Tag Archives: social media

Build your audience like a virus experience

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So I’m sitting here in “Build your audience like a virus” training presented by Victoria Rasmussen of UEN. She has some great ideas. She’s talking about the pros and cons of the different social medias like blogging, facebook, twitter, text messaging, youtube. I’m thinking about whether USL can use youtube to share some of the training experiences that we offer.
There’s another session of this training in Richfield next week. You can sign up on our website: http://library.utah.gov/workshops

Statistics Show Social Media Is Bigger Than You Think

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Juan Lee just tweeted this from Socialnomics so you may have already seen it, but if not, it’s definitely worth watching:

“Social Media is Not a Fad” : http://bit.ly/3TVHoG

I hope you enjoy it.

The video is based on the new book by Erick Qualman, “Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business.”

The video is done in a way similar to Palmer DePaulis’ new presentation to the Legislature, Michael Wesch’s “Information R/evolution“, and the classic “Did you Know?” by Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Brenman (rev. 1.0; rev. 2.0; rev. 3.0 ; rev. 4.0).

I think that it provides numerous implications for those of us in the business of creating online government services.

I’m particularly enthralled with Qualman’s idea that we need to disengage ourselves from building search tools and portals. Instead of people searching, Qualman points to the future as being one in which social media will deliver to people the news, information, products, and services that they want. This future, I think, is months not years away. You can already see this emerging in applications such as Facebook and Amazon.com.

What ideas in the video struck you?

UPLIFT Professional Excellence Grant- Shelly Maag Heaps

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I received a Professional Excellence Grant from the Utah State Library to attend Emporia State University’s class called “Organization Theories for Administering Information Agencies” this spring. This class provided a great deal of information and ideas about managing libraries and other information institutions. For the final project, each student chose an issue facing library managers and researched that topic. I looked into reasons a library manager should allow teenagers to play computer games and participate in social networking on library computers. In the Fall 2008 issue of Directions, Linda Fields-Richfield discussed her realization that teens gain important literacy skills through gaming (p.4). This is one of many reasons that teen gaming and social networking are valuable to teens and should be allowed in the library. This article outlines one more of those reasons through an interpretation of a recent study on the association between teen gaming and civic involvement.

One benefit of teen gaming that is being explored by researchers is the civic experience teen’s gain from playing games. The link between teens that play games and involvement in the community is investigated in a 2008 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. This study looked at the fact that a vast majority of American teens play video games and that there “are civic dimensions to video game play” (Lenhart, Kahne, Middaugh, Macgill, Evans, Vitak, 2008, p. viii). This study found that teens who play civic computer games, especially in a social setting are more likely to be politically involved. These games include a wide variety of elements that make many games civically tied, including: helping and guiding other players, teaching about a problem in society, exploring a social issue, thinking about moral or ethical issues, helping make decisions about how a community, city or nation should be run and organizing game groups or guilds” (Lenhart, et al., 2008, p. 41). Most teens are benefiting from these skills by playing computer games, and many are doing it in the library, a place where all teens are free to try these games and play them with friends.

While much research is still needed about the connections between gaming and civic involvement, the “Teens, Video Games, and Civics” study by Lenhart, et al. (2008) indicates that teens that play these types of games in a group are significantly more likely to:
• go online to get information about politics or current events
• raise money for charity
• be committed to civic participation
• be interested in politics
• stay informed about current events
• try to persuade others to vote a particular way in an election
• participate in a protest, march, or demonstration (p. 44).

All of these things are important in a society where citizens can make a difference and the library should be promoting these activities. While it is surprising that allowing gaming can result in these activities, and it is not a logical link many people make, showing this connection to local decision-makers and library leaders can make gaming that much more valuable to individual institutions. Continue reading →