Social Media Presence of Digital Libraries
Momeni, E., Haslhofer, B., & Tao, K., Houben, G. (2015) Sifting useful comments from Flickr Commons and YouTube. International Journal of Digital Libraries, 16(2), 161-179. doi: 10.1007/s00799-014-0123-1
Momeni, Haslhofer, Tao, and Houben’s article examine how best to sift through comments on Flickr and YouTube to find the useful and helpful comments that can contribute to the item or collection. The data was found by using syntax and semantic features of comments from both experts and those outside of the relevant field. One aspect of digital libraries and archives that is not as common in brick-and-mortar locations are the contributions made by the patrons or users of those digital libraries and archives. Aside from more casual comments made on items, “they may also contain factual information such as names and places depicted on digital media objects, which is not available in existing metadata records” (Momeni, Haslhofer, Tao, & Houben, 2015, p. 161). Not all user comments are as useful or contain a type of supplemental information and those are the comments that need to be disregarded when looking at user contributions to digital collections. Momeni, Haslhofer, Tao, and Houben define usefulness from the perspective of the user as well as from the perspective of the information professionals who are uploading the material, then use those features to analyze the comments on the digital items. They found that usefulness in comments is more likely to be found when there are more references and name entities, and say that commenting systems should encourage users to include resources to better assess their usefulness (and then get the attention that is likely wanted when one makes those comments).
Cho, A. (2013) YouTube and Academic Libraries: Building a Digital Collection. Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship 25 (1), 39-50. doi: 10.1080/1941126x.2013.761521
Cho examines the use of YouTube as collection itself, instead of a tool for marketing various collections and libraries and simply another social media platform. Cho’s article is a summary of various ways higher education has benefited from YouTube’s streaming videos and social media features. Cho begins by looking at YouTube as an instructional resource from within universities. In addition to university programs using YouTube as a way of recording and sharing lectures, University of British Columbia has used it as a digital collection. Cho goes on to describe the ways in which video streaming websites have changed the ways metadata is attached to items in digital video content. Cho does mention the difficulties with using YouTube such as copyright challenges. Cho concludes by saying that YouTube and other relatively new platforms allow digital collections to stay current.
Lanagan, J., & Smeaton, A. F. (2012) Video digital libraries: Contributive and decentralized. International Journal on Digital Libraries 12(4), 159-178. doi: 10.1007/s00799-012-0078-z
Lanagan and Smeaton look at video digital libraries as a way for collaboration to influence collect-building and also allowing videos to be shared, spread, and accessed on mobile devices. The study is summarized as including: shared content creation and access, versioning, annotation, collaboration, and media integration (Lanagan & Smeaton, 2012, p. 161). By decentralizing content creation, it allows collaboration and dynamic perspectives, as well as allowing contributors to add to the collection those items that they personally think are viable – which is a step in the right direction when information professionals in collection building have to ask themselves: how do I add materials that matter to people? Lanagan and Smeaton explicitly talk about tagging materials as a way for sharing materials that are relevant to users, while also adding new tags that may not be data entities that collection developers may not be familiar with. In conclusion, Lanagan and Smeaton summarize the ways in which digital libraries can archive materials considered most important by allowing collaborative efforts with users of those same archives.
Richardson, R., Vance, C., Price, E., & Henry, J. (2013) A mightier pin: Creating a credible reference library on Pinterest at Murray State University. Internet Reference Services Quarterly 18(3-4), 247-264. doi: 10.1080/10875301.2013.849319
Richardson, Vance, Price, and Henry document a case study using the reference librarians at the Murry State University Library who used Pinterest as an auxiliary reference service tool. The researchers begin by noting how important social media is to the lives of college students, and acknowledged that image-based social media is growing quickly. They offer a brief explanation of Pinterest as a virtual pinboard social media website that allows users to create image or video collections of anything ranging from wedding planning ideas to crafts and recipes. Pinterest is important to digital media specialists because it puts the emphasis on the pins rather than the social aspects of sharing those pins with other users. The case study focuses on the reference librarians who expanded their Pinterest page to include subject-specific boards which allowed access not only to students and patrons, but also to the general public. The initial questions asked whether Pinterest (free and third-party) could be used effectively as a digital library. The guidelines described in the article specified how each pin would be documented and with what data, how each board would be maintained, and who would maintain each board. The conclusion of the article states that “this case study demonstrates it is possible to build a digital library of credible research resources within the confines fo social media, specifically Pinterest, and that this library of resources will be used” (Richardson, Vance, Price, & Henry, 2013, p. 262).
Rossmann, D., & Young, S. W. H. (2015) Social media optimization: making library content sharable and engaging. Library Hi Tech 33(4), 526-544. doi: 10.1108/LHT-05-2015-0053
Rossmann and Young document a study in which digital collection shareability is measured using social media optimization (SMO). The goal was to assess how useful SMO is to digital collections when it is largely overlooked to the much-more popular search engine optimization (SEO) that uses coding and keywords to manipulate how high the site (or collection, in this instance) will appear in search engine results. Montana State University Library used its various social networking services (SNSs in the article) using Bhargava’s social media optimization principles including:
- Create shareable content;
- Make sharing easy;
- Reward engagement;
- Proactively share; and
- Encourage reuse. (Rossmann & Young, 2015, p. 529)
Rossmann and Young modified Bhargava’s fifth principle of SMO from “Encourage the Mashup” to “Encourage Reuse” to better serve the MSU Library patrons. Creating shareable content includes creating content through “digital collections, blog posts, institutional repository content, e-mail newsletters, videos, and staff directory pages,” and “content that is intresting and unique will have more likelihood of being shared” (Rossman & Young, 2015, p. 529). To make sharing easy, means using tools that already exist to encourage the sharing of content and using oft-used SNSs that people are already familiar with, MSU Library used Facebook and Twitter. In addition to using pre-existing tools, using metadata to the advantage of the person searching for content will also increase how easy it is to share, as well as embedding material in lieu of just linking to material. To reward engagement, those who monitor the collection’s social media presence should actively acknowledge those sharing material, and thanking them publicly. Sharing proactively includes not only directly sharing material, but also tagging other departments within the university, special university programs that have their own social media presence, and similar libraries who could find the material of interest -- proactive-sharing is sharing while thinking outside of the box and trying to introduce more of a conversation to the material instead of a show-and-tell mentality. The encourage reuse, those who handle the social media presence of digital collections should make sure that the library-hosted material is easy to share. The results results of the study showed a large increase in web traffic for the collection with an increase 5003% increase in sessions originating from facebook (Rossmann & Young, 2015, p. 537), which were due to two separate posts that were categorized as “viral” due to the high traffic over a brief duration of time. Rossmann and Young conclude their article by saying that actively using SMO principles, digital collections can see a huge improvement in usage.
Lamont, L., & Nielsen, J. (2015) Calculating value: A digital library’s social media campaign. The Bottom Line 28(4), 106-111. doi: 10.1109/BL-07-2015-0010
Lamont and Nielsen documented a study that took place at San Diego State University library. The study looked to duplicate the results of the Rossmann and Young article by creating social media accounts and making regular posts on the social media sites. Where the Rossmann and Young article had set principles that created a framework for the study, the Lamont and Nielsen study was less organized, and also chose to use different social media networks. Instead of Twitter and Facebook (Rossmann and Young), the SDSU library chose to use Pinterest and Tumblr. The library staff chose Pinterest and Tumblr because it required less immediate response from those who ran the social media accounts and because they are both largely image-based. Lamont and Nielsen specified that the two social media accounts had similar names and avatars (to create branding) and they listed the themes for either social network. Lamont and Nielsen’s findings showed that they did not gain as many followers as they were hoping, with only five followers on Pinterest and seven followers on Tumblr. They explain these results by looking at the social networks chosen, the themes chosen, and those who undertook the project. They did not view those who were in charge of the social media campaign as inadequate, but rather not knowledgeable enough about the various audiences of the social media platforms chosen. Lamont and Nielsen point out that even though “the initial investment may not result in a high return,” “ignoring social media will only marginalize the library and make it appear irrelevant” (Lamont & Nielsen, 2015, p. 111).
Baggett, M., & Gibbs, R. (2014) Historypin and Pinterest for digital collections: Measuring the impact of image-based social tools on discovery and access. Journal of Library Administration 54(1), 11-22. doi: 10.1090/01930826.2014.893111
Baggett and Gibbs document the University of Tennessee librarians’ use of Historypin and Pinterest as social media outreach, to increase access and discovery of collection items to social media users. Pinterest and Historypin were used by the UT librarians due to their pre-established use in academic libraries and because they are image-based. Historypin is used by various libraries and archives and using the ingestion interface, is able to allow bulk-uploading and includes metadata fields that imitate those traditionally used in digital collections. The selections for Historypin included small representations of larger collections and the selections uploaded on Pinterest were limited to objects that didn’t require extensive description for context. For both Historypin and Pinterest, additional parameters for the materials included institutional, regional, or national significance. Using Google Analytics and Historypin’s first-party analytics tool, it was found that over one year, “the average item on Historypin was accessed more than 44 times, compared to 15 times on the library Web site” (Baggett & Gibbs, 2014, p. 17). Pinterest’s first-party analytics tool was more complicated to use with Google Analytics, but found that, by the metrics outlined in the article (impressions meaning the amount of times a pin is displayed on the individualized main page or as search results for a user, and reach meaning the number of users who receive impressions), users are finding and accessing the content with an average 49 impressions score and a reach score of 28. Baggett and Gibbs note that image-based platforms like Historypin and Pinterest work well to garner interest but did not often lead people back to the library’s home page. They also note that when pins are posted matters to how popular those pins become and these sites are not beneficial to every kind of digital collection. Baggett and Gibbs conclude their article by saying that while Historypin and Pinterest are useful for sharing images, they should not replace traditional digital collection efforts and should be used as complementary modes of sharing materials.
Holzmann, H., Tahmasebi, N., & Risse, T. (2015) Named entity evolution recognition on the Blogosphere. International Journal on Digital Libraries 15(2-4), 209-235. doi: 10.1007/s00799-014-0135-x
Holzmann, Tahmasebi, and Risse previously published an article introducing their approach for named entity evolution recognition (NEER) in newspapers, but found that while their approach is sufficient for searching newspapers for information, it does not work as well in social media and on the blogosphere. They begin by noting the nature of language shifts that largely go un-remarked upon outside of academia, and how shifts in language can cause difficulty when searching for information. When approaching social media, they note that while in newspapers and articles, there are certain language standards that are followed, because “everyone can publish content, discuss, comment, rate, and re-use content from anywhere with minimal effort,” (Holzmann et al, 2015, p. 209) the language lacks any type of formal requirement and is much more casual, or as they say “authors can change their language usage dynamically” (Holzmann, Tahmasebi, & Risse, 2015, p. 209). Named entity evolution is when named entities (such as words, names, and places) change from the archived material, the time in which it was archived, and the time in which it wants to be accessed. Holzmann, Tahmasebi, and Risse note that two problems with looking up information in archives are the ability to find content and then further being able to interpret that content (Holzmann, Tahmasebi, & Risse, 2015, p. 2010). Named entity evolution complicates both finding content and the ability to interpret that content. The blogosphere, with its lack of formal standards and requirements, lends itself easily to named entity evolution. Holzmann, Tahmasebi, and Risse define web language as that language used on the web that is a mixture of local and global web trends, as well as casual speaking language. The study conducted uses NEER (which was initially used for newspaper archives) and creates a secondary NEER (referred to as BlogNEER in the article) to make the blogosphere more manageable to digital librarians and archivists who would want to archive various blogs. NEER operates using word structure, including prefixes and suffixes, as well as synonyms, and word frequency to document co-reference terms in the blog posts. The article concludes by saying that web-based NEER is more complicated than that used on traditionally published newspapers, but it is a start. It will increase retrieval precision and access, but due to the casual and social nature of the blogosphere, the NEER approach by Holzmann, Tahmasebi, and Risse needs improvement.
Pecoskie, J., & Hill, H. L. (2014) Indie media and digital community collaborations in public libraries. Collection Building 33(4), 127-131. doi: 10.1108/CB-05-2014-0025
Pecoskie and Hill focus on digital collections within public libraries, and examine how small, independent, and local digital media is collected in public libraries with a large emphasis on digital community collaborations. The article explains that UGC is a social media initiative that allows “non-LIS-professional voices to be heard, offering interpretation and feedback in a variety of contexts,” (Pecoskie & Hill, 2014, p. 130). They note that social media sites that are reading-based are vital to collection development because it shows not only what people are interested in having access to, but also their reactions to those things that may already be available to them, such as through reviews and rating systems. By looking at social media, they find that it takes a bottom-up approach instead of a top-down approach to serving the library’s patrons.
Bainbridge, D., Twidale, M. B., & Nichols, D. M. (2012) Interactive context-aware user-driven metadata correction in digital libraries. International Journal on Digital Libraries 13(1), 17-32. doi: 10.1007/s00799-012-0100-5
Bainbridge, Twidale, and Nichols begin by noting the challenges users face when searching for materials by name, and lists all the reasons why this challenge may arise. The article proposes an approach that takes user feedback to correct and expand metadata for different objects. By using the CSN toolbar collaboratively with other users, it allows metadata to be updated without need for extensive input from digital archive or library staff.
