Tired of Reinventing the Wheel? Then Stop! How to Use Online Communities for Solutions to Common Library Issues

Abstract

Do you know that the library issues you regularly face cannot possibly be exclusive to your library? Would you like to find better solutions without “re‐inventing the wheel”? Have you tried participating in an online library commu‐ nity? This lively discussion based session focuses on participating in online communities and networking through social media as free resources for theoretical and practical solutions to common library issues. Common communi‐ ty offerings, including continuing education and far‐reaching collaboration opportunities, are discussed as tools for addressing any range of library issues. Furthermore, tweeting, e‐mail digesting and other best practices for making the most of community participation will be discussed as beneficial acts of membership rather than time‐ consuming distractions from your real library work. This paper will summarize the experiences and concerns about online communities shared during the Charleston Conference session. It will offer ways to get the most out of online community participation and how online community participation has benefited librarians who have used it as a solution to their everyday work‐related issues. Librarianship is not a new career. Even focusing specifically on librarianship in America, the career itself went through its formative period in as early as the seventeenth century (Rubin, 2010, pg. 46). Furthermore, library science is not a small, limited career field. The American Library Association esti‐ mates that there are 122, 101 libraries (public, aca‐ demic, school, special, armed forces, and govern‐ ment) in the United States today (2010). The Ameri‐ can Library Association offers that there are a total of around 342, 343 paid staff (librarians, other pro‐ fessionals, paraprofessionals, clerical and technical personnel) in libraries (2011). With these two points in mind, it becomes difficult to answer the question of why, in our digital age, librarians so often end up working in a vacuum when it is so easy to reach out to colleagues and find theoretical and practical solutions to common library issues. As information professionals who have benefitted from participation in online collab‐ orative communities, such as Libraries Thriving (http://www.librariesthriving.org), we were inter‐ ested in not only finding out what keeps our col‐ leagues from taking advantage of all that online communities have to offer but also in offering sup‐ port to address their concerns. To collect col‐ leagues’ responses, we used two data collection methods: a brief survey distributed online and an open discussion during a Charleston Conference session. This paper will offer a brief description of the definition what is of the term “online communi‐ ty” as well as a discussion of the most common rea‐ sons offered for not taking advantage of these communities and responses to those issues. “Online Community,” though a somewhat descrip‐ tive term, tends to mean different things to differ‐ ent individuals. For instance, though much of the literature about online communication designates online communities and social networks as closely related if not indistinguishable, Tharon Howard, a leader in the field of social networking with thirty years’ experience researching and creating commu‐ nities online, emphasizes the distinction between social networks and online communities. Howard offers that social networks put individuals at the center of relationships and online communities fo‐ cus on “the user’s commitment to a core set of in‐ terests, values, and communication practices” (2010, pg. 15). This is interesting to consider along‐ side the answers provided to our online survey. While an emphasis on the importance of the web as a space for communication of ideas and information between individuals with a common interest was a common thread in the answers provided, a distinc‐ tion was not made between Facebook, Twitter and other commonly labeled “social networks.” Rather than this emphasis on a specific focus or agenda differentiating “online communities” that focus on one specific topic from “social networks” where information from family news to job‐related occur‐