The use of technology is spread just like a mushroom in every walk of our life nowadays and everyone almost feels really helpless whenever there is a gap in these technologies in our day-to-day life's routine work. Technology has also widened the scope of our working areas as well as our level of thinking but, if we just have glimpses of the days two decades ago in our mind, we hardly used to hear the terms like automation, digitization, content management system, etc. Without the use of technology also, library professionals were able to provide services to their library patrons effectively and the system used to be very strong those days from a user satisfaction point of view. Those days it was really a tough task for any library to market its products & services as the medium of communication was not that much strong in comparison to what it is today. Even then, the libraries were able to disseminate information and assist in research and academic work by providing personalized services, customized services, evaluating different services, etc.
I am trying to draw your attention
to the value of library services in the digital era......
We have
been using technology to speed up our efficiency but have we ever thought about the value of library services being provided? Does it reach society &
its users successfully? And so on...If the answer is 'Yes'......then great
and if 'No'.....we must think it over about how can it reach?
In my
opinion, social media or networking has been playing a very effective role in
maintaining public relations......it is working just like a bridge between two
ends.
In order to
stay up-to-date in the socially networked environment and meet the growing
needs of their users, libraries, therefore, need to adopt new technologies
and face the challenges for the delivery of better services.
Active
response is expected from all of us for the popularity of social networking
sites e.g. most popular Facebook, Twitter, etc., and their expanding role
in the creation, use, and dissemination of information by engaging us as a
central medium for interacting with library patrons and providing services to
meet their information needs.
Public
conversations, blog posts, updates, events, and resources must be followed by
us and as much as possible, we must extend help. We are supposed to work as active learners and participants of social media and identify the needs of library users and must provide positive solutions by providing relevant
information, important links as per their information needs, etc.
To promote the library and its users in knowledge creation, it is urgently required for
libraries to adopt social networking tools in their library services. With the
help of social networking websites, other libraries can be connected for
accessing their OPAC, other relevant informative pages, research guides,
e-newsletters, calendars of events, etc.
In order to increase the value of our library services,
we must play the roles of the social networking librarian:
- Understanding
the nature of social networking sites,
- Creating
web pages and content,
- Establishing a friendly user interface over the network,
- Evaluating
and applying information,
- Assisting
users by providing quality online library services.
Thanking you
DP Tripathi
NIT Jalandhar