Comments on: Librarians Online Survey

By: Librarians Online Poll Results « Agnostic, Maybe

Librarians Online Poll Results « Agnostic, Maybe — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 02:54:31 +0000

[...] at the end of August, I put together a poll asking librarians about their online activities. I stopped collecting data at the end of September and then completely forgot about it. So, in the [...]

By: Labor Day Jottings « Agnostic, Maybe

Labor Day Jottings « Agnostic, Maybe — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 21:35:38 +0000

[...] on a project* right now that has been going on for the last few months as well as organizing the Librarians Online poll which has over 1,100 replies as of the date of this blog entry. (Many thanks to the people who promoted, shared, and otherwise [...]

By: Home Libraries of the Rich and Famous - Sopaipleto » Sopaipleto

Home Libraries of the Rich and Famous - Sopaipleto » Sopaipleto — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 03:30:49 +0000

[...] sixteen-year-old girl who opened libraries in rebel areas of The Philippines? * Fellow librarians, it’s survey time! What do you do online? Won’t take very long, I promise, and could really help an NJ librarian [...]

By: John Jackson

John Jackson — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:57:09 +0000

That comment actually brings to light one problem of these types of surveys (people do this on list-servs all the time and probably don’t realize it): snowball sampling. It can dramatically skew your results and basically produce the very results you predict. My wife works in a field that does a lot of heavy demographic and psychometric research and they usually try to avoid this.

But it also brings up something that I always harp about: librarians have an online echo chamber that is probably only rivaled by the tech industry. Those of us who live in the Facebook, who spend all our days twooting (::raises hand::), forget that *it is not normal* and, for many people, *not desirable.*

One librarian at MPOW that I admire and respect to no end once told me, “For every minute you spend online talking to other ‘professionals’ (she used air quotes), there are 5 patrons who are not getting your attention.” I responded, “but what about during down times?” To which she replied, “So instead of taking 5 minutes to start building something useful, something that could benefit a user, you went online to check your Twitter stream?” o.O

/rant. This has been coming up a lot at work. Ugh. In any case, I look forward to seeing the results of the survey, if anything to see how online librarians spend their time. =)

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 03:48:11 +0000

“Truthfully, I can’t imagine that very many librarians use any social media site for professional development – for connecting with patrons maybe.”

o.O

I’m glad you offered your take on the social media sites.

By: Debbie

Debbie — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 19:39:54 +0000

I passed this link onto many and many have participated. One reply i got from a colleague was disappointing –

“I tried to answer his survey but it won’t accept my response since I don’t use any of those sites for my professional development. Typing in “none” in the freeform box apparently isn’t considered an answer to the question. The lesson learned – don’t do a survey without offering “none” or “other” as an option.

Truthfully, I can’t imagine that very many librarians use any social media site for professional development – for connecting with patrons maybe.”

Disappointed in the final statement, not that you couldn’t respond “none/other”…oh well. I responded to her about my daily experiences w/using various forms of social media and how beneficial it can be to me personally and to my library and it’s patrons by keeping us up to date and maintaining a relevancy in the lives of those we want to walk through our physical and virtual doors on a daily basis.

Looking forward to hearing about this. Good luck!