NextSpace (The OCLC Newsletter) asked nine experts to explore and comment on the trends and behaviors of users of the social Web.{Lori Bell (Alliance Library Systems, Second Life Librarian and Director of Innovation), Edward Castronova (Indiana University, Associate Professor of Telecommunications),Paul Jones (ibiblio.org, Director), Hemanshu Nigam (MySpace, Chief Security Offfice), Kitty Pope (Alliance Library System, Second Life Librarian and Executive Director), Fred Stutzman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ph. D. Student), Stuart L. Weibel, Ph. D. (OCLC, Consulting Research Scientist)} The challenge is how to apply social networking in a digital age to enhance and extend the public service mission of libraries, museums and archives.How do you define online social networking?
This is one impressive line-up of people.
Comment from Gary:
Yes, it's important topic that librarians must understand, but we wish librarians would spend some of the time they are using to "think on social networking issues" to promote core services such as virtual reference, telephone reference, audio/video downloads, etc. Heck, forget all of that -- how about just promoting themselves by politely (as Mary Ellen) puts it, "getting in peoples face."
This week I had three situations that I think relate to all of this in a direct or indirect way.
Indirect
Campaign and Elections magazine has a full-page ad, inside front cover, for a company that will get your opinion out and blasted on social networks and blogs and social nets within minutes. They call themselves "blog warriors." Nothing new, but one has to wonder how much social network opinion is authentic and how much is being manipulated by groups -- either for a fee or by groups that might have well organized political views (perhaps about a local issue).
Direct
The local dog assist program for those with vision issues was making some $ today by wrapping books at a local bookstore. I started talking to a man from the group with poor version and one awesome dog. I told him what the Montgomery County Library offered in terms of downloadable audio books and what the State of Maryland offers with its statewide VR program. Like many people, he had no idea.
The same thing goes for a conversation that I had with my ophthalmologist a few days ago. He was blown away when I showed him what's available both at his local library and also available remotely for people with site issues. He told me he's going to prepare a new guide for his patients.
Social networking is a major issue and a potential way to reach new users. But priorities (aka time) being what it is, we have to remember that sometimes the old fashion way (word of mouth) still works in reaching new and potential users. Need an example? OK, here's one. Just ask Google.
A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »
Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
