Survey Results: Web 2.0 Tools in Special Libraries

Amanda Etches-Johnson of McMaster University Library has posted the results of a survey she conducted about the use of 2.0 tools in special libraries.

These tools include blogs, wikis, RSS, instant messaging, and social bookmarking.

There were 68 responses.

The survey shows the following:

• Blogs are used by 60% of respondents
• Wikis - 46.7%
• RSS - 73.3%
• IM - 26.7%
• Social Bookmarking - 33.3%

Among the uses to which these technologies have been put:

• Internal blogs to share research information, and "What's New in the Library" blogs
• Embedding federal government RSS feeds into resource guides
• Social bookmarking for internal reference stuff
• IM for collaboration
• Using a wiki for reference service or for compiling results of large group research projects

The survey also asked people what implementation issues they had faced. These issues broke down into 4 major groups: "little/no staff buy-in, firewall/security issues, other IT/computing issues, and corporate issues".

The most interesting consideration was perhaps the one about "how can we deal with these barriers to implementation...". Some of the ideas included:

• "identify the 'low-hanging fruit': pick the technologies that are the easiest to implement & use, and get your colleagues (and manager) hooked! "
• "...operate under an 'ask for forgiveness, not permission' MO - do as much as you can without having to involve the IT department..."
• "the management/staff buy-in issue is bigger than the IT issues. Why? Because once you have buy-in (particularly from management), there isn’t much IT can do to block your ideas/projects. "