The Cybrarian’s Web 2: An A-Z Guide to Free Social Media Tools, Apps, and Other resources

Raewyn Adams (Bay of Plenty District Health Board, Tauranga, New Zealand)

The Electronic Library

ISSN: 0264-0473

Article publication date: 6 February 2017

290

Citation

Adams, R. (2017), "The Cybrarian’s Web 2: An A-Z Guide to Free Social Media Tools, Apps, and Other resources", The Electronic Library, Vol. 35 No. 1, pp. 211-212. https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-05-2016-0122

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited


My first impressions of this book were very positive. It includes resources I know, many that I don’t know, and most importantly for me, some that I have heard of and wanted to know more about. The information provided is basic but does cover the essentials. It is certainly an excellent starting point for ground level information about the resources included.

Each section has a brief overview, a list of features and a note about how cybrarians might find the resource useful in their work. The overview is a description of the resource and some background on its source, function and intended audience. The list of features includes information on how to get started with the product followed by bullet-point paragraphs to highlight some of the key aspects of particular features. The suggestions for uses by cybrarians include ideas to use the potential of the product and, in some cases, notes about actual use. I sometimes found this section a bit too narrow and would have preferred to see more ideas here.

A few sections, such as the one on ebooks and mobile apps, are more generic with an overview and features list that applies to the genre and an extra list being used to point out specific products. This approach is great for complete beginners, and the list of websites is useful to have.

The alphabetical arrangement of the entries makes specific tools easy to find, and each entry lists any similar resources covered in the book. The appendices include a listing by service type to allow a quick reference to similar products. It was disappointing that many categories only have one example so comparison between tools is not always possible. I can see though that to have included more would have changed the balance of the book and maybe having fewer resources over a wider range of types was the intention. Perhaps a combined index or appropriate references back to Book 1 might be useful. It appears that the two books complement each other.

Black and white screen shots of Web pages are used to illustrate the book and the text is also complemented with occasional “FYI” boxes that show interesting extra information. These are factual snippets that relate to the main text but can also stand alone.

I liked the fact that the book is written by a librarian – someone who understands our business and can relate the world of the internet back to what we do – and also appreciate the associated website that provides more information at Cybrarians Web (http://cybrariansweb.com/).

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