After reading Meredith Farkas’ blog titled “The Essence of Library 2.0″ (http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2008/01/24/the-essence-of-library-20/), I have appreciated that while it is easy to ‘jump on the bandwagon’ to use social media, it is essential that the focus remain on the users or clients rather than focus on social media itself.
While social media delivers excellent tools to market, communicate and engage users, it is important to choose an appropriate tool that users will respond to and librarians can keep updated regularly to make it worthwhile and useful. For example, libraries providing not just Facebook but Twitter and a number of other social media contacts provides for a diverse range of social media users. But first, libraries must be aware of their user demographic and use evidence-based practice to determine this.
Genuinely understanding the users’ needs and delivering tools and applications where they are at is the essence of Library 2.0.
