(note: This post is my submission for the Syracuse University iSchool “Librarianship into the Future” award)

Hi, I’m JaTara. I’m a wife and mother living near Hartford, CT. However, I was born and raised in Louisiana. I have several degrees in computer science and mathematics and worked as a software engineer for several years. However, I realized that while I love working with computers, what excited me even more is helping people use technology in a way that made sense to them (taking the “eek” out of geek-speak). Consequently, I decided to pursue a MLIS degree with the goal of being an emerging technologies librarian or a systems librarian.

I currently volunteer at the Fletcher Memorial Library in Hampton, CT and work as a Library Service Assistant at the Yale University Library in New Haven, CT. I love both of my jobs and look forward to learning something new every day. Serving two different types of patrons help ensure that my days are NEVER boring. One day, I may be shelving books around a canine patron in Hampton and the next, I’m handling materials from 1915 in New Haven. I love it all.

I’m a member of the ALA (New Members Round Table), New England Library Association, Connecticut Library Association, and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association-CT affiliate. I currently don’t hold a committee appointment, but have served as a conference blogger for the NELA conference last year (here is my recap complete with links to the conference blog) and plan to blog at other conferences in the future.

Currently, I’m a HUGE social media fan. I have accounts on myspace, facebook, and LinkedIn. As a rather shy person, I love that I can instantly connect with people online and start exchanging ideas or get a pulse on what the “hot” topic of the day is. I’m also interested in the “geeky” side of social media. I’ve served as a virtual intern with Keppie Careers. As part of my duties, I set up the Career Collective blog using WordPress with a modified theme and several plugins. Even though I don’t contribute any content to that site, I do advise the blog owners about interesting technological solutions that can help them be more efficient in their work.

I want to be a part of helping libraries get the most out of social media. I see too many library blogs, facebook fan pages and twitter feeds with little to no content on them. The sad thing is that many of these libraries have interesting content hidden away in their monthly (paper) newsletters that are perfectly appropriate to share via social media technology.

I think this is due to a combination of two factors:
a) not understanding how social media can help their libraries
b) a perception that it would take “too much time” to update all the various sites on a regular basis

I’ll start with the easiest to address – b) “too much time.” The fun thing about social media is that it really doesn’t have to take that much time — there are numerous APIs out there that let the major social media sites connect and share content with each other. For example, if you post the blog’s RSS feed into your facebook fan page, every new blog post will automatically show up as a new note on your facebook fan page (and is visible from the wall). We all send/recieve email everyday — WordPress will let you update your blog via email — no need to log into a different site. I think that in addition to sharing with libraries the benefit of social media, we should also share ways to make it easy to incorporate this technology in their workflow.

As for a), I believe that Syracuse can lead by example. If we can present successful, tangible examples of how social media works, then I believe that libraries may be encouraged to follow suit.

I want to be a part of this effort and if selected for this award, I know I would do a great job for you. Thank you for your consideration.