Social Software is where it’s AT!
I will admit that I feel a sense of urgency when it comes to public libraries at this time - our services are no longer novel. Via the internet there are dozens of information and library service providers that are doing it better than we are because they are not limited geographically. Library Thing, Library Elf, and Booksfree are all knocking at our door. Our ace in the hole has always been our strong social foundation… we are really good at providing our patrons with a sense of place and connectedness. Through social software, however, they no longer have to turn to us for that either. We need to meet them where they live, so to speak, be present where they are online in order to secure our own valuable and appropriate place in the future, both online and off.
Tags: booksfree, future, Libraries, Services, and Librarians, library elf, library thing, social software
June 20th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
A note on Booksfree. At the present time, they’re not the category winner. Swap services require a lot of members. At least as far as traffic, it’s Paperbackswap. Here’s the Alexa traffic for a few of them compared:
http://www.alexaholic.com/paperbackswap.com+titletrader.com+frugalreader.com+booksfree.com
There are some general swap services, like Swaptree. Lala is doing very well, but it’s only CDs at present.
I’m not sure why I’m doing this, considering the people at Paperbackswap refuse to reply to my emails…
June 21st, 2006 at 8:15 am
I’d never heard of paperbackswap until reading Tim’s comment, but am very happy to now know about it. However, I see that as slightly different from the websites listed originally, which I still lump together with services like NetFlix. From what I can tell, paperbackswap is purely people-working-with-people, and for some reason, that doesn’t seem like a threat to libraries - on the contrary, it seems like the kind of thing libraries could foster or encourage. The others, though, are companies who are filling a market need, a need that exists because libraries aren’t providing those same services nearly as well as we should be.
Libraries even have the advantage of being in the position of being a single source for all of these services. But perhaps what why we