UKOLN
Raising Awareness

"A centre of excellence in digital information management, providing advice and services to the library, information and cultural heritage communities."

UKOLN is based at the University of Bath.

ILI 2010 Conference

Effective Use of the Social Web in Organisations: 13 October 2010

Background

Ann Chapman and Brian Kelly were co-facilitators for a workshop on "Effective Use of the Social Web in Organisations" which was held at Novotel London West, 1 Shortlands, London, W6 8DR on 13 October 2010 from 10.00-13.00. This event was part of the pre-conference workshop programme of the Internet Librarian International Conference 2010. Further information is available on the ILI 2010 web site.

Abstract

This workshop offers practical experiences and advice on best practices for using Social Web services such as blogs, microblogs and social networking services in your library.

The session will provide an update on blog fundamentals to ensure that participants are aware of the key aspects to blogs. The issues involved in setting up a blog will be addressed, such as selection of software and hosting decisions. Using various case studies the session will cover policy and procedure issues such as blog scope, writing style, frequency of publication and use of individual versus team blogs.

These days it would be inappropriate to develop strategies for organisational blogs without considering the role of social networking services (such as Facebook) and micro-blogging tools such as Twitter. Although such tools were initially developed for individual use, they are now beginning to be used by organisations. Is this a sensible approach, in which organisations are being quick to exploit the potential of popular services, or a misuse of such services which is unlikely to be sustainable?

The session will also explore such issues and provide advice on best practices on the use of social networking services such as Facebook in an organisational context.

This workshop will be of interest to those who are new to blogs and social networks, or those who have experimented with such tools but would like to learn more about strategies and metrics for developing effective, sustainable and cost-effective services.

Draft Timetable

The draft timetable is given below.

Time Session Comment
10.00-10.05 Introduction
[MS PowerPoint] - [HTML]
Brian Kelly will provide an introduction to the workshop
10.05-10.10 Group discussion 1: Why are you here? Group exercise
10.10-10.30 Case Studies: UKOLN's Cultural Heritage and JISC SIS blogs and CILIP CIG blog
[MS PowerPoint] [HTML]
Ann Chapman will describe the blogs she contributes to.
10.30-10.40 Beyond Blogs: the Role of Twitter
[MS PowerPoint] [HTML]
Brian Kelly will describe how Twitter can be used to complement a blog or as a communications / user engagement tool in its own right.
10.40-11.00 Why have a blog? Why use Twitter? The library context
[MS PowerPoint] [HTML]
Ann Chapman will facilitate a discussion on how blogs and microblogs can be used in a library context
11.00-11.15 Break  
11.15-11.35 Beyond blogs: the role of social networks
[MS PowerPoint] - [HTML]
Ann Chapman will describe the potential of Social Networking services such as Facebook
11.35-11.50 Group discussion 2: What are the barriers?  
11.50-12.00 Addressing the Barriers
[MS PowerPoint] - [HTML]
Brian Kelly will review approaches to overcoming organisational and individual barriers to use of Social Web services.
12.00-12.25 Making a Business Case for Use of the Social Web
[MS PowerPoint] - [HTML]
Group exercise in which participants make a specific proposal for making use of the Social Web
12.25-12.40 Making Your Proposal Presentations by participants
12.40-13.00 Final remarks Brian Kelly and Ann Chapman

Handouts

The following handouts were provided:

An Introduction to Blogs (briefing no 2)
Briefing Document: [About] - [HTML] - [MS Word]
Use of Blogs in Libraries (briefing no 3)
Briefing Document: [About] - [HTML] - [MS Word]
Developing Blog Policies (briefing no 5)
Briefing Document: [About] - [HTML] - [MS Word]
Addressing Barriers to Blogging (briefing no 12)
Briefing Document: [About] - [HTML] - [MS Word]
An Introduction to Social Networks (briefing no 13)
Briefing Document: [About] - [HTML] - [MS Word]
Facebook: Opportunities and Challenges (briefing no 14)
Briefing Document: [About] - [HTML] - [MS Word]
An Introduction to Micro-blogging (briefing no 35)
Briefing Document: [About] - [HTML] - [MS Word]
An Introduction to Twitter (briefing no 36)
Briefing Document: [About] - [HTML] - [MS Word]
Risk Assessment for Use of Third Party Web 2.0 Services (briefing no 70)
Briefing Document: [About] - [HTML] - [MS Word]
A Risks and Opportunities Framework For The Social Web (briefing no 70)
Briefing Document: [About] - [HTML] - [MS Word]
Using the Risks and Opportunities Framework (briefing no 68)
Briefing Document: [About] - [HTML] - [MS Word]
UK Web Focus flyer
[MS Word]
Cultural Heritage flyer
[MS Word]
Personal Action Plans
[MS Word]

 

Biographical Details

Image of Brian Kelly Brian Kelly is UK Web Focus, a post funded by the JISC and the MLA which advises the UK's higher and further education communities and museums, libraries and archives sector on best practices in use of the Web. Brian is an experienced presenter, and has spoken at nearly all of the previous Internet Librarian International conferences.

Brian has given many presentations on Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 over the past few years. Brian was a invited plenary speaker at international conferences held in Stockholm, Taiwan and Singapore in 2008.

 

Image of Ann ChapmanAnn Chapman works for UKOLN where she is responsible for UKOLN's Cultural Heritage Web site and manages the Cultural Heritage blog. Ann has given many presentations over the years on a variety of topics (catalogue record quality, collection description, international cataloguing standards, the information landscape) and more recently on Web 2.0 and the cultural heritage sector, including an Internet Librarian International workshop on blogging in 2008.