Marketing with social media

Marketing in Libraryland...

I looked at how the Orkney Library & Archive have embraced social networking such as Twitter and Facebook, and have also created a blog so that their users can keep up to date with services. And with users based on different islands, this must be very useful.

This quote from the Illinois libraries blog made me think:

"Social media serves as a place to enhance our relationships. Since we’ve already established trust-worthy relationships with our patrons inside the library, it’s only natural that we use social media enhance our relationships with patrons virtually."

It also mentioned how Library staff were given their own social media card to hand out to readers, which included their name, job title, e-mail, plus Twitter, Facebook and other social networking accounts they had. We use CamTools as a platform to back up what we say at inductions and online research skills sessions, as well as outline in detail the nitty gritty of being a member of the Library service. This also extends the Library from a physical collection to an electronic resource which can be accessed from anywhere at any time.

We have to market the Library service in different ways to different groups because of the diverse range of students we serve. For example, distance and part-time students do not attend regular sessions in the Faculty (& PGCEs are away on Placements during Lent & Easter terms) compared to full-time undergraduates and MPhils, therefore we promote the online resources to these students over the physical collection.

Social networking does offer new ways of learning and this is an area we are starting to explore through Twitter, and maybe Facebook...

Zotero

I did a search on the universal catalogue for Saxon history and added some of the results to my folder in Zotero. I also did the same search in JSTOR and Google Scholar and here are the results in my folder:

Zotero is taught by Faculty academic staff within research skills sessions and to date the Library hasn't been involved in running sessions or providing documentation for readers. We occasionally receive enquiries about it, and if they are not able to find information on their CamTools sites, then we would direct them to information available on the UL Library Toolbox.

I enjoyed this Thing! At least I have had hands on experience with it and if I do receive any enquiries from research students, I can talk about it with confidence!

LinkedIn

I've had a look at the profiles suggested by Andy. LinkedIn is a useful tool for people who would like to network with other professionals, keep track of people's career progression and to move forward in their own career too.

I read Top reasons to use LinkedIn and people have used this site to get in touch with past & current colleagues, and for career opportunities. Is this site for Librarians? Well, I don't see why not as it's another social network to be a part of, except it's more professional in scope than social.

Facebook

I went straight to step 5 as Sarah suggested as I don't have a Facebook account and explored some of the Cambridge Libraries...

The English Faculty Library uses Facebook in a number of ways, including posting messages about what's going on in the Library - we use the announcement facility on CamTools to communicate with our students. The photo albums and the list of books look good too:

We have started to list new books on a CamTools site created for academic staff of the Faculty, with pictures of covers and live links to the Newton catalogue:

The Judge Library use HootSuite to manage postings on their Facebook page - I haven't heard of this before, but it sounds useful if you & your users are members of more than one social networking site. I had a look at the 2 videos on the Marshall Library's site about vacation borrowing - I'm not sure how we would cope at Education if we had a vacation loan for all 1500 students!

I read Libraries & Facebook and it was interesting to note that Librarians in 2008 (when the article was published) thought Facebook was mainly for social networking and not for professional use. I'm not sure if you would get the same response now!

The Education Library doesn't have a Facebook site because we extensively use CamTools to interact with our readers. However, Facebook presents the information in a much more appealing format. Caret are upgrading CamTools in September, so I'm hoping the interface will improve and the site on the whole will be a lot less clunky to use. I haven't ruled out Facebook as a way to promote Library services on another platform though, but I will explore further!

LibraryThing

My own (not so) private Library

LibraryThing was very easy to set up and fun to add titles. I hadn't heard of it before Cam23 so I found some of the links which Kirsty encouraged us to read quite interesting. For example, the Social networking for Bookworms article suggests that LibraryThing can "connect likeminded readers - a sort of MySpace for bookworms", with the emphasis on finding more books and "not to kindle online relationships or cliques". Tagging is of course a strong element of many Web 2.0 technologies & LibraryThing is no exception, with librarians tagging their own books to "create indexes far more vibrant than anything the Library of Congress could handle".

Here's a screen shot of my profile page:


And here is the list of books I have added so far...

Use for Libraries?
I've had a look at those libraries which already use LibraryThing (Central Science & Nuffield College), but I'm not sure if it's for us at the moment. Here at Education we use CamTools to list books from reading lists or titles which have recently been added to stock. These lists include pictures of the front cover, plus a link to Newton to check if the book is available.

By the way, I liked a couple of the quotes from What do Librarians do? - "Information Ninja" & "I'm what Google wants to be when it grows up" are ones I would like to add to my name badge for the new academic year!!

Reflection

Thinking back

I'm a little late with my reflections but I thought the most coherent way to blog about them was to use Libby's helpful questions.

And so what?
I've just re-read my first thoughts on the Cam23 programme and the 3 opportunities I listed are certainly taking shape, if not already fully formed.

How have your skills/knowledge improved?
I am much more aware of Web 2.0 technologies and how some of them may have the potential to improve library services for our readers. I certainly feel a lot more confident in approaching a new thing (note small t!).

Have the 'Things' covered everything that you need to know, or think it relevant to know?
Yes, the Things so far have been varied enough to keep it interesting each week, and it's good to be reminded of how each task could be useful to libraries,

Have the activities suited your learning style?
I didn't know what my learning style was so I did the short VARK questionnaire as suggested by Libby and I am 'multimodel' which applies to about 60% of people. So I think the activities do suit my learning style in that I like to read a description of how to do something, but I also like something visual to look at too (e.g. screen shots or a short video).

Do you feel more competent and confident?
I'm certainly getting there! There are some Things that I would like to spend more time getting to grips with (e.g. Delicious) to see how useful they could be to the Education Library, but with the summer here and Michaelmas Term not far away, this may have to wait until next year after the new students have settled in.

How can you apply this learning?
There are a number of staff at Education taking part in Cam23, and as we are planning a whole staff meeting in September, this may be the ideal opportunity to discuss our thoughts on the Things and identify those that could be applied to improve the way we work as a team and the way we present information to readers.

What would you do differently - and what might change about how you approach the next 12 Things?
I wouldn't approach the programme any differently, but if I had the luxury of time, I would love to have spent longer on some of the Things. Still, I have had a taste now and know where to find them!

Is there one (or more) Thing that you would be happy to recommend to a colleague? Why?
iGoogle is definitely worth using as it's such an easy way to bring all your favourite pieces of information together (and a member of Library staff who isn't following the Cam23 programme now uses it every day!).

Delicious

I've had a look at how the Judge Business School and the Casimir Lewy Library are using Delicious and it may have potential for some resources we currently have listed on our 24hr Library pages. Tags would be useful to help readers find information in a particular area (see the tag cloud at Thunder Bay Public Library). In one of the items for further reading which Emma suggested, Tags help make libraries Delicious, I read an interesting comment:

“If our web-savvy users notice [that the library] is using del.icio.us...our hope is that they will recognize our position in the community as information providers, visit our web site, work with our virtual collection, and become engaged library users.”

At Education we continually try to think of different ways to present information so that our readers will find it easy to access what they need for their assignments. Which is why we currently use CamTools as a platform for all our resources because of it's flexibility and we are able to make immediate changes to information available on wikis.

I created a personal account a while ago just to familiarise myself with what Delicious does. I'll now look into creating a Library account to bookmark those sites which may be relevant to Education students and link it to our web pages and CamTools sites.

Slideshare

Kirsty has asked us to think about several things whilst exploring Slideshare - here are my thoughts so far...

I started off by searching for 23 Things Cambridge and found the following presentation from lettylib:

23 things Cambridge (cam23)

And just by searching for '23 Things' I came across Implementing a 23 Things Type Program at Your Library.

I also searched 'library inductions' to see what other libraries do to promote their services (see simoneokolo & sshlibrary), as well as more specific resources such as WOS & Scopus (see Gali Halevi for a comparison of both databases) which we promote to Education students.

I'll keep Slideshare in mind when we come to writing our presentations for new students this Michaelmas Term as I'm sure we will find some inspiration over the summer!