Social Networking for Library and Information Science Literature John Meier Science Librarian The Pennsylvania State University University Libraries LFO Grant Recipient

Background Problems - How do you keep current on research? - Can social networking aid in discovery of new research?

Table of Contents s

RSS Feeds

489 Articles unread in Google Reader

Web 2.0 Social Filtering Use the wisdom of the crowds to reduce the information overload Share and repost Value in attention

Scholarly Communication Traditional Method New Method WriteReviewPublishRead

Review of the Literature “Postpublication critique of articles in online pages provided by the journal does not seem to be taking hold.” - Schriger, et.al. Annals of Emergency Medicine, 57:2 (February 2011) “Blogs and tweets are ripping papers apart within days of publication” -Mandavilli, Nature 469 (January 2011)

Hypothesis Librarians and information science professionals would embrace new methods of scholarly communication and Web 2.0 technology

Methods Implementation Create a social networking website lislit.vmhost.psu.edu Collect research articles by RSS feed Integrate with Facebook Assessment Collect user submitted data Google Analytics to track web usage Mixed method user survey at end of study

How can it be done? Open source content management software Drupal offers the DRIGG module for voting PLIGG is a social networking CMS Develop and implement it on your own (or have access to developers)

What does Pligg require? Web Hosting that has PHP5 MySQL Some knowledge of HTML and CSS Some customizations require changing code Free, but Modules cost $$$ Support By user forum for basic Pligg By the developers of Pligg for any modules you buy Patience Determination

Facebook Module Authenticate with Facebook Allows a single sign in Uses Facebook API Requires the creation of a Facebook App (easier than it sounds) Post articles to Facebook

LISLIT Project as of May 2011 Vital Statistics 170 Users 8 User groups 310 Articles 5% User generated 21 RSS Feeds

Results Quantitative 170 users, 8 groups, 420 articles, 23 RSS feeds Google analytics 60 responses to final survey Qualitative 20 articles, 6 comments posted by users 16 comments in final survey

Analysis

Conclusions “…lack of content…” RSS feature of website not automated enough Large collection of citations needed, a possible source might be Citeseer “…alerting feature.” Users not encouraged to return daily or when new content added alerts sometimes flagged as SPAM

Future Directions “the site offers and fills an important niche” Secured funding for another year of website hosting Negotiating a partnership with information science courses and students Study research behavior on Facebook and Twitter

Other Projects and Sources Jason Priem Science in the Open Journal Table of Contents RSS

Bibliography CIBER. (2010) “Social media and research workflow”. Charleston Library Conference, 12/14/2010. Mandavilli, A. (2011) “Peer Review: Trial by Twitter”. Nature News, 1/21/2011. Meier, J. (2011) “Can you Digg it? Social Ranking of Scholarly Articles in the Library and Information Science Literature”. ACRL 2011, 3/31/2011. Schriger, D., et al. (2011) “Use of the Internet by Print Medical Journals in 2003 to 2009: A Longitudinal Observational Study”. Annals of Emergency Medicine, 57:2.

Acknowledgments Penn State University Libraries Faculty Organization for financial support through a research grant Penn State Virtual Hosting Services for technical support and hosting The Scholarly Kitchen blog for inspiration