At the IA Summit in Vancouver this spring, Luke Wroblewski, Principal Designer, Yahoo! Inc. shared some of his ideas about designing for the social web. His presentation, The Web Now: Social (PDF) looks at design considerations in building successful communities around content on the web.
Luke described the different roles that are played in an online community using Yahoo! Groups as example:
1. Creators
- 1% of the total users will start a group or a thread
2. Synthesizers
- 10% of the population actively contribute
3. Consumers
- 100% of population can benefit form the interaction
Using Flickr, a social photo sharing site as another example, Luke pointed out the need to create the right mix and balance between creators, synthesizers and consumers.
More and more libraries are looking at ways to foster participation on our web sites. Most social software sites like Flickr, MySpace, and del.icio.us are already fostering conversations around collections - enabling conversations, connections and communities to develop around the photos, bookmarks, music, books, and the ideas that they generate. These sites leverage the contributions of the users to create social discovery systems that improve findability, searching and serendipitous discovery of new items and people. The web is social.
Libraries, of course, have rich collections of materials that people want to talk about. Ironically, right now our library users are usually having these online conversations about collections almost everywhere but the library web site.
Some libraries have recognized the desire by patrons to have conversations about collections and are adding the ability to review or comment on items or participate on wiki "talk" pages. Other libraries are providing social software tools like social bookmarking software, blogs or wikis.
Our efforts to data in libraries may be just one piece of the overall pie. We need to ask ourselves what are our goals? Are we adding these features to increase user participation and interaction between the library and patrons? To increase interactions and connections and conversations between patrons and other patrons? And if so, to what end? Are we focusing on increasing participation as a means of opening up the library and developing and more responsive and nimble organization that responds to community needs and interests, aka a kind of enhanced feedback system that is transparent to everyone? Are we looking at designing online communities and fostering a unique "public community space" that is open to everyone just like the library building offers a public gathering and meeting space for its local community? Are we trying to engage our community in conversations around collections and local community events and information as a means to foster community development? Or are we interested in patron's creating more content and connections so that we can design "social discovery" tools by aggregating, mining and analyzing the data to make better systems for aiding the discovery of new materials?
Depending on our institution's particular goals, the advice that Luke Wroblewski offered in his presentation is particularly pertinent. Luke shared a few pearls of wisdom:
- Quality is a challenge. Sometimes burying the comment button (and the 200 posts that say "me to") is the smart option.
- Anonymous posting does little to build community and usually results in a lot more noise and spam. That's not say that real names have to be used - people can choose nicknames.
"The best check on bad behavior is identity."? - Mark Zuckerburg, Facebook Founder
- Pay attention to people in the way that you design the system. Factor in the different motivations and create reward systems that foster the community.
It's interesting to consider Luke's advice on designing social applications when you look at some of the initiatives that libraries have underway. In designing these new library services, have we factored in the different motivations and use cases in creating online interactionpiecess? Are we looking at the balance between (and providing for) creators, synthesizers and consumers?
Is there a role for academic libraries as well as public and corporate libraries to actively foster and facilitate social discourse about collections? How can we encourage conversations that benefit the whole community and become more valuable and useful as each new person participates (net effect)? Institutional repositories focus on the creator, but have we provided tools for other types --synthesizerss and consumers? Should we?
The web is bursting with hundreds of new Web 2.0 sites clamouring for users and participation. Many of these won't gather enough people and content to reach a "tipping point" where the site/service gains traction and takes off. How can libraries reach a tipping point by collaborating together? Are we participating in the discussion and the use of microformat standards like the reviews and events that would allow us to collect and combine and repurpose content contributed at the local library level? Libraries have a lot of experience sharing metadata.(cc) Photo by Tamàs Nepusz
Tags: social software wikis library 2.0
