Using Web 2.0 in the library

Following on from some of the blog chats and how we can use Web 2.0 in the library, I read an interesting article in Panlibus Magazine (Issue 13 2009) by Damyanti Patel, the team coordinator at Royal Holloway, University of London. She writes that the introduction of RFID in the library had a big impact on the enquiry service. Self Issue meant that where they once had an Issue Desk and an Information Desk, they now merged into one point of contact / a single service for all enquiries. To date they had collected the usual statistics at the Information Desk but she wanted to see if Web 2.0 could assist in gathering more detailed data on the type of questions asked at the desk.  They set up an Information Service Team Blog and they started to note all of the questions by tweeting them and annotating each tweet. By tagging the queries they were able to search Twitter. This allowed comparisons and discussion and a community of learning evolved. They found that very few subject specific queries were dealt with at  the service desk.  The most common requests from users related to fines and overdues. They found that physically coming to the service desk was not how staff and students were getting answers to their academic queries.