Social Media and the Library

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Use of Social Media at 3 different secondary schools across the world.  

	Castilleja	Brisbane Grammar School	Goldenview
Pinterest		✔
Facebook	✔		✔
Twitter		✔
Flickr	✔
Goodreads		✔
LibraryThing		✔
Blog	✔	✔	✔
Delicious		✔	✔  *
Diigo	✔	✔	✔
RSS	✔	✔	✔
Spineout		✔
Goodreading		✔
Vimeo
Bookcrossing		✔
TOTAL	5	11	5

* Link marked Delicious but leads to Diigo.

Web 2.0 is about participation, it is dynamic rather than static in nature. Users are contributors.   Johnson and Valenza (2009) insist that we maintain an online presence, as our future relevance depends upon it.   I’d we don’t keep up, we will be left behind and our users will find other ways to fill their information needs.  As a user, when I want to know something, I do go to google and look for it, and increasingly, Facebook pops up in the search results.  Some pages are well done and worth having, others hugely frustrating, and better off not being there with the lack of helpful information given.  As an example of a truly useless page that had me gnashing my teeth in frustration here is the Penrith Panthers Fireworks for New year page).  It could have been great.  New Years Eve, it had even less information than is on there now, almost a month later.  A Facebook page that is not updated, or a blog with infrequent posts are not going to engage patrons (Crawford, 2008), and become a tool that frustrates users rather than being useful. 

Facebook is primarily seen as a tool for connecting socially, so where does the library Facebook page fit into that culture?  And education in general?  With 1.01 billion users in September 2012 (figure from Yahoo Finance, 2012), it is clear that Facebook is an important social media tool that has potential to impact education for students over 13.

Goldenview Middle School have created a lively page, and in 2012, made 112 posts. There are a significantly higher number of comments and likes, and the library staff are responsive to their community.  Questions do not remain unanswered for long.  Goldenview understand the culture of Facebook.  Their posts are relevant, yet interesting and varied.  It is not just a list of announcements –there are pictures and videos linked, some humorous, interspersed with announcements.  The librarian also uses it to have conversations about online safety issues.

Used well, social media can make the library feel more personalized, and the connection is in a form that is already very familiar to most patrons.  Blogs fall into this category also, and increasingly, schools are using blogs as a way of connecting.

BGS have used a lot of tools to engage their community, and perhaps have taken on too many things, as there is little participation evident in the form of comments on blogs.  When only 10% of a community are active participants, while the other 90% watch, using more than one or two social media tools will be unsuccessful at engaging patrons in discussion. 

Using multiple applications that have the same purpose is not a good use of time, and the effort of keeping each one up to date is unlikely to be worthwhile as far as community benefit (Harvey, 2009).  The same can be said of using more than one social bookmarking application, which allow users to save articles and websites to one place (DesRoches, 2007).  If two are used, it is no longer simple.

When considering how patrons will contact the library, it is unnecessary and potentially damaging to provide more than a couple of options, as it increases the likelihood that messages will be overlooked (Harvey, 2009).  The patron who feels ignored, is not happy, and an unhappy community member has a wide scope for expressing their dissatisfaction.  Customer response must be fast, positive and consistent

Crawford, W (2008), Libraries and the Social Web.  Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large, Volume 8, Number 11.  Retrieved on January 15, 2013 from http://citesandinsights.info/v8i11b.htm.

DesRoches, D. (2007). All Together Now: Social Bookmarking Offers a New Way to Store and Share Web Sites. School Library Journal, 53(1), 33.  Retrieved on January 18, 2013 from http://ezproxy.csu.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ755104&si

Harvey, M.  (2009).  What does it mean to be a science librarian 2.0?  Retrieved on January 1, 2013 from http://www.istl.org/09-summer/article2.html

Valenza, J and Johnson, D (2009).  Things that keep us up at night.  School library Journal, v 55, no 10 pp28 -32.  Retrieved on January 14, 2013 from http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6699357.html

Yahoo Finance (2012) Number of active Facebook users over the years.   Retrieved on January 17, 2013 from http://finance.yahoo.com/news/number-active-users-facebook-over-years-214600186--finance.html

 Castilleja Girls School (USA)   http://library.castilleja.org/category/recent

Brisbane Grammar School (Australia)  http://libguides.brisbanegrammar.com/libraryhome

Goldenview Middle School Library Anchorage (USA) http://goldenviewlibrary.blogspot.com.au/

Assignment 2 and all the discoveries I made along the way

I was overwhelmed at the beginning of assignment 2, and unsure of how I was going to proceed.  I don't have a school community I am attached to that I could create a project, so I knew it had to be a case study, but what to choose??

Then I read What does it mean to be a science librarian 2.0?, and it gave me my theme, can we overload our websites and our community with too many tools.

I've learned such an enormous amount in the writing of this assignment, and although my original expectations weren't born out by my research (ie, the school that I expected to have made a hash of using too many web2.0 tools didn't have many at all, it was links that was their issue, and terrible website design), I did happily choose a school that used too many things, another which had a very successful blog, and yet another that has a lively Facebook page.  All very helpful for writing my assignment and arguing that doing one or two things well was preferable to doing many things superficially.

One of the most important things about moderating a successful Facebook page is understanding the cultureof Facebook.  Because it does have a culture, and people are not interested in a library that just sits on Facebook and does nothing.  The librarian (or whoever does the maintenance) needs to engage with the community, by responding, and by posting in a way that is compatible with the way FB is used by most people.  That is what Goldenview Middle School do well.  The posts are a mix of funny pictures, announcements, responses to queries, and all the things you would find on a friends Facebook page.  The librarians also slip in stuff about keeping safe online and the way Facebook itself works - many students didn't activate any privacy settings at all. As Facebook grows, it's use in education will no doubt expand.  People understand it, they use it for their own social networks, it is not a big jump to use it to keep in touch with your school community.  As long as you don't set yourself up as something unapproachable and dull.

I have also had a rekindled enthusiasm for GoodReads this session.  This could be because being summer holidays I have read a fair number of books this January.  I like to read the reviews others put up, though I'm hard to please, I don't want to necessarily love all the really popular 5 star books, I don't have a lot of faith in the general publics discernment (Fifty Shades of Grey anyone?), but I also get put off by bad reviews.  I think GoodReads has huge potential for school libraries, but I haven't seen it utilised well so far.

After initially being a complainer about the Facebook page we have used instead of the university forums, I have come around.  An afternoon ferreting out the whys and wherefores of Book Crossing with a fellow student and I was hooked.  Interestingly there hasn't been the frantic panic of last semesters pre assignment rush as details were confirmed and re confirmed, and hysteria expressed and patted down.  Not sure why it has been different.  I still think that there are a lot of people who sit and watch and don't participate, but that is also born out by research - the figures are that 10% participate, and 90% just watch.  it has probably been slightly higher than that on our forum but not much.