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Social Libraries

2009, December 6 - 16:42 — PatParslow

 I have had reason to think about Libraries lately.  I am giving a talk to library staff at my university on Digital Identity, so I have been thinking through the whole 'library in a digital world' idea.

Now, I have to confess, I am not a great library user.  I used to get books out when I was a kid - such a wonderful world of fantasy and science fiction was available.  It used to gall me that I couldn't take books out, read them and return them and get more out on the same day.  More recently, I have not been so prolific in my (physical) book reading.  Apart from anything else, I tend to be busy reading and writing things on the web, or trying to get various programmes working properly.  I probably should take more time out to read the printed word, but for the time being I don't think it is likely to happen.

Having said that, there are a couple of things which would make me much more inclined to use a library (even if only virtually).  Libraries are the 'natural home' of books (and journals).  One of the most important things to me, when it comes to deciding what to read, are personal recommendations from other people.  It doesn't have to be from someone I know - but a decent review of a book is much more likely to attract me to read it.  However, a publishers 'review' or most critics' reviews leave me cold.  Obviously, sites like Amazon are relatively helpful in this regard, although as I am aware of a number of critical reviews being removed from their site, I generally don't pay much regard to the ones that are there, as they are implicitly biased.

I would like to see my local library (both public and institutional) running a social networking site.  Each book could have a home page (with links to online text, if available) and a discussion forum.  Maybe someone, somewhere, is already doing this, but I haven't seen it.  Alongside this, if library staff posted about the publications they found interesting, about local events such as poetry readings or plays, it would really boost my level of interest.  I know many libraries have calendars of events (e.g. Reading Borough Council's library pages) but why is there no opportunity to get into a discussion about them there on the site?

I would love to know if anyone is out there doing this sort of thing - and if they aren't, I would love to know why.  Is it because of the risks of someone saying something nasty about a book/author/member of staff/service user?  

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Comments

2009, December 6 - 22:45 — Vecna (not verified)

"I would love to know if

"I would love to know if anyone is out there doing this sort of thing - and if they aren't, I would love to know why. Is it because of the risks of someone saying something nasty about a book/author/member of staff/service user? "

I fully suspect if I asked my mother, she'd say "Time".

V.

2009, December 6 - 22:42 — Vecna (not verified)

"It used to gall me that I

"It used to gall me that I couldn't take books out, read them and return them and get more out on the same day."

You couldn't? Did they have strange and arcane rules on the number of books borrowable per day or something?

V.

2009, December 6 - 23:32 — PatParslow

Yes

Yes they did. 

2009, December 6 - 17:12 — Owen Stephens (not verified)

In terms of social networks

In terms of social networks around books LibraryThing (http://www.librarything.com/) stands out. Although it is based around personal ownership of books rather than libraries I guess. However, quite a few libraries are starting to integrate LibraryThing content into their collections using the 'LibraryThing for Libraries' service (http://www.librarything.com/forlibraries/) - for example The Open University library in the UK uses this to integrate tags assigned to items by LibraryThing members into their catalogue records.

There are also examples of libraries (more so in the USA I think) providing the opportunity for users to be part of a library SN - perhaps Darien Public Libraries being the most well known attempt to rethink the library in these terms http://www.darienlibrary.org/. It is worth looking at SOPAC (Social OPAC) which was written by John Blyberg (now at Darien) when he was at Ann Arbor District Library (http://www.aadl.org/catalog)

At the 'Developer Happiness day' (Dev8D) last year one of the project proposed was a 'social OPAC' called 'sh!' - see http://vimeo.com/3289718 for an outline of the proposal.

I'd also highlight what I think has been a less successful attempt to capture 'user reviews' - which is WorldCat which has supported this function for some years. It would be interesting to see some stats on this, but my general experience has been it isn't well used (a quick look now suggests it could be improving actually). This raises questions of what factors are required to get good user generated content and/or social network functions. There is clearly some question around the size of the user base, but I suspect that a more important question is that of 'community'. Obviously if you are looking at geographical based issues such as an events diary, a public library user base would be the interested community. However, when looking at book reviews, I guess that you (like me) is more likely to want recommendations from people you know rather than simply other people who use the same library as you. I suspect this is one part of the reason why LibraryThing has been successful whereas other library-based initiatives have not been.

So, my final thought would be that looking at how you could expose your library usage data via your existing social networks (e.g. a 'books I've borrowed' feed into Facebook) stand a better chance of being used than a 'library based' SN. I'd also link this back to aspects of digital identity - who owns your borrower record - you or the library?

2009, December 6 - 18:46 — PatParslow

Good points, thanks

 Thanks Owen,

Interesting links.  I had heard of LibraryThing but had forgotten all about it.  I certainly think that it is one of those problems of how to bootstrap such a system.  With LibraryThing, it seems to me that it isn't of much use until other people get involved in using it - but when they do, I can see that it could be a great resource.

Just 'thinking out loud', I guess I would want to be able to keep notes on books I had read, and not necessarily share them with others (at least initially).  

The geographical aspect is certainly an issue - a distributed system, such as I think is possible through using LibraryThing's service is probably the way to go, allowing a location based community as well as allowing the global or specialist communities to work with a common 'platform'.

 

2010, October 3 - 13:16 — Lo Snofall (not verified)

Google books?

Maybe Google books could develop some of the features you write about? As for now you can create your own bookshelves in your own library, read and write reviews, sort (into favourites, reading now, to read, have read) and maybe other things I've not yet discovered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Books:
"The initiative has been hailed for its potential to offer unprecedented access to what may become the largest online corpus of human knowledge and promoting the democratization of knowledge, but it has also been criticized for potential copyright violations."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Books_Library_Project