes ways to use technology and web tools to develop and market library services would enable purposeful development of library 2.0.
3. Partnership: Shel Wagner also recommended creating strategic partnership between libraries, IT and the communities they serve. For IICS library the key partnerships would be with school leadership, the technology team, the parents and students using the library. Using social media and web tools to connect with these partners would be one way to strengthen and develop the partnership.
4. Build Participation: Meredith Farkes spoke about communication, going where are users are virtually – like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and building participation. She recommended being in the virtual spaces that the students use like adding library access to the online learning portals. IICS has many homeroom WordPress sites. It would be simple thing to ask each teacher to add a library search box as a widget to their pages.
5. Get rid of the culture of perfect: Meredith Farkes knows her librarian colleagues well when she gave this challenge. When applying social media and web tools there is the need to get things done quickly and know that editing and improvements can come later. At IICS library that means blogging about events as soon as they happen – getting the word out quickly can mean a lot for the students involved. It also means trying new ideas and tools even if we are not experts at using them yet. We are making the plane in the air when using web 2.0 tools, they are changing all the time.
References
AFallGuy4u. (2007, October 8). EDS airplane [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2zqTYgcpfg
Huvila, I., Holmberg, K., Kronqvist-Berg, M., Nivakoski, O., & Widen, G. (2013). What is Librarian 2.0 – New competencies or interactive relations? A library professional viewpoint. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 45(3), 198-205. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0961000613477122
UC Berkeley Events. (2007, November 2). Building academic library 2.0 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_uOKFhoznI