Social Presence: a theoretical construct for evaluation of the participatory catalog

Social Presence: a theoretical construct for evaluation of the participatory catalog

Jack M. Maness
Assistant Professor
Engineering Librarian
University Libraries
University of Colorado at Boulder
1720 Pleasant St.
184 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309
jack.maness@colorado.edu

Abstract

This paper suggests the literature of “Social Presence” could provide a theoretical paradigm for the evaluation of social software and related technologies in libraries’ online public access catalogs (OPACs). Social Presence is a well-researched term in communication and education, and it has been demonstrated that a high degree of Social Presence facilitates online communication and learning. A review of the relevant literature, a potential model for understanding the OPAC as a “participatory catalog,” and suggestions for future research are given.

Background
There is currently in libraries a discussion about the next generation of web-based services, including OPACs. In its beginnings, much of this discussion revolved around the term “Library 2.0,” a term that is defined in many ways, some of them contradictory (Crawford, 2005; Maness, 2006). Recently, a more specific, concerted, and perhaps objective effort to coalesce the discussion has emerged from a partnership between the Information Institute of Syracuse and the American Library Association’s Office for Information Technology Policy. This effort suggests “Conversation Theory,” which ostensibly posits that learning is achieved primarily through conversation, provides an underpinning for this next-generation web-based library system, or the “participatory library.” Participatory libraries allow users to have conversations with one another, with librarians, and with library systems in order to retrieve information and create new knowledge (Lankes & Silverstein, 2006).

The “participatory librarian” understands that the current state of the OPAC is inadequate in this regard, that they “provide minimal opportunities to the receiver of the information to provide feedback or input,” and that the “participatory catalog” requires the profession “rethink the catalog as a dynamic system, with data of varying levels of currency and, frankly, quality, coming into and out of the system” (Lankes & Silverstein, 2006: p. 5-6). The current generation of OPACs act as monologues, limiting conversation and thereby the creation of knowledge. Participatory OPACs, however, facilitate both conversation and knowledge creation.

But conversation requires conversants, of course, and in computer-mediated environments the presence of others is not always as apparent as it is in face-to-face settings. This paper suggests the literature of “Social Presence” can be used to assess the awareness users have of one another through OPACs enhanced with social software, thereby helping to facilitate conversation, information transfer, and knowledge discovery. Social Presence can compliment and undergird Conversation Theory and help build not only the next generation of OPACs, but the theoretical underpinnings to the participatory library itself.

Social Presence Online

The seminal work that introduced “Social Presence” to the lexicon is The Social Psychology of Telecommunications by Short, et. al. (1976). This work defined the term as “[t]he degree of salience of another person in an interaction and the consequent salience of an interpersonal relationship” (65). The authors emphasized that Social Presence is “a quality of the communications medium itself,” and hypothesized that “communications media vary in their degree of Social Presence, and that these variations are important in determining how individuals act” (65). They concluded that face-to-face was the most socially-present media, followed by video second and audio recordings third, but it has been suggested since that these findings cannot necessarily be generalized to online interactions (Tu, 2002b). Summarily, Social Presence is here explored as the degree to which one is aware of others in computer-mediated environments, an awareness that affects their behavior and their perception of other people, their relationship to them, and of the media itself.

Short et. al. (1976) also discussed how the degree of Social Presence of a communications medium can be measured, using gradient continuums such as personal-impersonal, sociable-unsociable, sensitive-insensitive, cold-warm, and others, all of which may be better understood to fall under two broader measures of Social Presence: immediacy (how aware a user is of others) and intimacy (how positively that user perceives that awareness) (Tu & McIsacc, 2002a). Social Presence, then, is a complex qualitative judgment one makes of the relative immediacy and intimacy of an interpersonal relationship perceived through the lens of a communication medium, and this judgment helps inform one on the appropriate behaviors for that medium and that relationship.

There is, however, no common way of quantifying Social Presence, and Tu (2002b) has further suggested that “[c]urrent instruments are unable to measure the complicated issue of online Social Presence” (34). Most studies of online Social Presence utilize surveys designed to determine subjects’ perceptions of the social interactions within mediated environments along the basic matrices suggested by Short, et. al. (1976), but do not address many other factors shown to affect users’ behavior in computer-mediated environments (Tu, 2000). There have in recent years been two instruments that demonstrated construct and content validity, one provided by Kreijns, et. al. (2004), the other by Tu (2002b), and these may be instrumental first-steps in better understanding Social Presence in CMC.

Despite difficulties in measuring Social Presence, the implications of Social Presence studies for online learning are great and duly noted in the educational literature. Tu (1999) builds a theoretical history for Social Presence relevancy in education, using Albert Bandura’s (1997) well-known Social Learning Theory as a basis by which to reconstruct Social Presence theory for instructional settings utilizing CMC as their primary means of teaching and learning. Many studies corroborate the hypothesis that positive Social Presence measures indicate student satisfaction with instruction and instructors in virtual environments (Dirkin, et. al., 2005; Gunawardena, 1995; Leh, 2001; Polhemus, 1995; Richardson & Swan, 2003; Rovai, 2002; Swan, 2002) and perceived learning (Richardson & Swan, 2003; Swan, 2002). However, Picciano (2002) was unable to find Social Presence and interaction to be a consistent indicator of student performance, but did conclude that “how interaction affects learning outcomes and what are the relationships between the two is a complex pedagogical phenomenon in need of further study” (33). Ultimately, however it is defined or measured, Social Presence does appear to be strongly indicative of effective communication and learning online, and yet intricately related to many factors and variables, including privacy (Tu, 2002a).

Interestingly, the concept of Social Presence has also expanded beyond CMC and educational settings to the realm of human-computer interaction (HCI). In two publications, Kumar and Benbasat (2002a; 2002b) define and outline a model for Para-Social Presence (PSP), wherein they “make a case for treating a web site as a valid social actor and argue that the relationship between a web site and her visitors should be characterized in much the same way one would characterize an inter-personal relationship” (2002a: 5). In this sense, the relationship of Social Presence and PSP to libraries is complicated perception of the interactions among individuals and the web-resources they utilize.

The Participatory OPAC

It is possible that the literature of Social Presence can inform how libraries evaluate OPACs as they begin to become more participatory. It is not necessarily so, as OPACs are not the sort of learning systems that the educational literature has investigated in this regard, but Social Presence at least provides a justification for and mechanism by which social software applications in OPACs can be evaluated. There is also some reason to believe users are coming to expect OPACs to be more participatory (Ballas, 2006).

Assuming Social Presence is a desirable aspect to an OPAC, a simple model can be given that illustrates the difference between the traditional, information-retrieval model for OPACs and the Participatory OPAC. It is technologically agnostic, endorsing no particular tool, product, or vendor. Rather, it is prescriptive and general, suggesting that librarians abandon the “database” or “information search-and-retrieve” model of providing resources (Fig. 1), which emphasize resources, and begin recasting their web-services as participatory networking sites, which emphasize both resources and the social interrelationships necessary to make them valuable (Fig. 2).
Fig. 1: OPAC as database

Fig. 1 depicts the traditional OPAC. It simply provides an interface to a database that contains information “objects” (which can be records for books or serials, databases or web sites, anything that can be considered a unit of information). The user’s participation is very minimal, and the OPACs participation is passive and homogenous; it can really only do one thing—retrieve objects whose description meets the user’s search criteria. It is hard to imagine Social Presence measures, and perhaps even PSP measures, amounting to any significance in this database-driven OPAC.

In Fig. 2 the participatory model is depicted, wherein a user interacts with a library system that provides access to resources, other users through social software (such as chat boxes or group resources based on user profiles), librarians through components such as virtual reference boxes, and other networks, all of which, in turn, provide access to more users, resources, and networks. Action is initiated by both the user and the library system (system can alert user to new resources, messages from other users, or assistance from librarians), and methods of accessing resources are exponentially increased. The result is a more dynamic, interactive, enhanced tool for information transfer, all determined by the degree to which the user is aware of others’ presences in the networked environment.
Fig. 2: OPAC as network

Moving from the database model to the network model will greatly improve Social Presence aspects of OPACs. Users will be aware of one another’s presences on the site, as well as the presence of librarians. Users will create new or connect previously existing networks and communicate either synchronously or asynchronously to share and create resources for their communities. Librarians will recommend resources and search strategies, and the OPAC itself will do the same. These Participatory OPACs will ostensibly do in the online library what they have done in physical libraries for centuries: share resources and knowledge. The user will experience a much higher degree of Social Presence and PSP, and information transfer will be significantly improved because the entire “social life of information” will be present in one environment; users will not only discover, but share, evaluate, and utilize information (Brown & Duguid, 2000).

Yet there is a great deal to be investigated in this model. Different users would utilize different components of such a system very differently. Cataloging practices could face dramatic change. Issues of intellectual property, privacy, and intellectual freedom abound. But if the work of others on Social Presence in education and communication is any indication, the use of social software and augmentation of Social Presence and PSP in library services is possible and could herald a revolutionary improvement in the history of library services. Services will join collections online, and a true “virtual” library will be possible.

Future Research
A research agenda for understanding the benefits of a Participatory OPAC can be understood as a three-dimensional matrix of variables, the investigator choosing among them and designing a study to understand the specific combination. If the agenda is visualized as a cube, the investigator determines a smaller cube within the larger one to investigate (Fig. 3). For instance, a researcher might consider if the use of wikis by undergraduate engineering students increases their perception of how personal the OPAC is, or how the use of a blog in government publications research group creates a sense of immediacy among faculty versus students in economics. A nearly infinite number of combined investigation is possible, a critical mass of which would greatly benefit libraries in their particular investments and deployments of social software technologies.

Fig. 3: A research model for the Participatory OPAC

It is rather inevitable that different users will utilize the same technologies in different ways, or will perceive the PSP of them differently, and allowances must be made for this array of possibility. In some cases, Social Presence can be perceived as an undesirable quality to a mediated environment. Participatory OPACs, then, must be customizable virtual spaces where users opt in or out of various social software services, personalizing their library interface to their needs.

Conclusion
Libraries have readily adopted the use of the Web in a noteworthy and largely successful attempt to deliver their content and collections in a more user-centered medium. But to date the delivery of library services have not been as readily provided via the same medium, creating a dissonance in library services that must be rectified. Social software intimates a possible rectification, and libraries have already begun adopting them in disconnected and experimental ways. But by integrating these sorts of social software into OPACs, the true value of them may be realized.
A potential theory for understanding and evaluating the use of such technologies in libraries is “Social Presence,” a term that has enjoyed a wealth of investigation in communication and education communities. Their findings that a person’s awareness and perception of other people in online environments impacts their behavior and their perception of the medium itself, could assist librarians and information professionals in providing online services. Another valuable concept in this regard is “para-Social Presence,” a theory wherein a website is considered a social entity that interacts with its users much in the same way that Social Presence research finds in person-to-person interactions.

Libraries, using Social Presence and PSP as a philosophical paradigm, should begin building, framing, and perceiving their OPACs as participatory networks, websites that allow users to access not only resources, but one another. As libraries research, design, and provide personalized online systems that provide improved Social Presence and PSP, they will become more valuable in a world where information is sought, evaluated and used not only in communities, but in online communities. The “virtual library” will have come of age.

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