The apparently unsociable librarian

I'm the first to admit, I love social media stuff. I've been on Twitter for almost 5 years, I (slightly grudgingly) eventually joined Facebook around the same time, and have played with all sorts of thing in between, from Formspring to Pinterest.

However - my use of all those sites is almost exclusively personal (apart from Twitter, which is actually heavily weighted towards work-relevant networks). There's not actually much need that I can see to do anything involving social media in its current form for my own library service. I do enjoy reading about how academic and public libraries are furthering the use of their resources and exploring how to best use sites, using Facebook to inform users about events and service specifics, Twitter to respond to individuals, and Pinterest to collate interesting visual materials...but it just doesn't work in my situation.

As a corporate librarian, I'm in a very different position from a public or academic librarians, in relation to sharing resources. Those types of services are set up to spread information, and allow as many people as possible to benefit from their resources, partially because the people using the resources are also helping to fund them (either through tuition fees or taxation). In a corporate library, the employing organisation has invested from their own funds to create their own library service, and properly staff it. A lot of time and effort is spent in a corporate library to create resources that are tailored to the needs and demands of internal service users, and which are therefore a valuable business asset, and definitely not a thing which could be shared. Corporate libraries cannot be sociable outside their own body - their work is for the benefit of their own, internal users only, the exact reverse of the situation for public and academic libraries.

And if it were possible to use social media in a manner suitable for sharing externally (eg for marketing purposes, which the library may have involvement in), most of the social media sites are based on the model of free sharing, e.g. Pinterest (although this has its own copyright-infringement issues, due to the sites enabling of such easy online sharing), or sites which are free because they carry advertising. This throws up all sorts of issues for a firm - what if the adverts on a free site were for an offensive service/company, or for a competitor of a client? By having firm-linked material on the same page, we could look like we were endorsing a client competitor. What if we accidentally infringed copyright on Pinterest by using an image that seemed freely and legally available, but in reality wasn't? It could be a highly risky activity to be involved in.

Corporate library services basically have to be faceless, neutral, and non existent on social media.

So...don't think I'm being unsociable if I'm not joining in with these discussions and experiments, but just remember: for every interesting public use of social media, there's probably a corporate librarian watching it all, feeling frustrated that they can't join in with the fun stuff...

Any other library service types out there unable to be sociable?

The mysteries of cataloguing

Cataloguing: an arcane art, where each piece of punctuation is significant, and commas and semi colons are all-powerful. Well, they are in "proper" libraries, where in-depth research of esoteric points goes on, and the precise spelling of Christian names, and information such as when a person lived and died can be crucial in pinpointing obscure facts. Here, we have our own catalogue system. It doesn't have a name, but if it did, it would probably be something along the lines of "I need this book NOW, no I don't care about the precise spelling of the authors middle name, or their date of birth." I know, I know, it's not snappy, but it's accurate. Cataloguing demands are different in a commercial law firm: we don't care about much more than what it's about, who wrote, when, and what jurisdiction it covers. And what we really, really care about is "where the hell is it". Law books are amazing: they have the power to move themselves f...

Careering along

When I look around at the activities of information professional groups, it seems that there’s a disparity. There’s quite often a lot of support and funding available for those who’re just starting out in the profession, but a desert of nothingness for those of us who’re “just getting on with it”. If you’re a new professional, you have lots of groups to support you as you progress in your early career, various prize funds available for essay and report writing, access to bursaries for conference attendance, eligibility for awards for being new and enthusiastic. But what do you get when you’re past that bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed first 5 years (5 years seems to be the approximate cut-off point for becoming “established” and no longer new). What happens when you’ve already received a bursary from an organisation earlier in your career and so wouldn’t be eligible for one now, meaning you’re not able to attend events or training? When you’re heavily involved in a project but not at ...

UK librarian blogs - the list so far

I’ve pulled the previous entries into one alphabetical list, with a few categories. Will be back later with more detailed discussion of what I’ve learned by doing this. And, as always, if you know of other librarian blogs, let me know and I’ll add them in! Institutional Library Blogs / Professional Group Blogs aRKive Appears to be the blog of the Reid Kerr College library, or someone related to the Library, but unable to confirm as it doesn’t have any ‘about’ section that I can find. Lots of posts about library topics, books, IT… Brit Lib Blogs Google Group There’s a Google Group for British librarian bloggers! Unfortunately it looks to be pretty much unused at the moment. CILIP Blogs CILIP has various blogs by either staff, or links to relevant blogs, available from the Communities section. Varying levels of activity on these blogs – the PTEG blog has one post from November 2007, while Lyndsay’s CILIP Blog has been going has been going for almost a year, with at le...

Pandora said…

I feel similarly in a government library setting, but I thi there are things we could do, but a restricted by internal permissions and politics. All about risk / benefit. I think some of the risk is worth it for the potential benefit. Because internal, corporate intranets and communications structures just aren't fit for our purpose, which actively threatens our ability to do our job, and through that, the quality of the work our customers can do.

23 March 2012 at 10:06

Dumpling said…

Yes, it must be even harder in government libraries - a similar need to public bodies to disseminate info to as many users as possible, but with even stricter IT lockdowns to wrestle with!

23 March 2012 at 10:44

twi said…

I too work in a corporate setting. I use Twitter to monitor what is going on in the profession outside these walls. I find it especially good at alerting me to developments in web search services and CPD events. I do post about professional development activities but rarely about anything involved with what goes on in our information service. So much more a lurker than a poster, but glad to use Twitter for professional purposes (my use of Facebook is strictly for personal stuff and not done from work).

23 March 2012 at 11:36

Yup, I use Twitter for that too - it allows me contact with a wide range of info professionals, across all sorts of sectors, and to keep an eye out for any interesting/relevant events. I also throw a fair amount of personal chat in too, because it lets people get to know me, and develop a personal AND professional relationship. But I don't post stuff that's identifiable about my work (other than it's in Edinburgh, in Scotland, and potentially some of the sectors where I'm digging about for research, but that's all information that's viewable on the firm website anyway).

Facebook is entirely personal - no workmates, no work info, nothing! Not sure how Facebook could ever be useful for a corporate library service! :)

23 March 2012 at 12:28

lorna.robertson said…

We may not be able to join in using social media to market our libraries but we can use our expertise at a higher level to help market the whole firm

23 March 2012 at 12:40

Yes, this is where it'd would be good to be more involved with Marketing - to be able to advise on how certain services could/should be used, through the experience of having seen those services used in other ways by other sectors, would be a benefit the Library could offer.

23 March 2012 at 12:46

I hate Blogger said…

Yes, I get a similar feeling quite often. I work in a company, but we're not even big enough for a library, or formal information service. I provide that role without most people even realising that's what I do! A certain amount of my job is persuading people of the importance of information and how we handle it in all situations. There have been a few times when I've pined over things people are talking about - but I also have a lot more freedom than many (I can download anything I want to my computer, for example), so it has its ups and downs!

26 March 2012 at 15:53

Dumpling in a Hanky

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