To fb or not to fb

This week the Cam23 juggernaut, rather inevitably, parks up at Facebook (or fb if you’re ‘down with the kids’ as I so obviously am!) Was there a time when I didn’t know what it was? Probably, but it was surely many centuries ago. Although I’m a firm believer in the blurring of personal and professional boundaries, something that is actively necessitated by true engagement with social media, I do draw the line with Facebook because I have made a conscious effort  not to use it professionally. My other rule is not to accept friend requests from people I work with because I do very occasionally use it as a place to sound off to friends and family, along the lines of “Kirsty’s being a total bitch today” (joke!). Having said all that I’m not really using it anymore, except for the occasional status update and photo album. My interest and the interest of my fb friends is very evidently on the wane. My theory is that this has more to do with the unending stream of Farmville and Mafia Wars than with all that privacy controversy. Twitter is the other culprit. It is – for the moment anyway – the place to be and I think its going to hit the zeitgeist for a while longer.

However, walk about any academic library in the UK, including mine, and the most frequently open application is still Facebook not Twitter. It is for this reason that we persist with our Judge Library Facebook Group in the hope that we can get in the eyeline of our fb-focused users and every now and then get them to click through to library updates and our collection of database and open web links. We’re not exactly assisted in this by Facebook’s ridiculously restrictive architecture which is barely customisable and prevents us from prioritising and showing off the resources we want them to use. Despite this major problem, I well remember the moment when Claudia, who maintains our fb content first passed me our fb stats. To my complete surprise it turned out that the pages were being used and fairly extensively, proving that our efforts in that direction were worth it after all.

We currently have 155 fans (two of them don’t count as one is my mum and another my little sister – thanks guys) so that’s 153 fans (I got my Maths GCSE). Of those around 32 are active in any one week – that’s 20%. OK, so that’s not startlingly high but it means that after becoming fans a fifth return regularly. However, we have no way of knowing if they are the same 32. Now on to the more interesting stat: we average around 300 unique visits a week. This is anyone visiting the page, not restricted to fans, and we assume must include JBS library users who have not signed up due the ignominy of being a fan. Remember my concern that our fb users weren’t getting to the places we wanted to take them, namely the ‘Boxes’ section where all the good stuff is – link to our portal, Newton, new books, Delicious links etc – well that section is getting 65% of use compared to only 33% use of the rather useless ’Wall’. It seems that users can make their way to the information after all.

So in conclusion, we’ll persevere with fb for the time being as a library, but I feel sure that my own personal use will continue to drop off. About to post this when I saw this BBC news item about fb reaching the 500 million users mark. Not quite dead yet then.

[Images courtesy of Crackbook]

Life is just too short

Flickr is one of those things that I’m a little surprised to find I don’t use, especially as I’m a very visual person and postively evangelical about using images in blog posts and teaching presentations in order to pep them up, make an impact and drive a message home.

However, I freely admit that my primary, nay only, source for images is not Flickr but Google, partly because of the convenience of just sticking some words into the search box (which I always have open) and partly because the selection is the most comprehensive anywhere on the web. In terms of uploading my own personal photos I prefer to use Facebook as I don’t feel my holiday snaps need to be out there for all to see. I know you can set permissions on Flickr and invite certain people to view, but really it’s a bit of a rigmarole – been there, done that. I prefer the fact that friends are immediately alerted to my new Facebook photo albums via the news feed.

Me and my son John at Knossos last week (currently residing on Facebook not Flickr)

And now I come to the potentially contentious part of this post. Despite the emboldened text in the Thing 10 post about reproduction rights I have to say that I have no inclination whatsoever to check if the images I’m using are officially available for use, for the following reasons:

1. Life is just too short (and I am way too busy).
2. It would restrict my choice.
3. A lot of baloney is talked about copyright and fair use when it comes to use of images in blog posts and other non-commercial websites.
4. If someone has a problem with an image I’ve used I’ll remove it.
5. 12 years adding images to websites has only ever resulted in one incident (of which more below).

It’s worth mentioning that the images I have used on the many websites that I’ve maintained over the years, that have had nothing to do with my professional interests but instead my personal interests (in classic TV drama from the Seventies and Eighties), have been much more potentially contentious – using BBC images for instance. And yet I have never been asked to remove an image by any TV company. Indeed I know for several TV series the BBC has made, they actually point fans with questions in the direction of my sites. 

The only time I’ve ever been asked to remove an image was when a loony actor asked for a picture of him in Nazi uniform be taken down for fear that people might recognise him from 30 years previously and think he was a Nazi when he was younger – and this on a TV series appreciation site! Clearly this guy had been out in the LA sun a little too long.

Another Nazi from the same TV series. The actor pictured is Clifford Rose, the character Kessler. Unlike one of his former colleagues, Rose is aware  that Secret Army was a TV series and is not afraid people will think he used to be a Nazi.

Now when it comes to my publishing sideline, I of course regard obtaining permission as essential as I’m in that game for commercial gain. Each and every photo is credited and monies paid if necessary. But blogging (and my classic TV sites) well that’s a different matter. Copyright is undeniably about intepretation and while I understand the majority wish to err on the side of caution, when it comes to non-commercial web activity, I actively do not.

As for applying use of Flickr to libraries I do recognise the potential (limited) marketing opportunities when it comes to recording an event, but I think this sort of thing works rather better in public, rather than academic, libraries, as the list on the Tame the Web blog suggests. As for the possibility of Flickr photo tour of the Judge Library, as I’m rather more keen to promote our extensive database content than the look of the physical library that wouldn’t really help with delivery of our core message. 

So sorry Flickr mate, your name’s not down and you’re not getting in.

I have not sought permission for any of  the images in the above post.
Chase me!

The average academic business librarian

I’ve recently updated and sent out a benchmarking survey to British Business Schools Librarians Group (BBSLG) member institutions with a view to gathering key information on their library services and the roles of the individual librarians that run them. The survey was first distributed in 2007 so it should prove very interesting to see how much has changed since then. The most easily digestible results of the survey will be a picture of the average BBSLG institution and the average BBSLG librarian.

Looking specifically at the latter, last time around the average BBSLG librarian:

• Was a chartered member of CILIP
• Had 23 years experience in libraries
• Has been in their current post for 7.6 years
• Spent most of their time answring ad hoc enquiries, developing and delivering training sessions and producing user support materials
• Spent almost as much time acquiring electronic resources as printed
• Managed and negotiated a budget
• Represented the library on a teaching committee
• Enjoyed a flexible policy when it came to accessing CPD
• Was involved in markting and PR activities
• And earned between 27,000 and 32,000 pa

Whereas the average BBSLG instiution:

• supported 278 MBAs, 1720 undergrads, 66 PhDs and 103 academic staff
• provided access to 32,000 business and management books
• provided access to 212 printed journals
• had 3.5 FTE full-time library staff
• had a ratio of 1 FTE library staff member to 29 academics/79 MBAs
• were either testing or using the following ‘new’ technology the most: blogs, openURLresolvers, fed search
• were giving more standalone lectures or tutorials than ones integrated into the curriculum
• spent most of their budget on databases
• formed the business section of an integrated University Library, rather than being a standalone library within a larger University libary service

The main additions to this year’s survey are some more social media options, as this has moved on a touch in the last 2 years (!), to find out how business librarians are using Facebook, Twitter and blogs and specifically the ratio of professional and social use. In addition there’s a new a section on how motivated individuals feel, the level of support they feel they receive from their institution and how challenging their post is.

The aim of the survey is to gauge the temperature of business librarianship as a whole as well as to assemble some hard data.

I’ll be posting top level (but non-confidential) results here in mid-July. The full report will be available to BBSLG members via the website.

Andy

Every way that we can

It’s probably the most difficult problem that librarians around the world are currently facing : how to get the instiutions in which we are based to understand what it is we actually do and moreover to recognise our value and relevance. I realise I’m not saying anything new or groundbreaking here, but I honestly believe that if we don’t start addressing this issue of issues more comprehensively and conclusively, and soon, then in this leaner and less forgiving age, we may genuinely run out of time to get this message across. Earlier this month, this fact zoomed even more inexorably into focus for me, after hearing about sweeping staff cuts to a library service that I’d always regarded to be as safe as houses.

So where are we going wrong? Well for one thing I’m convinced we’re still not being bold enough about communicating the value we bring to our organisations, and for another that we’re still assuming that stakeholders have a better understanding of the myriad complexities of librarianship than they do. Yes we all have our champions and supporters, but they are far outnumbered by those who, if pushed for a description of what it is we do, would inexplicably trot out the old ‘stamp, shelve and shush’ cliches. We can no longer afford to be complacent or assume that our services will be eternally funded. Going back to an earlier post, like Bertrand Russell’s Christmas turkey, sooner or later we may stop being fed and suddenly find that we have no future.

So what can we do about it? Plenty. Its no accident that I spend so much of my time marketing my own library service through newsletters, plasma screen adverts, boomarks, online and printed guides, Youtube videos, consultation exercises, focus groups, teaching and training, our portal, emails, Twitter, surveys, Facebook, inductions, social bookmarking and internal committees. Rather it’s in recognition of the fact that I’m more convinced than ever that the services we offer need to be communicated and promoted in every way that we can, and that all the avenues that are open to us must be fully explored and utilised. I see accountability and statistics as equally key, so that we can incontrovertibly prove that our services and resources are sufficiently used, that our staffing levels are appropriate, and that our contribution to teaching and research is both tangible and vital. Of course, statistics do not constitute a cast-iron guarantee, but they’re incredibly useful safeguards against uninformed assumption.

Can we market ourselves too much? Can we spend too much time seeking to prove our worth? I don’t think we can. In a world where the activity of an information search has been popularly distilled into sticking a word a Google and hitting return, we cannot assume that our incalulably more complex raft of services will be understood, never mind embraced. And I suggest that this should be our other primary objective going forward: to simplify our services and to explain ourselves in as straightforward a manner as possible. This should lead to better  understanding of, and more importantly, sufficient buy-in to, our services and in turn to some much-needed professional security.