Virtual Community Building Using Internet Tools

Hope N. Tillman, Director of Libraries
Babson College
Wednesday, November 8, 2000
presentation given at Internet Librarian 2000

• A community is a combination of place, content, and people and the interactions & relationships between them
• Virtual community members interact because of some reason they have in common but they do not get together face to face on a regular basis
• Greeting without handshakes
• Communication without body language

• Meetings in libraries, etc.
• physical presence in a community defined by geography
• users for the most part defined by geography
• Online communities
• no physical presence
• users defined by shared interests

• Customer Support Groups
• Academic Support
• Dispersed employee communications
• Support groups (e.g. medical)
• Communities of a common interest

• Classmates
• Delphi.com Forums and Well Engaged (both now part of Prospero
• Genforum, Rootsweb (genealogy groups)
• Inside the Web (LookSmart)
• Internet Public Library - see below
• Members of a class/course
• Newslib, Stumpers-L, Web4Lib(discussion lists)

http://www.ipl.org/

Online Reference Services

• Librarian has credibility as source of answers
• Are easy way "in" for customer – just ask a question
• Engages user in a dialog with the librarian
• Questions serve as source for content for a frequently asked questions for individuals to search without asking specific questions

• Start with participants’ needs
• Get the participants involved
• Then choose best technologies that will help members do what they want so they will keep coming back
• Foster member-generated content
• Integrate the published content of a website with an environment for communication

• E-mail discussion lists
• Chat rooms
• Text based chat
• Video chat
• Voice chat
• Meeting services
• Instant messaging
• Message boards
• Usenet newsgroups
• Web rings (http://dir.webring.yahoo.com)

• Closed vs. Open membership
• Moderated or unmoderated
• Scheduled or any old time or 24-7 (specific to chat or anything realtime like instant messaging)
• Anonymous or handle or name

PROS

• real time
• log can be used afterwards
• private sends may facilitate process

CONS

• firewalls may block
• difficult to schedule for different time zones
• difficult to be available
• log may be lost
• requires typing skills
• confusion of several conversations going on simultaneously
• private sends may be logged

• Logging enabled?
• Private sends allowed?
• Are private sends logged?

• draw people to the site to contribute their knowledge, ideas and experience
• build community of interest around topics or issues that can extend beyond the event itself
• allow interactions with a much broader range of people than would be possible with face-to-face events
• provide you with a very valuable list of contacts for future events, marketing, etc.

• Plan ahead
• Give time commitment
• System must work – be sure of technical support
• password controlled or open?
• ongoing or time-limited?
• wide marketing

• Archiving, indexing, searching
• Editing enabled? For whom?
• Deletion enabled? For whom?
• HTML supported? Graphics allowed?
• Member controls: gag, lockout
• Tech support?

• Reciprocal linking
• Registration in search engines and directories
• Careful e-mail promotion
• Newsgroups
• Participate in online forums
• Print promotion of your website

• Have "guest presenters" participate in forum
• Post background info on the web from presenters or other sources to frame the discussion
• Prepare presenters so they are comfortable using medium
• Develop questions ahead to promote dialog between presenter and participants
• Secure rights ahead from presenters/participants to use transcripts of chats/discussion sessions
• Coordinate the discussion content with other initiatives to integrate into participants’ needs

• Howard Rheingold. Virtual Communities: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Addison-Wesley, 1993.
• Karla Shelton and Todd McNeeley. Virtual Communities Companion. The Coriolis Group, 1997.
• Rae Earnshaw. Frontiers in Human-Centred Computing, Online Communities and Virtual Environment, 2000.
• Amy Jo Kim. Community Building on the Web. Peachpit Press, 2000.
• Chris Werry et al. Online Communities: Commerce, Community Action, and the Virtual University. Not yet published.

Hope N. Tillman, Director of Libraries
Babson College
Horn Library
Babson Park MA 02457
email: hope@hopetillman.com
web site: http://www.hopetillman.com
This presentation is at: http://www.hopetillman.com/il00/vc.html in HTML or
as Powerpoint slides at: http://www.hopetillman.com/il00/tillman.ppt