Social media for health librarians

Abstract

Welcome to a new information technology column called ‘‘Social media for health librarians’’ for the JCHLA/ JABSC. Over the next year or so, I plan to write about social media and the effects of Web 2.0 tools on our information practices. I hope you find the column a more casual read (i.e., less academic) than previous teaching and learning columns. My goal is to engage health librarians about the tools and trends of Web 2.0 and to raise topics for debate with your peers. Feel free to engage me in debate also. E-mail your questions and send suggested topics such as medicine 2.0, health 2.0, or even health librarian 2.0. For now, let’s leave all of the Web 2-point-ohs for later. (See Appendix A for quick definitions of these terms.) Let’s begin by talking about time — what other health librarians tell me is the single largest barrier to their use of social media. As a health librarian who follows social media very closely, I realize that time is a significant barrier for many of you and that these barriers also prevent appropriate evaluation of tools. I also realize that if it comes down to spending your collections budgets or evaluating Twitter, there is no contest — collections come first. But Twitter’s rise in particular reminds me of the hoopla around Google Scholar when it was first released; do you recall how many librarians spoke out against using it [1–2]? Would any of us now deny that Google Scholar is extremely valuable in the health librarian’s toolkit, indeed any librarian’s toolkit? The realization that Twitter, like Google Scholar, is valuable is certain to come with time. Social networking presents its own quirks for health librarians — and a tendency to drain more of our time. And the ruse is that to use social media well, you need to build a network of people to create the network effect. The network effect (Metcalfe’s law) states that the more people you have in your network, the more useful it becomes [3]. On Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, I follow ,1000 people. I can’t follow all of these people closely but am getting to know about 5% of my network. I follow people from around the world and anyone who can teach me something. If someone is not providing value to me, I quietly stop following them. I am regularly asked how I monitor so many social tools while maintaining a full-time position at the UBC Biomedical Branch Library. How do I find time to evaluate the tools? I’m also asked what my opinion is on social media’s long-term prospects. Is social networking a passing fad? And even — as a busy academic health librarian at Vancouver General Hospital, why do I blog and tweet? For me, social media is primarily about two things: lifelong learning and promoting the profession. I firmly believe health librarians should be thinking about the implications of social media in the information age but also using it to tell our stories. Moreover, I think social media is a natural ally for lifelong learners. My use of social media directs my learning every day, and I see it as part of understanding the digital landscape. Our information practices in the digital age should take into account core librarianship competencies but within an environment that includes social media. Many of you already use social media and collaborate with users online. Please share your ideas. You might even author blogs or use Twitter to network with colleagues. In 2010, it is obvious we have reached a critical mass of social media users in CHLA / ABSC [4]. The Association Web site is now interactive and several members contribute to the Board blog — maybe not as regularly as I would like, but it’s a start. In the same way that Google is now accepted, social media has reached a level of quiet acceptance by information professionals. Have you discerned the slow shift towards the acceptance of social media in health libraries? Within the Medical Library Association (MLA), librarians work through modules to learn about social media [5]. While tools such as Twitter and Second Life may be peripheral for a while, other tools seem to be here to stay. Take a look at some of the recent social media research in MEDLINE; recently, I noticed that several well-designed studies have been published [6–15]. Clinicians around the world are evaluating social media, and the evidence-base is growing. Social media represents a new domain of expertise for health librarians. Are the collaboration and informationsharing skills of Web 2.0 critical for our future? I believe that they are. Social media skills are not as important as maintaining our intellectual orientation or the work we do to organize collections and services. But I believe we