SocialNetworkingLibrarian.com

The Library Journal had an article this month on Twitter and Friend Feed. It focuses all about how to combine these two tools to market your library. It had several ideas many of which had never occurred. to me. I thought I would share it here as it sure peeked my interest.

Have you tried Library a la carte with your library? I recently found out about it from the Journal of Web Librarianship and it looks quite interesting. It appears in many ways to be an open source version of Lib Guides. Many of the features are similar or the same only it is created and hosted on your own server. It also has some chat and RSS features not available through Lib Guides. So if you are looking for a way to create interactive subject pages for your library and you either don’t want to pay for lib guides or you want to try something different then check out Library A La Carte.

Today I am going to review a new website called Lindsey’s Library.
This website highlights new books for young adults. However, it is not your same old boring website. Here are some of the great features that not only make it unique but a must visit for young adult teachers and librarians:
1. a wide variety of book reviews on various topics, organized by topic.
2. for each book there are also other books recommended similar to the format used by amazon.com
3. there is also a rating rubric you can use to decide which books to read and or recommend.
Furthermore the blog style makes it easy for you to comment and interact with other users plus the layout is unique and interesting.

So how can you create a similar blog or website for your library?

Do you have social networking skills that you have used in your job as a librarian? Or are you trained as a librarian but you are unemployed or underemployed because you can’t find a job? This is unfortunately a common situation for many people, including me. I only have a part time job and therefore, one of the reasons for writing this blog, to earn an extra income.

There are many ways you can use your social networking skills combined with your library expertise to earn an extra income online from home or in an alternative career. Here are some ideas for you:

1. Join a network marketing company and promote it online.
2. Work as a library consultant for an organization or corporation.
3. Start a popular library blog and make money with the adsense and other ads on it.
4. Sell info products online.
5. Work for a book publisher.

Find more ideas on how to profit from your library skills at
Library Jobs.

Learn more about what I am doing to make money using my library skills at Librarians Make Money Online.

ALA has joined the social networking bandwagon. If you are a member of ALA, now you can network with other ALA members via Library Connect. Learn from, socialize with and share information with other librarians in a social networking format. This is a great idea, although I personally have made some great connections with other librarians on Facebook and Twitter so to a certain degree, I wonder if it is really necessary.

Is your library offering social networking classes? My library has offered classes on wikis and blogs in the past with reasonable success. I found this public library who is offering social networking at the library classes. This is a great idea which can add another aspect of library 2.0 to your library. Not only can you use social networking in your library but you can teach your patrons how to use it as well.

One of our English faculty at my college where I am a librarian recently pointed out to us a website called Bib Me. One of her students had used it to compile his references for his English paper and she was rather impressed. For the past year, we have been trying to promote and get our students to use Refworks and it has been too confusing to many of them, plus it is expensive. The other day I tried Bib Me for myself and I have to say that I am impressed. You can enter in as little or as much information as you want about books, magazines, articles, websites and more and it will look up online the rest of the information for you and then easily format your list of references according to the citation style of your choice. Wow!
We are now linking to it from our library web page and are going to start encouraging our students to use it and we will probably cancel our Refworks when it expires at the end of 2009.

Are all the librarians at your library social networking literate? The chances are that you would probably say no. The following paper explains how to go about making your librarians social networking literate as well as why this is necessary for the future of your library.

Social Networking Literacy for Librarians

Have you though about offering social networking workshops at your library as a marketing ploy or as a way of getting more patrons and the general public in your doors? I found this library that is doing just that.

Eat Lunch at the Library and Learn about Social Networks