"The Networked Librarian" talk by Lee Rainie

One idea brought up by Mister Rainie that I would like to discuss here is the concept of "everyday folk" (for lack of a better term) publishing and disseminating information by means which were once the domain of individuals like professional journalists and "gatekeepers of knowledge" (like librarians).

Now, there have been many arguments made that this is not necessarily a good thing (Andrew Keen's "Cult of the amateur" and Jonathan Zittrain's "The future of the Internet and how to stop it" come to mind for me); however, I would suggest that there is reason to be optimistic that these "non-professionals" can be steered in the right direction when it comes to churning out useful/relevant information, with the help of individuals that are more experienced and better trained in such matters (again, like librarians).

Rainie mentions a "new media culture" that is being created by this "crazy bunch of bloggers", and I can see why the more traditional media outlets (i.e. The Fourth Estate) would be a little nervous about this relatively new turn of events ... not just out of fear of being deemed obsolete - because the "hip" thing nowadays is to get information from amateur sources rather than newspapers or television - but also because of the heightened possibility of having questionable/erroneous information widely circulate amongst the general populace.

While this is certainly a valid concern, it doesn't have to signal the end of traditional mass media (or libraries for that matter) as a source of legitimate information; librarians have always been about giving patrons the tools necessary to find the information that they need, either through reference materials or information literacy instruction ... Now that this "crazy bunch of bloggers" is gaining a foothold in how our patrons get their information, it's up to librarians to teach them the skills necessary to not only distinguish the relevant/useful information from the junk, but to be able to create and publish that relevant information themselves (bloggers can be patrons too, after all!).

Rainie goes on to say that there are "norms and professional standards" employed by members of the mainstream media, where they follow a "sensibility of publishing" as to how and where they can gather information/sources; now, it is not the role of librarians to be conducting journalism classes or anything like that, but they could certainly steer people in the direction of finding out how those standards can lead to more socially responsible ways of researching/verifying the information that they want to share with their individual networks. The "content creation world of social media" can be more "quirky", so helping educate bloggers on these issues can be a way for librarians to help temper the creation of poorly-researched or misleading information.

All in all, librarians have a role as "information specialists" to try and help their communities have access to as large a pool of reliable information as they can provide ... Now that those communities themselves are becoming a larger part of the information-providing equation (creators just as much as recipients), librarians must do their part to help and inform those bloggers on how to make their created content as reliable and factual as possible.

Anyone use dlvr.it?

Dlvr.it is a pretty neat website that allows you to "instantly syndicate content and expand their reach on the social web and into new channels" (as they explain it on their website).

It's a great way to automatically add content to your Twitter feed or Facebook wall, directly from your blog ... I've been trying for ages to convince our library to use this with their Facebook page (which is fairly regularly updated) in order to get more traffice onto their Twitter feed (which is pretty much dead at this point).

Anyway, if all goes according to plan, you should see this blog post linked up on both my Twitter and Facebook accounts within the next fifteen minutes or so ... fingers crossed!

Welcome!

This is the blog I have created for the URI class LSC 597 ("Library 2.0 and Social Networking") ...

More coming soon!