The Synthetic Librarian

Social Networking and Libraries

In the library context, social networking presents three interesting opportunities: marketing, professional development, and socially enhanced search. I have already addressed socially enhanced search in relation to Delicious in a previous post, and while I find it to be the most interesting opportunity, I will not discuss it further here. Instead, I will start by providing a brief overview of what social networking is. Second, I will explain how Ning, a specific social networking system, can be used for professional development. Third, I will describe ways in which libraries can use popular social networking sites to market their services. Finally, I will conclude by commenting on the overwhelming privacy problems that social networking systems represent.

Social Networking and Social Networking Sites

Social Networking is the term, broadly applied, to features of Internet systems that allow you to specify your connection to other people and to search, browse, filter, find, or otherwise organize things using information about the connections between people. Online Social Networking occurs in two overlapping ways: via Social Networking Sites and via sites whose purpose is not social networking but that leverage social networking.

Social Networking for Communication

Social Network Sites (also called Social Networking Services or Social Networking Communities), are those Internet systems that have at their heart the personalized profile (Tapscott & Williams, 2006, p. 49). Facebook, Linkedin, and MySpace are prominent examples. These sites share three core features: each user has a “profile” that explicitly catalogues their interests and background; each users explicitly identifies who they know (establishing a “network” of social relationships); and users have some mechanism to communicate with one another through the site. (For a longer list of popular features see Courtney, 2007, pp. 77-78).

By having every user declare describe themselves and their relationships to other users, it becomes possible for groups of people that know each other already to communicate online as a group, and for strangers with shared interests to discover each other.

For people who already know each other, social networking sites are a transparent communication mechanism. It has become common for social networking sites to incorporate the ability for users to post content (e.g. photos, updates, videos, events) which is automatically made available to everyone they know (on that site). This transparent automation of the distribution of information is significant improvement over previous Internet technologies (e.g. email or Instant messaging) which require a user to manage multiple communication methods and contact details.

Social networking sites also support the formation of new social connections. Because each user is required to describe themselves and their relationships, it becomes possible to search for people with shared interests, and to discover others through “friends” they have in common. In this sense, a person’s identity is as much about who they know as it is about how they describe themselves.

Social Network Sites facilitate the sharing of identity information…. Compared with traditional methods for identity information disclosure, such as a campus directory, the social network community fosters a more subjective and holistic disclosure of identity information.” (Stuzman, 2006a, p. 1)

Social Networking as a Feature of Other Sites

Many websites leverage social networking without it being at the “heart” of site. For example, Flickr is, arguably, primarily a photo sharing site. However, it includes the ability for members to declare which other members are their friends are distinguish friends from family and strangers. This information is used in two ways: to allow users to restrict access to their photos to only their friends or family; and to allow users to browse the photos of their friends and family. Similarily, delicious, the social bookmarking site, recently added the ability for users to declare who is in their “network”. This feature is used to allow users to list the newest bookmarks added by their friends.

It is worth mentioning that in both Flickr and Delicious, people in a social network are not explicitly “friends”. Unlike social networking sites like Facebook, users cannot deny someone the ability to add them as a contact and follow their photos or bookmarks. The people in are network are not necessarily friends, and relationships can be “one way” (e.g. Bob lists Jane in his network, but Jane does not list Bob in hers). The purpose of explicitly recoding a relationship is not to communicate with someone else, but to watch what they post.

[Aside: I believe this non-communicating use of social networking features is a form of Stigmergy (Theraulaz & Bonabeau, 1999): where “indirect communication between individuals via modifications made to the shared environment” causes the emergence of surprisingly complex and sophisticated structures (Fong, Nourbakhsh, Dautenhahn, 2003, p. 143). In this case organized information.]

Ning as a Platform for Professional Development

While the professional literature provides many examples of how to use social networking sites to “reach out” to library patrons (e.g. Courtney, 2007, pp. 82-84), I believe that it is important for librarians to use this technology directly for their own benefit. Librarianship holds collaboration as core value, and social networking sites provide substantial opportunities for collaboration.

However, I would argue that large, general, social networking communities like Facebook, are not the most effective space for this type of collaboration. If librarianship is a single profession, then is a diverse and complicated containing many groups with different goals and interests. To effectively make use of social networking there should be organization and focus. Multiple social networks, with separate focuses, and smaller communities may be desirable. In this way, individual librarians may find it easier to keep up, benefit from, and participate in individual social networks. For example, I envision separate social networks focused on literacy, teacher-librarianship, or reference to be desirable.

Wishing to explore this, I went looking for such social networks and discovered the TeacherLibrarianNing. This social network has 3,466 (currently) and features a way for members to share photos & videos, announce events, and discussion items of interest. The site also features individual blog which are aggregated together.

I was impressed by the mix of both closed and open community that this “Ning” supported. To participate in discussions, one must be a member. This “wall garden” approach encourages thoughtful, qualified participation and (in theory) should raise the quality of conversation. At the same time, the blogs are public and allow non-members to see the public face of this community.

While I am not interested in Teacher-librarianship, it did prompt to me find a Ning that suits my specific niche interests. I could not find a similar community for those interested in libraries and technology but I did find the SysAdmin Network which is also built with “Ning”. This particular social network is of intense interest to me as I have been an information technology professional for 15 years. I immediately joined and, once inside the walled garden, recognized the same value I speculated existed for teacher librarians in their Ning. The level of discussion was much higher than I had experienced in most other open forums, and the aggregated blog of all community members was worth adding to my blogroll. On the other hand, the shared photos were comparable but not superior to those found in Sysadmin groups on Flickr that I am member of.

Ning is a kind of “meta” social networking site. Unlike Facebook or MySpace, where all users are partipating in the same system, Ning allows anyone to create a new social networking site, with substantial customization available and ways to open or limit membership and access.

This lead me to consider that there was no social network for another niche topic of intense interest to me: Information Security in Libraries/Librarianship. As a serious experiment with Ning, I decided to create a new social network on this topic.

The steps were easy. On the Ning homepage there is a link that says “Create Your Own Social Network”. Clicking that link provides a short form where you provide a name, tagline, and other brief details for your social network. You also get to pick your own URL (ending in “ning.com”). I created the “Information Security for Libraries” (http://infosec4lib.ning.com/ Ning.

After the site was created, I specified that anyone could join and that all parts of the site were public. I choose to default features for the site (photo and video sharing and blogs for all members). Then I sent an invitation to the instructor of the course for which this post is written as a test.

I explored the available features of the the Ning available through the “Manage” control panel (only available to the Ning creator/administrator). I was very impressed by the features available. For example, it is possible to “broadcast” message to all Ning members, to create a “badge” for each member to embed in their other online spaces. It is possible to import photos for Flickr.

Similarly, the privacy features of Ning lend themselves to the ideas I previously articulated for a constrained community. It is possible to make some parts of the site private (available to members only) while others are public. I believe this would allow librarians to create vibrant social networks with focused internal activity but a productive public face. For example, by restricting discussion forums to members-only but allowing all blogs to be public, members have a place to share openly without a fear of being misunderstood in public, but also a place to communicate to the “outside” world.

Libraries can use Facebook for Marketing

Charningo & Barnett-Ellis (2007) surveyed 126 academic librarians about their knowledge of and attitude toward Facebook and found that while librarians were overwhelmingly aware of Facebook (p. 28) but that most were not involved (p. 28). My personal experience was that in the spring of 2007, librarians in my community (Alberta, Canada) began to adopt Facebook in incredible numbers but that libraries are still struggling to find productive uses for Facebook.

Importantly, Facebook is an online space heavily represented by University and College students. Stutzman (2006b) found that 88 percent of college freshmen at UNC Chapel Hill had facebook accounts, and that the majority were active, frequent users. Similarly, Charingo & Barnett-Ellis (2007) found that librarians reported Facebook to be a very popular use for library computers. My own experience is that Facebook is the most popular website used on public computers in the large academic library in which I work.

Given the popularity of Facebook among students, and the familiarity of Facebook with librarians, I believe it is an ideal vehicle for marketing the services of academic libraries to students.

The notion of “reaching out” to students where they are is not new. Courtney, 2007, p. 83) summarizes some ideas including delivering existing content on social networking platforms, promoting library events through social network sites (Facebook has a nice event management system).

Social networking sites allow librarians to adopt a new role by placing themselves into a social realm with users. By reading blogs, group postings, and message boards, the librarian becomes an active participant, who is able to anticipate and advise patrons as needs arise. Linking to patron profiles also keeps the library within the consciousness of users, potentially increasing interaction. Courtney (2007, p. 83)

I will go further, and describe a practice that I will call “pro-active reference” whose goal is not reference but marketing. The idea is for librarians to identify members of their community in social spaces (Facebook is the example I will use) and to participate in these social spaces by pro-actively providing the type of information that would normally result from reference service. Think of this as “roaming reference” in cyberspace.

Furthermore, an explicit goal in this practice would be to encourage the word-of-mouth spread of knowledge about library services through social networks. I will explain this by referring to the “Tipping Point” social network model (Gladwell, 2000).

The Tipping Point

In The Tipping Point, Gladwell (2000) explains how three types of social agents are responsible for the spread of word-of-mouth information. These agents are:

1. Connectors: people who know many other people, and often bridge different (real-world) social networks
2. Mavens: subject-area experts who make it their business to know a lot about a subject and who are strongly motivated to share that information.
3. Salesmen: people are advocates and evangelists for information, products, or points-of-view.

Gladwell (2002) argues that:

Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen are responsible for starting word-of-mouth epidemics, which means that if you are interested in starting a word-of-mouth epidemic, your resources out to be solely concentrated on those three groups. (p. 256)

While libraries are unlikely to start an “epidemic” spread of knowledge about their services, they still stand to benefit from spreading knowledge about their services. For example, in my experience even LIS students are not fully aware of offerings from the library such as Refworks and Citation Linking services. Undergraduates are often not aware of databases, and faculty are not often aware of specific databases that might be available to them.

Pro-Active Reference for Marketing

So how can libraries exploit “tipping point” like effects in Facebook and other social networks? I propose that libraries should appoint a “Social Networking Librarian” whose job is to find members of the libraries community in Facebook, and identify those who are connectors, mavens, and salesmen in subject areas for which the library can be of extraordinary value. The social networking librarian should follow the public conversations, posts, updates, and events of these key individuals, and pro-actively offer advise, resources, and help. This is not an attempt to mindlessly “shill” library services or to say, “you should come to the library for that!” Instead, the goal is to act as an authentic participant in the social spaces and activities of those members of the libraries communities and to be of value in precisely the way that libraries set out to.

For example, at the University of Alberta, students form group online for all kinds of purposes. On Facebook there are long-standing groups of students whose common bond is that they hang-out and study in Cameron library. There are groups directly associated with clubs on campus. There are also individuals from the University of Alberta, participating in groups not associated with campus, but with their scholarly or recreational interests.

Idea #1. The social networking librarian would seek out Mavens (subject-area experts and the spreaders of knowledge) and follow their wall posts, posts in discussion forums, etc. The librarian would look for ways that library resources or services might help out and participate by offering information, links to the library resources, and even direct offers of help. The mavens, who are naturally inclined to collect, explore, and share information will be likely to pass on not only the information provided, but knowledge of how to get more information on that topic.

Idea #2. By finding connectors in the community, the social networking librarian can spread awareness of library services to those who might never hear of them in the first place. Connectors of those people that bridge communities by virtue of the large number of people they know. Connectors are often the people that forward links (mindlessly or otherwise) (Phelps, Lewis, Mobilio, Perry, and Raman, 2004). Librarians can make excellent use of connectors by simply posting links that get attention: the interesting, flashy, weird, or unusual. I would also suggest that connectors are the ideal spreaders of information about library events. Anything that is simple to spread and obvious in its value is going to be spread far and wide by connectors. Fortunately, because individual self-identify who their friends are and who they affiliations are, it is easy to find those individuals are well-connected on Facebook.

Idea #3. The social networking librarian can find the library’s “salesmen” in facebook by looking at the discussions associated with hot topic groups. Specifically, groups whose subject matter is of local interest, or interest to areas where the library has services or collections would be of interest. The salesmen are the ones who vocal in advocating or evangelizing a point of view, or a product. While librarians might not be comfortable assisting someone in evangelizing a specific point-of-view, they should be interested in those individuals that advocate information-related products. Finding an individual that helps others pick a technology is a good idea: if you can make that person aware of the technology provided by the library, they may become an effective advocate for the libraries costly and underutilized software, computers, and online resources.

An unlikely approach?

I suspect that many librarians would bristle at the thought that they should seek out members of the library’s community for the purpose of making them aware of the useful services and information of the library. I suspect that most would be more comfortable with waiting for the community to come and ask us for assistance, that we would be happy to provide. However, social networks represent “spaces” where members of our community go to actively participate in information exchange: information resources are of premium value in these space. Libraries should see a new opportunity here: an opportunity to be relevant in new and stronger ways through active participation instead not passive assistance.

The Creepy Way that Social Networks Know You

I would like to conclude by discussing the topic that must have been invoked by the last section: privacy. Social networking sites are tied directly to concepts of privacy because of the intimate details shared openly through them.

Govani & Pashley (2005) surveyed 50 undergraduate as Carnegie Mellon University as to their attitudes toward privacy on Facebook and the types of information they shared. They examined how student’s use of Facebook privacy settings changed after the survey, when they were more aware of the consequences. They found that openly shared a great deal of information, with only postal addresses, phone numbers being held back from public view. Notably, students were willing to share their mobile phone number much more so than their home phone numbers, but not nearly as much as other information. Email addresses were shared publicly by roughly 40% of surveyed students. After the study, there was almost no change in the use of privacy settings: knowledge of privacy risks and the availability of privacy controls did not result in increased usage of privacy controls.

Similarly, Stutzman (2006a) found that students at UNC Chapel Hill shared openly with course schedules, sexual orientation, web sites URLs, and phone numbers being held back by most students.

The public discourse surrounding Facebook, other social networking sites, and privacy usual boils down to comments such as, “I have nothing to hide”, or “I don’t put anything personal up there anyways.” However, other research (see Govani & Pashley, 2005 for a review) shows that users do have substantial concerns.

As a person involved in and with strong knowledge of information security, I believe the discourse needs to move away from promoting awareness of sharing only what you are comfortable with and looking at the more alarming trends in cybercrime. Social networking sites work because of the explicit detail we provide about ourselves, however, this information is precisely what enables cybercrime (e.g. identity theft).

For example, most sites require that you provide your full (real) name, date of birth, and encourage you to list where you went to school, where you live, and where you work. Participation in the social networking sites is difficult if you don’t provide this kind of information. However, this information is also valuable to someone who want to steal your identity as these are the types of questions need to fill in credit applications or to prove your identity over the phone to a large institution.

On Facebook, the greatest threat comes from its “applications.” Anyone can make an facebook application: there is no vetting process for application developers. This is a problem because when you add an application, it gets access to your entire profile with few limits. The Canadian Privacy Commisioner has recently notified Facebook that this is not inline with Canadian privacy legislation because there is nothing to prevent application developers from storing information gathered from user profiles (the license agreement requires them to say they won’t do that, but there is no practical auditing of this agreement).

Many users might believe the solution is to avoid adding applications. However, applications also have access to your friends profiles. If one of your friends adds an application, it can see everything in your profile that your friend can. Thus, you are at risk even if you do not add applications.

So, realistically, how bad is the problem? Criminals are active on facebook and have been for some time. One ploy involves “malvertising” whereby criminals use facebook apps that appear to be ads, but are in fact viruses. Another method is cookie stealing, where hackers can take control of your entire facebook account.

To my mind, the worst are the phishing scams disguised as quizzes. Have you ever taken a quiz on facebook? You know, things like, “What 80s rockstar are you?”, “What is your pr0n-star name?” These seem innocent but involve you answering a lot of unrelated questions about yourself. Scammers have used these quizzes to collect precisely the information they need to steal your identity: the kinds of questions your bank would ask if they wanted you to prove who you were over the phone. When disguised as a quiz the questions seem completely innocent, the problem is that you might not know who is recording the answers or assume that they are not recording them at all.

The Creepy Feeling of Facebook and Google/Orkut

When I signed up for both Orkut and Facebook under a pseudonym, both systems suggested people I might know. This is creepy because facebook go things right. Despite not using my real name, it guessed who my friends are. Three of the people listed are people known to me. One was a person whose name I know, but whom I’m never had contact. The last was completely unknown to me.

In Orkut, I found the profile of a friend: a profile I didn’t know about that reveals a somewhat different side to the person. They might not want me to know about that profile. I am fairly certain that the suggestion in this case was based on the fact that Orkut was allowed to read the names of everyone in my Gmail address book and did pattern matching. This is wrong. Nothing in the sign-up process indicated that my private address book would be scanned by Orkut and used to reveal my identity to others (other people are now going to see ME as a suggestion should they have my address, or something like it, in their contact list).

Facebook wanted access to my email account. They wanted me to give them my email address and password. This would allow facebook to download all my emails and scan them for email addresses. Why on earth would you give the password to your email account to anyone, ever? I’m not sure who thought it was OK to encourage people to give up their passwords to their email accounts. In the Information Security world we go to great lengths to tell people to never share their passwords due to the constant and horrible consequences we see every day from that kind of behaviour.

So how did Facebook know my friends? Because my friends shared their email accounts with Facebook. Facebook slurped up everything in those email accounts. My friends have emailed me at my pseudonymous address and so my pseudonym, Cloned Milkmen, is a “contact” of theirs.

So what is a librarian to do?

You might find my concerns over Facebook privacy contradictory. On the one hand, I have advocated that librarians use Facebook to identity specific individuals and participate in the conversations those people are involved in and pro-actively offer them reference-style assistance. Surely, that is an invasion of privacy?

I would argue that it is participation, and not privacy-invasion. Privacy, in the modern sense, is an individual’s right to control information about them (Acquisti, et al., 2007, Chapter 1), it is not the same as confidentiality or secrecy. We must respect that individuals have a right to share what they want, that they are free to make potentially risky choices in sharing. To respect privacy means that we must not share information about them, that they have not chosen to share.

At the same time, a traditional view of privacy is that one has the right to be alone or apart. (Woodward, 2007, p. x). By this definition we would not like to have anyone feel that they are forced to participate or that we have invaded their private spaces. For this reason, I advocate that any Social Network Librarian, seek out ways to be an authentic participant in social networking discourse, and not simply a “shill” for the library. This requires that such a librarian be immersed in and part of Internet culture, not simply a worker doing a job.

What then is the role of librarians when it comes to the creepy side of social networking? Many libraries already adopt a role in educating users on the practices of evaluating information sources and identifying “good” information. Should librarians have a role in educating users on how to protect their privacy?

I would like to say yes, however, I am not convinced that the level of discourse surrounding privacy in the library community is sufficiently developed that they could play that role. For example, knowledge of information security is not generally taught in library schools (The University of Alberta will be offering a 1-credit course on this topic in October).

On the other hand, many libraries are aware of and participants in EDUCAUSE’s Cybersecurity Awareness month activities. Librarians, if they are to be advocates of improved privacy practices, must start by improving their own awareness and technical skills related to information security. In creating the Information Security for Libraries Ning, I hope that I might soon play some small part in that.

Reference

• Acquisti, A., Gritzalis, S., Di Vimercati S. (2007). Digital Privacy. CRC Press
• Boyd, D. M., & Nicole B. Ellison. (2008). Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210-230. doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x.
• Charnigo, L., & Barnett-Ellis, P. (2007). Checking Out Facebook.com: The Impact of a Digital Trend on Academic Libraries. Information Technology & Libraries, 26(1), 23-34. doi: Article.
• Courtney, N. (2007). Library 2.0 and beyond : innovative technologies and tomorrow's user. Westport, Conn. : Libraries Unlimited, 2007.
• Fong, T., Nourbakhsh, I., & Dautenhahn, K. (2003). A survey of socially interactive robots. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 42(3-4), 143-166. doi: 10.1016/S0921-8890(02)00372-X.
• Gladwell, Malcolm. 2000. The Tipping Point. New York: Hatchet Book Group.
• Govani, T. and Pashley, H. (2005). Student Awareness of the Privacy Implications When Using Facebook. Privacy Policy, Law, and Technology Course, Carnegie Mellon University, 2005.
• Phelps, Joseph E., R. Lewis, L. Mobilio, D. Perry, and N. Raman. 2004. Viral Marketing or Electronic Word-of-Mouth Advertising: Examining Consumer Responses and Motivations to Pass Along Email. Journal of Advertising Research 44 (4): 333-348.
• Stutzman, F. (2006a) An Evaluation of Identity-Sharing Behavior in Social Network Communities. International Digital and Media Arts Journal, 3(1).
• Stutzman, F. (2006b) Student Life on the Facebook. Ph.D. Research Report.
• Tapscott, D. & Williams, A. (2006). Wikinomics : how mass collaboration changes everything. New York, NY : Portfolio, 2006.
• Theraulaz, G. and Bonabeau, E. (1999). A Brief History of Stigmergy. Artificial Life, 5(2), 97-117.
• Woodward, J. (2007). What every librarians should know about electronic privacy. Westort, CT: Libraries Unlimited.