What types of services could libraries offer with user-generated content? The advantages and disadvantages?
In a school library, there could be a student created book review blog. I am doing this with my students in the 4th, 5th, and 6th grades. They are using www.kidblog.org/madisonlibrary and are creating a blog for the school. This is a site specifically created for teachers to use in schools. I, as the librarian, have to approve all posts before they are added to the blog. This allows me to be able to grade them, but also monitor the appropriateness of the posts. This is a great way for the children to recommend materials to each other and find books they would like to read. The recommendations mean more to them from their peers than from me or their teachers. The advantage of this is some children are reading more because they enjoy blogging. A disadvantage has been the work to monitor the site. If there were multiple schools I was doing with this it could be problematic.
In public libraries, patrons could add reviews right to the catalog. This would give people the opportunity to express their opinions and would give the librarians a good idea as to what people like to read. The disadvantages to this could be with challenges. People could add things to the reviews that are offensive to some people or hurtful. This would be a disadvantage to any user generated content. The lack of control can create a high risk environment. Policy would need to be clear on what to do in said situation.
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