The 4 C's

I watched several one minutes videos on various topics and visited the ASU twitter page, ASU ASU Facebook page and the ASU Flickr page linked on the ASU Library channel page.

The underlying principles of social media technology are the 4 C's. Below are points on how the ASU library channel implements these principles.

1. Collaboration - People are invited to comment and make suggestions either via Facebook, Twitter or the suggestion box page on the blog (although this is not prominent or easy to find). This is a collaborative approach which can be used to direct the types of services the library is offering. The collaboration can also be indirect as the library can use this information from the twitter and Facebook posts to follow trends – where are issues/ requests coming from - and develop new programs/resources to assist. Although this is not directly collaborative, it is responsive.
2. Conversation – ASU is actively participating in conversations – particularly via the Twitter page and the Facebook page.  It is answering all issues raised in the tweets and posts – ranging from printing issues to the accuracy of birth control information in the library toilets. From the evidence of the types of information they are tweeting, the staff are using an RSS feed to follow mentions of ASU libraries (by individual name or collectively) as they are picking up refrences to the library on Instagram and other social media sites.
3. Community – ASU is following other organisations and retweeting/posting their information. While the social media tools being used by ASU libraries are largely about broadcasting ASU information and responding to issues, they do also follow other organisations (twitter) and like (Facebook) and share this information and take part in the broader community. Schrier (2011) says that this type of community participation is important to show evidence of being part of the broader community and nor being focused purely on self serving marketing.
4. Content creation - I could find no evidence of students or staff being able to co-create information – whether by contributing material on to the flickr site or tagging material and developing a folksonomy to work along side the controlled tagging. This may be because of lack of access to the databases as don’t have a login. 

Of the 4 c's mentioned above I could see evidence of the first three, but not the last. (It may be that this is restricted as I am not a member and can’t log in). there is the opportunity for members to be able to submit content either through images to Flickr or take part in content generation activities such as competitions or submit articles/videos to the blogs.

Schrier, R.A. (2011). Digital librarianship & social media: The digital library as conversation facilitator, D-Lib Magazine, 17(7/8) July/August 2011. Retrieved fromhttp://dlib.org/dlib/july11/schrier/07schrier.html