Investigative Exercise 9 Community Profiles

My local council area is the Sutherland Shire Council.

The Sutherland Shire is located in Sydney’s southern region. As of 2014 the estimated population of the Sutherland Shire is 225,070. Of this population approximately 78.8% were born in Australia. The other major backgrounds are English, New Zealander, Chinese and South African. The most common languages other than English that are spoken at home are: Greek, Arabic, Cantonese, Italian and Mandarin. The main areas of occupation are Professionals 23%, Clerical and Administrative Workers 18.4%, Managers 14.3% and Technicians/Trades Workers13.9%.The unemployment rate for the council area is 3.5%.

Sutherland Shire Library

Sutherland Shire Council 

Investigative Exercise 8 - Current Awareness Post

Facebook Privacy & Identity - Exploring your digital self: Mario Rodriguez at TEDxStetsonU

The discussion about Facebook Privacy and Identiy by Mario Rodriguez was a fascinating video and talk to watch/listen to. With the rapid expansion of social media and sites like Facebook, people have taken to putting their whole lives onto these sites for everyone to see, every message/comment/post/photo is available for public display and as soon as it is placed on these sites it is no longer our property. The idea that we are monitored by our electronic footprint is fascinating, especially the early examples that were discussed about people being turned down jobs or being fired from their jobs for things they have posted onto Facebook or other social media sites. What you say and do online is not protected just because you are only sharing it with some of your friends and it is still interesting to see how this problem of digital privacy will evolve and be handled in the future.

Investigative Exercise 7 Podcasts

Loan of rare maps to the Library by Mr Kerry Stokes from Australian National Library


This podcast discusses the collection of rare Dutch navigational charts which have been loaned to the library by Kerry Stokes.

Investigative Exercise 6 Social Bookmarking

Community book reviews are a great and useful tool for libraries to use. They allow community members to be able to write their own opinions of an item, be it a book, a dvd or something else. This provides other users of the library to see what other people thought of the book, without having to go to another site to read reviews there. It is also useful for library staff as they can then see trends in what people seem to like or not like, what is getting the popular reviews and what is being ignored. This information could come in handy when it comes time to weed the collection or for other collection development purposes.

The only drawback with allowing community reviews is that by allowing anyone access to write what they want, ANYONE can then write what they want, meaning that problems could arise with unsafe material being written on book entries for anyone to see, so libraries need to be mindful of what is being posted onto the reviews.

My local service, Sutherland Shire Libraries already makes use of these social bookmarking tools. When you search a book or other item in the catalogue there are options to view community reviews and tags as well as options to create your own review and tags for the item you are looking at.

Investigative Exercise 5 Social Networking

Facebook, Myspace and other social media sites are greatly important for libraries. With the development of Web 2.0 technologies, people have flocked to these sites to be able to create, share and link content with other people. It is estimated that there are 1.44 billion Facebook users across the globe. That is just one social media site. Libraries need to tap into these websites in order to connect with their users in order to promote themselves and their events, not only to people who are already members and users of the library but to those who are not yet users or members, to be able to draw them in using Facebook or other social media and gain access to these other people through promotion from the library itself but also from library clients who promote the site just by subscribing or ‘liking’ it on their own pages.

Investigative Exercise 4. YouTube

In this video popular author and librarian Nancy Pearl discusses her experiences as a child in libraries and how good librarians should work and how libraries are important for young people.

Investigative Exercise 3. Photo sharing and Flickr

Sutherland Shire Libraries Flickr

Sutherland Shire libraries use Flickr to promote the library and its various community outreach programs.

An example of this is this photo showing the Taronga Zoomobile and the library inviting children to the library to learn about various Australian animals.

Taronga Zoomobile and Sutherland Library