Suprising myself with the third post of the day, and again I’m going to cite an article in the Guardian.
I read the ‘Media’ section of the Guardian every week (Monday) – I’d highly recommend it, as it regularly touches on the issues of how the web and digital world impact on traditional media – and as such has a lot of relevance to libraries, and the resources they provide.
Yesterday a column by Jeff Jarvis (who blogs at http://buzzmachine.com) talked about the way that Dell, Starbucks and Salesforce are engaging with their customers via online public forums, where people can post, discuss and vote on ideas about things the companies could do to improve the service they offer.
This started me wondering – which will be the first Library software vendor to do something similar – and if they did, would the community involved be large enough to make it a worthwhile exercise? I guess I first thought of library software vendors because of the commercial nature of the organisations mentioned in the article (although the article goes on to reflect on the use of similar ideas in government, specifically mentioning http://petitions.pm.gov.uk).
The other obvious question which came to mind later was, what about libraries – which libraries are using these methods to change their services? One answer, is my own Alma Mater and ex-employer Royal Holloway. This summer the library at Royal Holloway is going to be refurbished, and the company that they have brought in to help with the design (NOMAD) have setup a Facebook group called ‘Love your library’ to get input to the design (open to the Royal Holloway network only I’m afraid) – and so far it looks like there is lots of interesting comment, and some discussion around points of disagreement.