social searching

After having a look at social searching this week and found it quite interesting. I am a big fan of 'amazon' and always find the 'what customers bought' links quite good (I have found many good reads that way). I find the reviews good also however I don't necessarily find them indicative of whether I will enjoy the book or not and they are usually so varied anyway but always interesting to read. If I had the time I would love to contribute to these reviews also as it is a great way to share thoughts and opinions with others around the world.

This is yet another way to connect with our clients and I know many public libraries review books on their websites and encourage clients to do the same. This could provide an opportunity for knowledge sharing amongst clients who are researching a specific topic. However I suppose another side to this is that ratings and reviews are always subjective and each individual really needs to judge for themselves whether it is useful for their inquiry/research - but it can definately lead in the right direction.

I think it is fantastic that librarians are answering queries on answer boards and it is always interesting to see the types of questions people are asking (which, after looking at yahoo answers, it seems is pretty much anything and everything). It's useful that the answers are rated also as this is good feedback for the librarian and highlights their valuable skills in finding information which people may not have necessarily know about, so great promotion of library services too!