An article in Information Outlook spoke about the need for special librarians to take the led in educating clients and co-workers about how to find information. This applies to traditional sources together with how social data can be used. While this additional responsibility falls on the special librarian, social media--Facebook, Twitter, blogs provides many new ways of getting information. There are 3 real problems with this. The first is that social media is a mess for anyone who tries to analyze it. The second is the overwhelming amount of data....when Bin Laden was killed, there were 4,000 tweets per second. The third is the confirmation bias; people tweet what they often hear, but what if it is wrong information to begin with?
Special librarians need to develop a strategy, tied to the mission of the organization. To develop an effective social media strategy, a good starting point can be to look at places that have successfully adopted one, such as universities, Zappos, Dell Computer and financial groups interested in the Occupy Wall Street movement are other examples. The point is that social media is a untapped source of information that can be put to good us.
Etlinger, S. (2012). Taking the lead on strategy. Information Outlook 16 (12),14-16.
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