StumbleUpon’s potential--indeed, 2.0’s in general--extends beyond the realm of public libraries. Special libraries in the areas of medical, law, science, and even insurance can stand to gain valuable resources from StumbleUpon. At last summer’s annual Medical Library Association’s annual conference (named, incidentally, MLA 2.0), President Mark Funk spoke at length about 2.0’s in the professional world: “Bureaucracies are changing, becoming less hierarchical and opening up through blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, and podcasts (Kniffel, 2009).”
As part of the conference’s 2.0 Panel, medical librarian Melissa Rethlefsen, (at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine) spoke about, “How librarians are using social networking applications to create online communities” (Kniffel, 2009). From a technical perspective, StumbleUpon offers many of the same features as Facebook and Twitter in that users are encouraged to add “friends” who have similar and professional interests. Thus, a law librarian with a Stumble account can receive updates and recommendations from fellow law librarians for new digital law-related resources and utilize them to strengthen the resources of their own library. Thanks to StumbleUpon, the law librarian posts quality resources to an institution’s homepage, where other workers can use them to improve job efficiency; therefore, StumbleUpon directly contributes to an organization’s overall efficiency.
Sources:
Kniffel, Leonard. (2008). Medical Librarians Get Healthy Dose of Social Networking.
American Libraries, 39, 32. Retrieved from
http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/hww/jumpstart.jhtml?recid=0bc05f7a67b1790e1186e01681fd1ff74efa001b8aa8d03a73d33ee33140d79f1eff1bb479b67d2f& fmt=H
