USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES IN LIBRARY AND INFORMATION CENTRES “If you’re not networking, you’re not working” Denis Waitley Aslam Ansari | Assit. Librarian | Library, Integral University | Lucknow |
[email protected] Mehfoozul Hasan | Library Assistant | Central Library | Integral University | Lucknow Abstract: Social Networking (SN) just began from late 21st century and growing up rapidly up to date. It verified as a medium of communication with one to another for sharing their experiences and information regarding interest, and also helps to build up long-time relationship between individuals and group. In the field of LIS services, it may be quietly help to promote the services of LIC (Library and Information Centers) to develop the proficiency about technology of professionals and other side like users. Keyword: SNS (Social Networking Sites), LIS Professionals, Online community, Virtual reference, Mass friending. INTRODUCTION
Now a day’s Information Communication Technology is approach to transmitting the idea or thought or information between one to another and understanding through the interaction, in other words it is the act of sharing or exchanging information, ideas or feelings. There are various technique to communication that establish through the network, web technologies are creating more friendly, social and fun environments for retrieving and sharing information and one of such Social networking websites are a good example of communication network and it is a social structure that lets the user interact and work collaboratively with other users. Although people have been using the internet to connect with others since the early 1980s, it is only in the last decade that social networking services have proliferated and their use has become a widespread practice – particularly amongst young people and changing the ways in which people use and engage with the internet and with each other. Young people particularly are quick to use the new technology in ways which increasingly blur the boundaries between their online and offline activities. The uniqueness of this social networking is to share information among users ranging from highly personal to academic interests of the participants and it has become one of the largest platform in the world for sharing real time information and its possible uses for LIS Professionals and to assess how much real transformation this technology can deliver, while deflating reaffirmation and singling out the real assessment of these innovations. DEFINITIONS
Social networking sites can be broadly defined as an internet or mobile-based social space where people can connect, communicate, and create and share content with others. While we use the term "social network site" to describe this occurrence, the term "social networking sites" also appears in public discourse, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. We chose not to employ the term "networking" for two reasons: emphasis and scope. "Networking" emphasizes relationship initiation, often between strangers. While networking is possible on these sites, it is not the primary practice on many of them, nor is it what differentiates them from other forms of computer‐mediated communication. According to Computing Dictionary (2011), “Social networking site as any website designed to allow multiple users to publish content of them. The information may be on any subject and may be for consumption by friends, mates, employers, employees just to mention a few.” Boyd and Ellison (2007) define “social networking sites as Web-based services that allow individuals to having three common elements (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site”.
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Advantages of Social Networking: The significant advantage is: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Worldwide Connectivity Commonality of Interest Real-Time Information Sharing Free Advertising Increased News Cycle Speed
Disadvantages of Online Social Communities: While up using SNS, there is some negativity is also like: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Face to Face Connections are endangered Cyber bullying and Crimes against Children Risks of Fraud or Identity Theft Time Waster Corporate Invasion of Privacy Negative Health Consequences Diminishing Privacy MAJOR CATEGORIES OF SOCIAL NETWORK
SNS can be categories as their content types, it is very extensible services, White, Mary Gormandy (2014) describe the major categories like: 1. Social Connections: Keeping in touch with friends and family members is one of the greatest benefits of social networking. Facebook, Twitter, Google + and MySpace are some of the most widely-used websites for building social connections online. 2. Multimedia Sharing: Social networking platform makes it easy to share video and managing digital photography content online. Some of the most popular sites for multimedia sharing are YouTube, Flickr and Picasa etc. 3. Professional: Professional social networks are designed to provide opportunities for career-related growth. These types of networks provide a general forum for professionals to connect, while others are focused on specific occupations or interests. A few examples of professional social networks are LinkedIn, Classroom 2.0 and Nurse Connect. Online community designed to help individuals in the nursing profession connect and communicate with each other. 4. Informational: Informational communities are made up of people seeking answers to everyday problems. For example, when you are thinking about starting a home improvement project or want to learn how to go green at home, you may perform a web search and discover countless blogs, websites, and forums filled with people who are looking for the same kind of information. A few examples include: Super Green Me : Online community where individuals interested in adopting green living practices can interact. HGTV Discussion Forums: Connect with individuals interested in home design improvement via the HGTV message boards. Do-It-Yourself Community: Social media resource to allow do-it-yourself enthusiasts to interact with each other. 5. Educational : Educational networks are where many students go in order to collaborate with other students on academic projects, to conduct research for school, or to interact with professors and teachers via blogs and classroom forums. Educational social networks are becoming extremely popular within the educational system today. Some examples of such educational social networks are The Student Room, The Math Forum and ePALS School Blog etc. 6. Hobbies: One of the most popular reasons many people use the Internet is to conduct research on their favorite projects or topics of interest related to personal hobbies. When people find a website based on their favorite hobby, they discover a whole community of people from around the world who share the same passion for those interests. This is what lies at the heart of what makes social networks work, and this is why social networks that are focused on hobbies are some of the most popular. A few examples of hobbyfocused social networking sites include: ISBN 1-63102-455-8
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Oh My Bloom: Social media site specifically for gardening enthusiasts. It features groups, forums, blogs, video content and more. My Place at Scrapbook.com: Designed specifically for scrapbooking enthusiasts, users can create profiles, share information, post updates and more. Sport Shouting: An online destination for sports fans to voice their opinions and connect with other enthusiasts. Academic: Academic researchers who want to share their research and review results achieved by colleagues may find academic-specific social networking to be quite valuable. A few of the most popular online communities for academics are: Academia.edu : Users of this academic social network can share their own research, as well as follow research submitted by others Connotea Collaborative Research: Online resource for scientists, researchers and clinical practitioners to find, organize and share useful information.
There is another category, which define by Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), are describing the major categorization of social network using by usera. b. c. d. e. f. g.
Collaborative Project (for example, Wikipedia), Blogs and micro blogs (for example, Twitter), Social news networking sites (for example, Digg and Leakernet), Content communities (for example, YouTube and DailyMotion), Social networking sites (for example, Facebook), Virtual game-worlds (for example, World of Warcraft), Virtual social worlds (for example, Second Life ).
In briefly all the SN has some specific features like: a. b. c. d. e. f.
Create profile themselves, Connect with other user sending as “request” (may be accepted or denied), Manage the list of friend and searching related links Sending messages Posting, tagging and sharing object with others and Customize a range of aspects, from layout and design, to function and selective disclosures of information to different user or audience. TYPES OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SERVICES
A social networking service or social networking site is a platform to build social networks or social relations among people who share interests, activities, backgrounds or real-life connections. It covers the two main formats – sites that are primarily organised around users' profiles and those that are organised around collections of content. However, it’s important to remember that services may be different and characterised by more than one category. Educators setting up private groups in order to make use of collaborative space and tools are a good example of this. Profile-based SNS: Profile-based services are primarily organised around members' profile pages. Bebo, Facebook and MySpace, are all good examples of this. Users often include third party content in order to enhance their profiles, or as a way of including information from other web services and SNS. Content-based SNS: In these services, the user's profile remains an important way of organising connections, but plays a secondary role to the posting of content. Content-based communities include Flickr, Shelfari, and YouTube.com for video-sharing and last.fm, where the content is created by software that monitors and represents the music that users listen to. White-label SNS: Most SNS offer some group-building functionality, which allows users to form their own mini-communities within sites. Platforms such as Ning and PeopleAggregator broadbandmechanics.com. These 86
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sites offer members the opportunity to create and join communities. This means that users can create their own “mini-MySpace’s”10, small scale social networking sites which support specific interests, events or activities. Multi-User Virtual Environments: Sites such as Second Life, an online virtual world, allow users to interact with each other’s avatars – a virtual representation of the site member. Although the users have profile cards, their functional profiles are the characters they customise or build and control. There are also hybrids of these and social-networking sites, such as Habbo Hotel and Cyworld. Mobile SNS: Many social network sites such as MySpace, MYUBO and Twitter offer mobile phone versions of their services that allowing members to interact with their networks via their phones. Increasingly, too, there are mobile–led and mobile-only based communities allows users to share and view video over mobile networks. Micro-blogging/ Presence updates: Micro-blogging services such as Twitter and Jaiku allow you to publish short (140 characters, including spaces) messages publicly or within contact groups. They are designed to work as mobile services, but are popularly used and read online. Many services offer ‘status updates’ – short messages that can be updated to let people know what mood you are in or what you are doing. These can be checked within the site or exported to be read elsewhere. They engage users in constantly updated conversation and contact with their online networks. People Search: People search is another important web development. There are various kinds of social and people search, but sites like Wink generate results by searching across the public profiles of multiple social network sites allows search by name, interest, location and other information published in profiles and allowing the creation of Web-based "dossiers" on individuals. This type of people search cuts across the traditional boundaries of social network site membership, although the data that are retrieved should already be public. Benefits of Social Networking Service Use There are facts of a broad range of benefits to young people associated with the use of Social Networking Service. Below we summarise these as Media Literacy, Formal Educational Outcomes, Informal Education and Learning, Creativity, Individual Identity and Self-Expression, Strengthening Social Relationships, Belonging and Collective Identity, Building and Strengthening Communities, Civic and Political Participation, SelfEfficacy and Wellbeing UTILIZATION OF SOCIAL NETWORKING AND IT APPLICATION IN LIBRARY
User approach towards library is changing gradually; it wants most practical and speedily information in elearning age. But retrieve quick and easy information to user is a big challenge to library professional. Social networking helps library professional to share information with patrons and students in the easiest way for digital library environment. The possible implication of social networking can be successful by conducting maximum research and experiment on social networking from different point of view on library. That social networking tools were helpful in promoting library services was consistent with the finding that the two most reported purposes for which libraries used social networking tools were promotion of library events such as exhibitions, competitions, talks, seminars, workshops, tutorials, training courses and dissemination of news events alert, library updates. Purposes for using social networking tools, which included the following: to offer library resources including answer enquiries, catalogue search and information about new collections and lists, to convey general library information, and to offer online resources. Ezeani, Chinwe Nwogo and Igwesi, U Zoamaka. (2012) suggest, “…library should follow the public conversations, posts, updates, and events of these key individuals, and pro-actively offer advice, resources, and help. He should act as an active participant of the social space and be able to identify the needs of the members of the library communities and to proffer solutions by offering information, links to the websites that are relevant to their information needs; and even direct offers of help. There is an urgent need for libraries to adopt the new social networking tools in their services as a strategy to embrace change while promoting a participatory role for library users in knowledge creation. The growing use of social networking tools calls for librarians to develop 21 st century skills on digital technologies. Libraries can connect their social networking sites with their library Websites to links to their catalog, chat reference pages, research guides, calendar of events, news etc. Some of the roles of the social networking ISBN 1-63102-455-8
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librarian include: understanding and articulating the nature of social networking sites, creating webpage and content, establishing friendly user interface over the network, creating online database management, evaluating and applying information, and assisting users with skill acquisition. Other skills for a social networking literate librarian include: searching and navigating the web, creating social network space, teaching, and providing quality online library services.” Library professional can use in three broad activities in library and information services are Information sharing, Knowledge distribution and knowledge organization. Information sharing: Social networks are a great way to test your commitment to open communication. In this process librarian can keep constant touch and effective interaction with staff, patrons and faculty in online collaborative environment. The social networking tools that can be practiced by the library for the aforementioned purposes are: MySpace, Facebook, Ning, Blog, Meebo, LinkedIn and Twitter etc. Information Distribution: Information sharing is the major part and crucial area where professionals should looks seriously while considering and designing library activities in digital age. Patron’s satisfaction should give first and foremost priority by providing right information at the right time in a right way from anywhere. Library professionals should rethink for implementing technologies in library services from early period. Virtual Reference Desk (VRD) can be performed by Wikipedia that can planed, design and disseminate information to patrons by KM Wiki, Podcast, YouTube, Blogger, SecondLife Flickr, TeacherTube, Wikipedia PBwiki, Footnote, Community Walk, Slide Share, Digg StumbleUpon and Daft Doggy etc. Knowledge Organization: Social networks tools can helps the Library professionals in KO environment for getting handy and Harvesting information from individual users for improving library services, academic research, etc. which can be accessible with the social networking technologies. The following tools can effectively use in library and information centre for patrons as: aNobii, Del.icio.us, Netvibes, Connotea, LibraryThing and lib.rario.us etc. User Risk to using SNS: The following categories risks might be applicable to social media and specifically to SNSs: Crime and violence ; Recreation ;War, security and terrorism; Political, social and financial; Human disease/health ;Occupational and Consumer products but knowing the user risk to user SNS Haynes, David & Robinson, Lyn (2015) find out a graphical representation: There they suggested possible solution of risk to using SNS, “...current regulatory activity is risk based, this approach could provide a means of evaluating different regulatory approaches. For example, it might be possible to consider whether proposed changes in legislation tend to increase or reduce each of the risk categories in terms of probability of occurrence and severity of impact.” CONCLUSION
Social networking sites proved a vast area for communication with others, which are online network. SNS in library can be used productively but it has thread to user to using without circumspection. Libraries can proliferate to these networks for reaching out strategy to new generation users at their own space and time but it is also important that to provide quality services and interact with users efficiently. Khan, AM & Ansari, A (2014) find in her study that, Remarkable point is Social networking tools may be used as an interactive 88
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platform for LIS professionals to reaching out their various categories of user, young generation professionals are more active and feel comfortable through their techno-savvy nature compare than traditional way of serving services. The most of respondent feel this is easy way to communicate with their user group and also may be using SN tools for find out the research contents. The effectively use of SNS in library training and awareness program should be given to users and professionals prospectively about applications, benefits and risks associated with social networking sites. REFERENCES
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
Khan, Abdul Mannan and Ansari, Aslam (2014) "Role of social networks in library and information services in India: a case study of efficiency and effectiveness", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 31 Iss: 5, pp.11 – 13. Boyd, D. M., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of computermediated communication, 13(1). Available at http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html. Ezeani, Chinwe Nwogo and Igwesi, U zoamaka, "Using Social Media for Dynamic Library Service Delivery: The Nigeria Experience"(2012). Library Philosophy and Practice ( e-journal). Paper 814. Haynes, David & Robinson, Lyn (2015),"Defining user risk in social networking services", ASLIB Journal of Information Management, Vol. 67 Iss 1 pp. 94 – 115. Kaplan Andreas M., Haenlein Michael. (2010)"Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media". Business Horizons 53 (1).p.67. Social Network. (n.d.). The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing. Retrieved June 23, 2011, fromDictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/social network. White, Mary Gormandy (2014). What Types of Social Networks Exist? Available on : http://socialnetworking.lovetoknow.com/What_Types_of_Social_Networks_Exist (retrieved on : 14.02.2015)
Further Readings: [1] Ayiah, Efua Mansa and Kumah, Cynthia Henewaa. (2011). Social Networking: a tool to use for service delivery to clients by African Libraries. World library and information congress. San Juan : IFLA,13-18 August. (Revised on 2012). [2] Charlotte N. Gunawardena , Mary Beth Hermans , Damien Sanchez , Carol Richmond , Maribeth Bohley & Rebekah Tuttle (2009). A theoretical framework for building online communities of practice with social networking tools, Educational Media International, 46(1), 3-16 [3] Charnigo, L. and P. Barnett-Ellis. (2007). Checking Out Facebook.com: The Impact of a Digital Trend on Academic Libraries. Information Technology & Libraries. 26 (1):23-34. [4] Chu , Melanie and Meulemans, Yvonne Nalani . (2008) “The Problems and Potential of MySpace and Facebook usage in academic libraries”, Internet Reference Services Quarterly,Vol 13(1).pp:69-85. [5] Chu, S.K.W. & Du, H. (2013). Social Networking Tools for Academic Libraries. Journal of Librarianship & Information Science, 45(1), 64-75. [6] Connell, R.S.(2009). Academic Libraries, Facebook and MySpace, and Student Outreach: A Survey of Student Opinion. portal: Libraries & the Academy 9 (1):25-36. [7] Kim, Yong-Mi (2010), "User's perceptions of university library websites: a unifying view", Library and Information Science Research, 33(1): 63-72 [8] Madhusudan, M and Nagabhushanam, V.(2012). “Use of web-based library services in select university libraries in India: a study”. International Journal of Library and Information Studies, 2(1):1-20. [9] Naushia Parveen.(2011).”Use of social networking site (facebook) in making awareness among the library and information science professionals of university libraries of U.P: a case study”.International Journal of Digital Library Services.1(1),.available on www.ijodls.in [10] Redmond, Fiona. (2010). Social Networking Sites: Evaluating and investigating their use in Academic Research. Dissertation. Dublin Institute of Technology , [11] Suri, Samiksa.(2013). “Use of Social Networking Sites in higher education”. International Journal of
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