Do you question or wonder what the role of social media is in learning? Do you really wonder if it is an effective way to teach students, or library patrons about information literacy, how to use the library and other things important for librarians and for life-long information skills?

The Social Learning Handbook is here to help. This website offers a wealth of information and testimonials as well as experiences from other librarians and educators on how to use and how they have used social media in learning.

In addition here are a few ideas on how to make social media useful for learning:

1. Find ways to use social media sites such as facebook to teach your students or other patrons how to search library databases, find books in your library catalog, understand what information literacy is and other things important for them to know.

2. Incorporate social media aspects into your everyday library activities and information literacy presentations.

3. Consider offering mini-courses on various aspects of social media and how to use it for learning or marketing purposes.

4. Invite your patrons to ask you questions about social media.

5. Stay up to date with learning about social media yourself.

What other ideas do you have for how social media plays a role in learning and how it will play a role in the future?

1. In library literacy sessions in classes. You could use one for each group of 4-5 students and ask students to complete a project on it. This would be particularly useful when presenting in a non-computer lab classroom.

2. You could go into the student commons or anywhere else where students or your library patrons hang out and ask if you can give them a brief demonstration on something such as how to locate ebooks, how to find articles in a certain database or how to search the library catalog.

3. You could have a limited number available for in library use only for a limited time period.

4. You could use them to teach a library mini-course in a group study room or other library room that does not have computers.

5. You could have one of the members of your library staff stand in a high traffic area away from your reference desk carrying an ipad and offer to help patrons as they wonder through the stacks.

6. You could load some ebooks on them and check them out since unlike the kindle this is probably allowed. Although you would need to have the patron sign their life away, in order to be able to use one.

7. You could consider having your staff use ipads instead of your regular computers. This may or may not work but if you could make it work, you may be able to say a lot of money.

8. Find some library related websites, ebooks or other content and upload them onto a few ipads and leave these out on your library displays for patrons to use inside the library.

9. Get rid of all or some of your library computers and replace them with ipads for your patrons to use instead.

10. Give away an ipad as a prize for a library contest. Make your patrons complete some kind of a survey to be entered to win.

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.

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.

How was 2009 as a year for social networking tools for libraries? Well here are what I consider to be the top 10 tools, trends or sites that libraries began using successfully during 2009? Stay tuned in a few days for my list of predictions for 2010.

1. Facebook fan pages. This was the year that in my opinion many libraries started not only using them but making them work as a marketing tool for their library.

2. Twitter- before 2009, twitter was popular enough for many people but this year it really started being used by libraries and other library related vendors.

3. Library related widgets such as libguides widgets and gale widgets as well as those from other vendors. Although they existed before 2009, many vendors of library databases and other programs really began coming out with the social networking widgets for searching and using their products during this year.

4. Text a librarian and other texting services. Although some libraries may have used texting to hand held devices before 2009, it really increased in popularity this year.

5. Ebook readers- whether it is the kindle, the nook, or the sony reader, many more libraries and librarians as well as people either bought their first reader during 2009 or began really considering it.

6. Flickr- this site became even more popular in 2009 than it was in 2008. In 2008 the Library of Congress put their collection on flickr and many more libraries followed suite this year.

7. Online reference and citation software programs such as refworks and bibme. This increased in popularity and there are even more of them being made available for free than in the past.

8. Online book reading and sharing communities such as good reads, and shelfari.

9. Open source web design programs for creating a website such as Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress. Although reasonably popular before because of budgeting concerns, even more libraries are now using them to create their websites.

10. Social Networking classes- although not a completely new idea, it seems that the increase in these being offered at libraries was significant this year and why not? Social networking is popular and it is a great way to market the library and get patrons in the door.

So what did I miss that you thing was an important tool, resource or trend for social networking in libraries this year?

Does your library use MySpace? In the past many libraries have focused their social networking efforts on MySpace. However with the rise in popularity many libraries are using facebook, all while wondering if they should use twitter, blogs, or other social networks. In the book “More than MySpace:Teens, Librarians, and Social Networking” librarians can learn all about the various social networking options available for promoting their library as well as how to use them effectively.

In this book, seven expert contributors examine the appeal of the social networking phenomena to youth, as well as its growing role in the classroom. The book then puts the spotlight on public libraries that have embraced social networking successfully, describing the approaches and methods that have helped them reach a wider teenage audience. The book concludes with an invitation for readers to continue their exploration of the topic further with a little networking of their own, collaborating with the author on a Wiki.

I have finally decided to take this blog to the next level by offering a social networking in libraries forum. You will see the link in the menu above. There’s not much there yet, since it is brand new, but I would love to see it grow and become the go to place online for discussing all about social networking in libraries, library technology and any other related topic. So register and start contributing today.

Does your library have a social media policy and do you need one? Some things to consider as far as a library social media policy include:

1. If we have a library wiki who can post and contribute?
2. Are we using facebook and if so, who are the admins of our page and can our patrons contribute?
3. If we have a blog what goes on it and how often?
4. How many sites are we going to use for our library?
5. Why are we involved with social networking and is it really contributing to our library’s mission?

There was an article posted in the library journal, Should your library have a social media policy recently which I think all librarians should read.

If you have a social media policy for your library, what does it say? Any thoughts about libraries and social media policies?

I found this great site that has lots of great resources for Social Networking for Libraries If you are looking for some more resources to help you with your social networking for your library. Check out this website.

div > What is the value and importance of social networking for libraries?