Social knowledge production and services: a case for Hybrid Library

I did not really get excited reading the assigned articles until I hit the last two as I can relate them more with the library world and the issues surrounding it that are of interest to me. From these readings and looking at the four comparisons listed in the class blog, I knew what I wanted to talk about. Many established concepts that exist in the world is being challenged in this era of hyper-connectivity. The world of publishing is changing. The way we communicate is evolving rapidly. So does our concept of library. The thesis/accepted view of library is that of the traditional kine where books, information, and knowledge are stored in a physical storage 'guarded' by experts termed 'librarians'. Along comes the anti-thesis/challenging view of how information is obtain, created, or stored and this comes in the form of the information highway called the Internet through its agents: Google, Wikipedia, Gracenote, Yahoo! Answers, and many more. Instead of compare and contrast, I like to see the new hypothesis/collaboration and integration between the two views to address contemporary needs of creation, storage, and retrieval of information via an institution called the [hybrid] library.

[Not exactly the impression libraries want to have in the mind of their users...]

For libraries to be relevant and worthy these days, Dempsey's list of issues in his article needs to be addressed. Some highlights include: presence, marketing, brand value, presentation and visibility, and going mobile. My take from the readings applied to the state of library is the need for a balanced strategic movement in technology, outreach, and better customer service. Libraries, in their fervent effort to keep up with the latest technology, sometimes put little attention to customer service. Librarians need to be visible to its [potential] users to recognized or acknowledged as information source/concierge. The concept of roving librarian comes to mind, where librarians instead of being stationary at the ref desk, come out of its den and roam the library, being proactive and looking for users who might need help. This concept can go further by placing librarians outside of library setting, putting them in campus center or other busy gathering spots for users. And to refine it further, the concept of embedded librarians are starting to come up in the library blogosphere where librarians are stationed at the department they are liaising with. They are also present in classrooms physically or virtually via chat, Twitter, or other avenue.

That's in the real world, in virtual - social media world, librarians can assert the presence of their library by taking the institution to the playing field. What I mean here is instead of shouting at a big empty hall, i.e. the library website, they can make their presence known in the large campus center or in the virtual world; Facebook and Twitter, and to a lesser and newer extent, Gowalla, Foursquare and the likes (Location based SNS). Along with presence in other notable social media sites i.e. YouTube, Flickr, SlideShare, Yelp, Google Places, etc, and active management of virtual identity of the library, it can serve as both traditional and modern form of information hub.

Another step towards a hybrid library is to connect, synchronize, and syndicate the information pushed to the social media outlets and make sure that the library website is also updated. Our own UHM Library is starting this effort and identified several staff members to manage and administrate the different virtual outlets as an effort to reach out and speak the language of the majority of our users.
While there are many social Q&A sites out there, the library also have a similar take in the form of a FAQ database. When the interface of this database can be upgraded to a more 2.0 feel, along with proper placement in the library homepage, this can be another virtual outlet for library presence aside from social media, chat feature (which should be prominent and consistent through out the library site and its subject guides, along with embedded presence on databases and course management system, i.e. Laulima), and email.

Having a strategic and concerted effort in social media and other virtual existence also assist in scanning the virtual environment for comments, questions, and other issues that might arise. Library staff can monitor the 'interwebs' and social media using the likes of Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, notify.me, and the rest of the dizzying array of app. Some users statement, question, complaint, or compliment can be responded while others can just be part of consideration (see screenshot from NUS Libraries). All of these will go into web analytics that adds another angle of library value from the virtual or social media side.
Don't forget that to be hybrid, as the concept of time, space and its functions is changing (Duguid's article), the library also need to prepare a mobile-optimized website and preferably to have an app for the library, either as a standalone or part of the university system app (i.e. iStanford).

In closing, library is an evolving concept, a very fast evolution is happening in this day and age. Library is no longer only a physical place to store books (a 'book museum' if you will) with librarians as keeper of knowledge. Libraries are becoming virtual, social, and physical place for creation, storage, and retrieval of knowledge. That's where the library should go if they want to stay relevant or else they will be taken over by the likes of internet agents; Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, and Youtube. We (I) don't want that. I want a 'mesh' of those agents along with the library as they provide premium information knowledge culled from publishers, online journals, and database aggregators.