I guess this is why I call myself a Web 2.0 Enthusiast and not an Evangelist. I love tech. I think it has lots of great possibilities for improving library services. I also think there’s a lot of tech applications that our patrons are using anyway, so it’s probably a good idea for librarians to be aware of them so that we speak the same language. (And who knows…these fun applications may morph into something more usable in library services.) But if your library doesn’t maintain an SMS reference service or if you don’t have a twitter account, are you failing your patrons? No, of course not.

via SarahGlassmeyer(dot)com » Blog Archive » Message != Medium != Messenger.

The premise behind Question Box is that many barriers keep most of the developing world from taking advantage of the wealth of knowledge available through Web search engines, said Rose Shuman, the service’s creator. That could be a drag on economic development.

“So I was thinking, why not bring the information to them in a way that’s most convenient and useful to them?”

via Question Box Answers Calls in Africa Where Web Can’t Reach – NYTimes.com.

Their current website has a modern CMS.  They also offer comments on nearly every page on their website.  They offer lots of RSS feeds.  Staff writes content for news blogs, subject guides, and genre-specific recommended materials blogs.  That content is remixed.  David notes that the web is once again becoming decentralized.  They have a Facebook page for the library, one for their art gallery, and one for their teen customers.  They still have a MySpace account (David recommends killing all of the spam-friends like authors & other “questionable” friends).  David connected MySpace to their Twitter feed and they are now starting to get some converation on the MySpace page.  They are having conversations on the website proper in the comments section.  They are having conversations in Facebook–people fanning the page, likiing status updates, & commenting on the wall.  Their Flickr account is quite popular, especially the art gallery photographs.  They also have conversations going on in Twitter as well, and YouTube.  Most of the media organizations in town have subscribed to their Twitter account, and are using that instead as a press release source.

IL2009: Experience Design Makeover | Librarian in Black Blog – Sarah Houghton-Jan.

What is LibraryH3lp?

LibraryH3lp is an integrated web chat/IM platform written specifically for libraries.

It allows multiple librarians to receive chats from its native chat widget or Meebo Me widgets as well as IMs from patrons on other IM networks such as AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ. While it routes messages to multiple librarians, only the first one to respond “wins” the chat and becomes connected with the patron.

It is designed to be very mobile-device friendly. It provides two different SMS gateways. Both allow patrons to text their library using a phone number, which is easily stored on the patron’s phone, rather than a short code/library ID combination.

Librarians in the same administrative domain can transfer any chats, IMs, or text messages to each other as needed. The system provides an administrative backend for service creation, management, and centralized transcript storage, download, and deletion.

libraryh3lp.