Use of technology is spread just like mushroom in every walk of our life now-a-days and everyone almost feels really helpless whenever there is gap of these technologies in our day to day life's routine work. Technology has also widened the scope of our working areas as well as level of thinking but, if we just have the glimpses of the days two decades ago in our mind, we hardly used to hear the terms like automation, digitization, content management system etc. Without the much use of technology also, library professionals were able to provide services to their library patrons effectively and the system used to be very strong those days from user satisfaction's point of view. Those days it was really a tough task for any library to market their products & services as the medium of communication was not that much strong in comparison to what it is today. Even then, the libraries were able to disseminate information and assist in research and academic work by providing personalized services, customized services, evaluating different services etc.

I am trying to draw your attention towards value of library services in digital era......

We have been using technology to speed up our efficiency but have we ever thought about value of library services being provided? Does it reach to the society & its users successfully? and so on....If answer is 'Yes'......then great and if 'Not'.....we must think it over about how can it reach?

In my opinion, social media or networking has been playing a very effective role in maintaining public relations......it is working just like bridge between two ends.

In order to stay up-to-date in the socially networked environment and meet the growing needs of their users, libraries therefore need to adopt the new technologies and face the challenges for delivery of better services.

We all must actively respond to the popularity of social networking sites e.g. most popular facebook, twitter etc. and their expanding role in the creation, use, and sharing of information by engaging us as a central medium for interacting with library patrons and providing services to meet their information needs.

We all must follow the public conversations, posts, updates, and events of these key individuals, and offer advice, resources, and help. We all must act as an active participant of the social space and be able to identify the needs of the members of the library communities and must provide solutions by offering information, links to the websites that are relevant to their information needs; and even direct offers of help. There is an urgent need for libraries to adopt the new social networking tools in their services as a strategy for major change while promoting a role for library users in knowledge creation.

Libraries can connect their social networking sites with their library websites to links to their on-line public access catalog, chat reference pages, research guides, calendar of events, e-newsletter etc.

In order to increase the value of our library services, we must play the roles of the social networking librarian by: understanding the nature of social networking sites, creating web page and content, establishing friendly user interface over the network, evaluating and applying information, assisting users by providing quality on-line library services.

Thanks,

*********************
D. P. Tripathi
Assistant Librarian
Biju Patnaik Central Library
NIT Rourkela
Odisha - 769008
http://library.nitrkl.ac.in