I was honored to do an interview with Finding Education‘s Shannon Firth last week. We talked a lot about the Australian research project as well as other topics. The post is now up:
http://blog.findingeducation.com/assignment/educators-that-rock-michael-stephens/
Here’s a bit of the piece:
fE: How important is branding to libraries? And what do things like blogs and wikis have to do with stewardship?
MS: I think branding is important. I like seeing librarians who are actively engaging with users, via Facebook, via Twitter, and identifying themselves as a librarian or staff member at the library. I think that really helps carry the brand and mission of the library.
The library brand is also created by library users. That’s why things like tapping into review sites, finding what users are saying, allowing comments to post, and having that back and forth are very important.
I see stewardship alive and well in the new social spaces like Flickr, where a library can share a digital image collection and ask for user input on tags, comments, notes, etcetera–all enhancing the collection. That’s a beautiful combination of one of our foundational values (stewardship) meeting an emerging, collaborative sharing tool. The best use of social tools in libraries will be the ones that tap into our core duties and responsibilities as librarians.
Checkout the other interviews here – http://blog.findingeducation.com/assignment/tag/educator-profiles/ – including Sarah Houghton-Jan, Helene Blowers, danah boyd and David Lee King.
Thanks Shannon!