Social Networking in Libraries

Ebooks are all the rage. Between the kindle, new ipad, iphone applications, the Nook, the Sony Reader and all of the other gadets for reading ebooks, there is no doubt that ebooks will continue to be popular. However, how do you get ebooks that you can read without spending a fortune to do it? Even though the individual prices for ebooks are inexpensive, by the time you by lots of them you can end up broke. There is a huge list of 100 places where you can find ebooks at Online College. While you won’t find any of the new releases or other extremely popular titles there, you will find an impressive list of other ebook titles for your enjoyment and for free.

A-active, in order for your library patrons to view you as being serious about your social networking and for it to work for you and your library, you need to use it on a regular basis.

B- Blog, does your library have a blog. This is a great way for you to offer value and content for your library and it has become the standard for libraries to have one.

C-Content- just like businesses have to offer valuable content in order to market their businesses, your library needs to offer valuable content that your patrons will read and appreciate.

Direction- What are you planning to accomplish for your library with social networking?

Ebooks- You can share these on social networking to increase their exposure.

F-Facebook, having a presence on facebook with a fan page or a group is a must. Facebook is so popular now that it is expected.

G-Good Reads, Do your patrons need some ideas of what to read? Help them out with Good Reads.

H-Help- relying on only one or two people to build your library’s social networking presence will not work. It needs to be a whole team effort on behalf of your entire library staff.

I-Interesting- Are your library’s social networking profiles and content interesting? They had better be if you want them to work for you.

J-Joomla- an open source web design program that can make editing your library website and adding in social networking features much easier.

K-Koha the best open source program for your library catalog, you can also integrate social networking into this tool.

L-Library Thing- use this great site to share your library collections with others.

M- Mobile, more and more your library’s social networking needs to be able to be accessed via mobile devices. There are also more options than ever for making this a reality.

N-Ning this free social networking site allows you to create a social networking specifically for your library.

O-Open Source- use these programs and tools to enhance your social networking experience and to help your library save money.

P-Podcasting- this is a great way to share interviews and valuable audio tips with your library’s audience.

R-Reference- you may think that offering reference services via social networking is impossible but the reality is that so many of your patrons use facebook, twitter and youtube that you can offer the answers to frequently asked questions as a form of reference services on these sites.

S-Slideshare, this heavy traffic and awesome social networking site lets you share power point presentations. Use this site to embed your presentations and promote them on other sites as well.

T-Text messaging- Is your library using it yet?

U-Ustream- use this program to broadcast live to your library patrons.

V-Video whether on youtube or elsewhere, use video to enhance and engage with your users via social networking.

W-Widgets- many database vendors provide these and you can use them in many ways to promote your library resources.

Y- Youth- using social networking allows you to connect on a deeper level with young people.

Z-zeal, is your library staff exciting about the possibilities that social networking can offer your library? If not, you will struggle to make it work for you.

Do you have a facebook fan page? If not, you really should create one. In any case, why limit your facebook fan page to information about the library, photos, and announcements? Your facebook fan page for your library is a great place to offer and teach library literacy to your patrons, students, staff and faculty. Here are some ways you can do this with a facebook fan page.

1. Post polls as mentioned in number one and then share the results of the poll via a note with comments.
2. Post notes that offer library literacy tips.
3. Create videos that highlight one library literacy tip in each one.
4. Use the widgets offered by many library database providers.
5. Ask questions and take note of who answers them and respond back.
6. Post podcast or audio files with tips.
7. Post a survey and offer a prize to those who reply.

Why not use facebook in a library class presentation? While that may seem a bit outrageous, there are actually several ways that you can incorporate facebook into a library literacy class presentation. Here are some ideas of how to do this:
1. See part I with polls and ask students to answer questions by responding to polls during a class presentation.
2. Post a note on your facebook fan page asking a question and then have students answer the question during your library literacy presentation.
3. Create a group or a fan page for the topic or the class where you are presenting, add some content and then have students complete some or part of their library literacy project or assignment inside facebook.

Using facebook in the classroom as a teaching tool has been presented as an idea by many people in recent months. Most college students are already on there and so instead of fighting against it and trying to get them to go elsewhere, why not just use facebook as a library literacy tool? If you have used facebook a lot then you may realize that this site offers a myriad of applications and tools many of which can be used for educational purposes. If however, you have not used facebook very much then this may be news to you. One tool that has great potential for teaching library literacy is the poll application. This application allows you to post a poll on your profile, in groups or on any facebook page for which you are an administrator. For example, you could post a poll on your library’s facebook fan page and ask students to choose the best answer regarding a basic definition of library literacy. You could do this either in general and see who responds or you could ask for answers during a classroom library literacy session. You could also take this a step further by posting a question as a note on your fan page or in a group and asking students to respond. You could then have the students vote on who wrote the best answer by using the poll application. This is just the tip of the iceberg as there are many ways to use this application for library literacy.

Are you using facebook for library literacy and if so, how is it working for you? If not, what do you think of this idea?

What do you think about the idea of a community virtual library? I recently found this and I found the idea interesting. With the increase in the number of electronic resources more and more of the “library” is now available for access via the internet, in electronic format.

So what about the concept that your public library or community library is now online? While it may be more convenient and it may work for some people, will it really work for everyone? What about the people who have little or no technology skills and what about the community interaction available only via a physical library? What do you think about this concept?

Creating a better library blog requires you to increase the amount of readers who read your blog on a regular basis. Here are some ideas on how to do this:

1. Make sure you follow the ideas in part 2 to offer the kind of content that will attract more readers.

2. Make sure that the RSS button for people to subscribe to your feed is in a visible location.

3. Consider offering library newsletters or other information via email on your blog and encouraging people to sign up. That way you can also remind people about new content on your blog.

4. Import the feed for your library blog into your library’s facebook fan page.

5. Put a blog widget with a link to your library blog on your web page.

6. Encourage comments and sharing of posts. You can use a tweetmeme widget for twitter or a sharethis or a socialable widget for other social networks.

What other ideas do you have for promoting your library blog?

Creating a better library blog requires you to think about your target audience. Even though it is already obvious that your target audience is your library patrons, in many cases you still need to be even more specific. If you are an academic library then your audience will be primarily your students and staff. However, it may also be read by potential students or staff. If you are a public library then your audience is even larger.

What exactly does your audience want to read about on your library blog? It can be tempting to just start blogging based on what you think your patrons and your audience wants but creating a better library blog requires you to dig a bit deeper.

Here are some ideas to help you with this:

1. Take a look at what some of the more popular books are. Blog about these books and offer information about them as well as book reviews and other interesting things.

2. Blog about library events and other happenings that are not specifically related to books.

3. Survey your readers with a poll and ask them what kinds of content they would like to see on your library blog.

4. Take note of your more popular library blog posts and then create additional posts that address the same topics.

5. Blog about new items at your library such as new books or other new acquisitions.

What else have you done to create a better library blog?

Building a better library blog can be a challenge. However it can be done. In this first of four parts, I will share with you some ideas on how to make that happen.

You can build a better library blog by encouraging a sense of community. There are countless ways that it can be done. Here are some of the better ones.

1. Use a blogging platform and layout that encourages comments and interactivity. Wordpress is a great idea, however you can also use typepad or your own program.

2. Consider turning your web page into a blog format and accepting comments. This can be great if done right. However, if you do this then you will want to make sure that someone at your library is assigned to monitor the comments in order to avoid inappropriate ones.

3. Encourage comments by asking open ended questions.

4. Post polls and ask people to help you out by responded to brief survey questions.

5. Consider adding a wiki, ning community or other forum to your blog. This can be great because it provides your library blog readers with ways of interacting with others.

What other ideas do you have about how to build a better library blog by encouraging communication.

In my last post I talked about the top 10 social networking in libraries trends for 2009, so now let me share what I believe are the top 10 trends for 2010.

1. An increase in the use of mobile applications for library services. This includes things such as text messaging but also the development of library web pages on .mobi domains for use on mobile devices and maybe even libraries creating iphone applications for their libraries.

2. Even more ebook readers and the popularity of the ones that already exist. New and existing ebook publishers and device manufacturers will find ways for patrons to download and read a higher number of ebooks from popular collections such as ebrary and netlibrary on ebook readers. This is still a challenge and it will be easier by the end of 2010.

3. The usage of more niche social networking sites for the public at large and this will spill over into libraries.

4. An increase in the amount and usage of Google Applications such as Google Wave and other similar applications.

5. The Google Books controversy will more or less be resolved and patrons will begin to use it more.

6. Library websites will become more socialized and customized. Patrons will be able to interact more directly with the library’s website.

7. College libraries will use more open source software and more social networking sites to educate their patrons and for library literacy in order to save money.

8. More libraries will use podcasting and itunes U to communicate with patrons and to offer value.

9. More libraries will offer social networking classes to their patrons.

10. Social networking in libraries will be viewed more as a must and as a way to save money than as a fun thing to play with or to use to market the library.