Chelsea Hughes and Douglas Campbell
Nautical theme using the Web 2.0 Map.
MySpace – went to tell musicians “Give us your CDs, it’s the law.” Message was clear but didn’t actively engage; then left and had no exit strategy.
Blogs – started up a couple. Also name “The Collections blog that never happened” – because would be too time consuming for staff to do necessary research. Other blogs (Library Tech and Create Readers have been successful and they’re sticking around.
Flickr – Rights was an issue to start with but now joined Flickr Commons. Staying but passively – adding stuff but not joining discussion and groups.
Learned how to take risks, created relationships. But didn’t have resources to really nurture their pressence – like blogs it’s not really anyone’s job.
2008 Web Harvest
Timeline: anger because of bandwidth. NatLib explained so people were happier. What went well – they were already in the social spaces so were alerted to anger quickly and could respond quickly.
Twitter – worked well because could apply past lessons. Identified as opportunity to promote collections. Tea-break tweets only – no system outages, media releases. Try to be at desk for 30 minutes after tweets go out in case of replies so can stay engaged. Don’t measure success by number of followers but by clicks on bit.ly links and conversations. Low effort so definitely staying. Much went well; so far nothing’s gone badly!
Have tested waters in wikipedia, slideshare, delicious, youtube, but so far haven’t found a good fit at them. These places don’t meet their criteria of having something to offer, someone to tell it too, and a way to sustain it.
Lessons learnt:
Engage, set goals, know your audience, know your limits, know yourself, be social, own it, choose your platform wisely, make it personal, take risks but be smart about it, be casual but not too casual.
Handout folded in shape of boat with chocolate ‘gold coin’ folded inside. Contents will be on Library Tech.
Q: Still doing Flickr Commons?
A: Yes, still adding things, just not more involved.
Q: Are you capturing NZ Tweets through NDHA?
A: No. Not sure how to identify NZ twitterers. Only covers .nz and “known offsite distributors”.
Q: How do you sell Flickr etc to bosses?
A: Get a longer leash to trial it; point to success examples; show them the benefits. Get a three-month pilot agreed.
Q: Re “just do it” – but it’s about the library’s reputation too.
A: If you’re just doing it then use a personal account but also be smart about it.
Being online is just another way of living your life – a staff member could make just as bad a reputation for you at the pub.