tag=blogpost week 7

After reading several articles about online collaboration tools in the business world I began to wonder if or how such tools could be implemented in a library setting.  Many of the articles discussed the benefits of such tools for telecommuters.

My initial thoughts were that telecommuting seems like an inefficient model for most library employees.  Much of the work of the library is about connecting in person with people -- at least traditionally.  And while it might make sense for libraries to expand their reach to virtual worlds, which would facilitate telecommuting, the basic model -- at least for public libraries -- is that funding comes from the country or local municipality and thus the target patron ought to be local as well. 

There may be some library positions that could accommodate telecommuting (perhaps catalogers, for instance), but I think that the online collaboration tools are perhaps more useful for knowledge sharing, meetings, and external collaboration.

In his article, "Corporate Culture not Technology Drives Online Collaboration," Will Kelly talks about the construction of knowledge archipelagos, where certain employees have more institutional knowledge than others and either hoard it or the company fails to make the knowledge accessible to everyone else.  If you've ever worked somewhere and felt like you didn't know the most basic procedures and your co-workers scoffed at your ignorance, you may have been experiencing something like a knowledge archipelago.  I've encountered such situations in each of my last two teaching jobs.  I wasn't informed about procedures such as reporting tardies, submitting grades, accessing institutional email, or accessing (ironically enough) the centralized drive with all of this information on it.  Kelly argues that centralized drives are essential to bridging archipelagos; they certainly seem like useful tools for bringing new employees up to speed on institutional culture.  Such a tool would be useful in any job and would ease a new library employees orientation.

Simon Mackie, in "Invest in Collaborative Tools, Get More Than Double Return, Study Says,"virtual business meetings can be effective ways to bring people face to face.  I've found that, with some droning exceptions, virtual meetings with strict agendas can move faster and more efficiently than face to face meetings.  If your county library district is wide ranging and all employee meetings require excessive travel and extensive library closures, such meetings might be ideal.  Certainly if you are trying to team-build such meetings might not work.  But if you want to make a weekly or monthly address, such meetings might be money and time savers, which also help create a culture of open conversation.

Finally, I think that tools such as Facebook and Twitter can help create external collaboration.  In a recent conversation with a librarian about Teen Advisory Groups, I learned that one of the major benefits of organizing such a group was that they could help inform librarians about purchasing.  Certainly virtual patrons could also assist such purchasing on a much larger level, and could incorporate wider swaths of your patronage than simply teens.  Such collaboration could also help build loyalty in your clientele.