Week 14: Social networks

Social networks facilitated by the Library would primarily liaise clients sharing similar interests and information needs. This would allow exchange of knowledge and experience in the specific subject areas, often at the much higher level than the one that can be offered by the Library staff, who as librarians are not subject experts per se. I can see them being particularly successful in such areas as ML research and family history, but naturally they can have a much broader application. This sort of communication would help us to define better our clients profiles, understand more our audience needs. It would also allow us to further develop our own knowledge of the collections and build up our subject expertise.
Library based social networks could also be very successful as a marketing tool, allowing us to communicate our services to very specific groups, and act upon the feedback received from network members.