Are librarians useful in social media?

I had a job interview recently with a really exciting small niche social networking site. One of my interviewers mentioned an interest in my library experience, but said he wasn’t sure how it would apply to the position. This was really thought provoking for me—lots of people understand that librarians have valuable skill sets, but they’re not sure exactly how they’re valuable, or how these skills apply outside of a library setting.

My initial reaction to his question was a no-brainer—of course library experience has everything to do with me being the ideal person for the job. After spending some more time thinking about how my library experience makes me a better candidate for the position, I keep coming back to this: Librarians, by definition, exist to support communities of users.

How do librarians do this? How does this apply in a virtual community? I feel like I could write an entire book about this, but I’ll keep it brief: Librarians bring communities of users together.

Working in an important center of community space, a public librarian is a natural grassroots community developer. Working day-in and day-out, face-to-face with their user base, public librarians engage with users in order to serve them in a variety of ways:

• Identifying the needs and interests of users, and developing/organizing information resources, collections of materials, and events/activities to meet those needs.
• Researching, selecting, collecting resources
• Promoting usability and access
• Outreach & advocacy
• Bringing users and resources together
• Promoting intellectual freedom
• Fostering a spirit of community across a diverse spectrum of users

My favorite example of a librarian serving a vital role in supporting an online community is Jessamyn West, who’s been serving as one of the moderators of MetaFilter since January of 2005. Here’s an article in Library Journal in which she discusses the importance of librarians in the MeFi community, with a really awesome example question from someone trying to track down the apartment in Vienna where his grandfather lived before fleeing from the Nazis during World War II.

A good reference librarian is, by nature, a rabidly compassionate, empathetic, helpful person.  Not only is he or she an information ninja, but an information ninja that feels called to use their information-fu for the good of the community.  This is just as true in virtual communities as it is in the context of traditional library services.

I hope that answers your question, Casey. :)