I've been using Joomla for 3 years now on our library's website. While it is easy for any staff member to add content to the website, only a couple fairly regularly do it themselves. Most staff e-mail me the content and I publish it. Why are Librarians scared of technology?
I've always been given a lot of freedom to experiment with features for the site. I'm currently working on redeveloping the site featuring JomSocial (the community app that you are using right now). Believe me, JomSocial is capable of so much more than this site is currently featuring. Event registration with waitlists and message board integration for book reviews (example) are currently available. I'm working on a LibraryThing integration for patrons to keep track of what they've read.
Every Librarian that I've demonstrated it to so far have all expressed concerns about people's privacy and the safety of minors. What gives?
Thanks for starting this group Eric! Social Networking is a special interest of mine.
I think libraries and librarians are doing great things! Most of the librarians I know are internet savvy people. After all it's about people, not technology. Catherine is absolutely right - it will take a while for the rest to catch on. But change is coming ! lol
Librarians are open minded people. They want to know the facts, implications, compliance issues to make a good decision. We all like to feel in control. So it all come down to the level of Governance of the Social Networking enabled website.
Not all librarians are afraid of technology! However, librarians are just like other people, and only a few actually do more than dabble. One of the driving motivations for our library website was the demand that the librarians be able to updated their pages. That's why Tao created our new website on Joomla. However, human nature being what it is... we have about 3 staff who update their own pages. The rest are done by our webmaster. (This is actually a huge soapbox for me; it only goes to prove that if you give most people what they want, they really wanted something else....)
I'd like to see the LibraryThing integration you're working on. As for the privacy issues, I think Web 2.0 has changed all that; it's just taking a while for people to catch on. What we have to remember is that we shouldn't be the ones to expose the patrons' information; however, the patron can be as out there as s/he wants. Minors are people too; we don't want to out them, but they can certainly out themselves.
