I use data and technology to tell stories that facilitate personal and communal transformation.
This is a slightly more digested and polished presentation of the ideas I sketched out a while back in this post: iPad apps for Academic Technology Committee.
Direct link: http://www.haikudeck.com/p/ixpiL9TFvT/making-your-ipad-work-for-you
Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app
I’ve been thinking a bit about developing a plan and policy for the Brandel Library’s social media accounts. In the past, I’ve viewed this as an “important but not urgent” issue and I largely feel the same way now. However, I think that both for planning sake and direction I should invest some time and thought in researching other library’s policies and best practices to guide the Brandel Library’s social media in 2014.
By “policy” I mean a set of expectations that set the boundaries for acceptable conduct as well as some lofty goals for social media in the context of an academic library. I’ve started collecting some relevant policies and articles in this Zotero library and hope to keep updated that frequently.
Starting with the question of “Why?” leads me to connect our social media policy to the library’s general mission statement. Our current mission statement (as of 2012) is:
The Brandel Library supports the educational mission of the university by offering resources, services, and an environment to stimulate academic inquiry and intellectual, cultural and social exchange, while reflecting the Christian, urban, and multicultural vision of the university. This is accomplished through the acquisition, organization, and preservation of both physical and digital materials, and by facilitating their use (access) in a complex information environment through course and individual instruction. Creating awareness of and providing access to these collections are essential to our mission.
I’ve taken the liberty of highlighting certain phrases that I find particularly relevant to the library’s social media policy. Having not planned this – I’m actually relatively happy with how well library mission statement mapped to social policy. At the same time, I also see that our mission statement seems focused on our collections (and facilitating their use) and not on our our users (and meeting their needs). Something to consider long term, I guess.
Editorial confession – this draft has been pending for months. In that time, I went to the #ILEADUSA meeting and heard an inspiring talk from Beck Tench. The simplicity of her institutions social media policy has inspired me so much that I’m going to steal it directly and offer it as a first draft. Her policy is simply this:
If I recall correctly, this policy was given in a section of her talk focused on trusting people completely. I’m going to move forward with that confidence and revisit this when the need arrives.
Just wanted to post a little exchange on twitter that I think is a wonderful example of how simple gestures on social media can 
make a huge difference. I can really present it without too much comment:
I just read this great article posted by Library Journal: here is a link to the article.
Here are two highlights and my reflections on them:
Focusing on the technologies rather than the outcomes changes the way we talk about these topics and the way we learn about them. When we aim for the outcomes, we’re more likely to think deeply about the problems we’re trying to solve and consider multiple strategies that speed us to our goals.
Let me be clear: I’m not downplaying the importance of technology in libraries or setting up a false dichotomy. As a profession, librarianship has developed many mechanisms to learn about technology and the web. This is important, and we need to keep learning about the broader world of resources that can help us efficiently deliver our services. But let’s shift our collective eye to learning about people first, so everything we know about technology can be put in service of supporting meaningful goals.
Yes! Too often I fall into the habit of thinking about technology as the end itself rather as a means to a greater end. I really shouldn’t care how many people like a particular post or follow us on twitter – I really should care about the online community that has gathered around the library and meeting their needs.
Our collective focus on technology also prevents technology from being as deeply integrated into our libraries as it should be. When we fetishize technology, we can only look at it shallowly. When we depend on emerging technology librarians to be the ambassadors for relevant technologies, we take the rest of the organization off the hook.
In fact, if we put the emphasis on people, library technology will become even more important. Currently, it is all too easy to implement tech solutions halfheartedly, check the box that the project is complete, and more or less be done with it.
Yes. I think this article is such a basic reminder that my excitement about libraries and technology is best understood in the broader context of meeting user needs. At least for me, there is a tensions between measuring quantifiable outputs (numbers of followers, number of circulations, etc.) and measuring qualitative outcomes (how patrons engage with the library online, how patrons use library resources, etc.) but that in the best possible world the assessment practices should be tied to both objective standards and to the broader goals.
I’m still thinking a lot about how libraries can better engage with patrons and have found an unlikely area to test and ponder: NHL Hockey.
North Park University is located in Chicago and the Chicago Blackhawks just won the Stanley Cup (in thrilling fashion!). Knowing that the social media circles would be buzzing about this – I wondered if the library might be able to tap in and contribute to the conversation. So I decided to test the waters.
After a thrilling overtime victory (in triple overtime!) I tweeted a short, semi-library related tweet that got three responses. Two replies and one retweet isn’t exactly going viral – but I think it’s still pretty good for most small academic libraries!
After the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup, the library retweeted the official Blackhawks account that said:
I don’t know what I was expecting, but this update got no response. But, then again, it’s wasn’t exactly new knowledge (currently, nearly 20,000 people have retweeted that exact tweet), it wasn’t really that shareable, and it wasn’t unique to North Park patrons.
My co-worker actually created a wonderful book spine poem about the Stanley Cup and I published it later that day on both facebook and twitter.
That tweet has now been retweeted 5 times and is now one of our most “viral” tweets.
A similar post on facebook (link here) currently has 17 likes which is above average for us as well.
Despite the somewhat positive nature of these updates, I still have a few lingering questions:
For this past finals week, I had the idea to ask North Park University faculty and staff to write encouraging notes to students for finals week. The idea was quickly implemented and by the end of the week I had collected nearly 300 notes encouraging notes from a wide variety of faculty and staff. We placed these notes in a big bowl near the main entrance to the library and invited students to take a encouraging note from the bowl as a tangible reminder of the university’s encouragements.
Additionally, I selectively scanned a few dozen of the best and most creative cards and uploaded those images to our facebook page: here it the album of these encouraging notes! Some of my personal favorites are included below.
Overall, this project was a great success that really brought a boost to the library’s services as well as our social media accounts. It was great to be able respond to student’s frustrated tweets with links back to positive and encouraging words and the interplay between the print and digital was great as well. I will definitely think about doing something similar in the future!
Like the building itself, the library’s social media accounts get much busier toward the end of each semester. Like last spring, I thought I could use storify to help tell the story of the Brandel Library as expressed online. Here is a link to the story created from the tweets, updates, and photos of the North Park community.
Last spring, I thought storify could be used to both demonstrate the value of social media and provide some expression of thanks to their community. And, I think both still hold true today! People tweet some really amazing and uplifting things about the library; collecting them provides a way to demonstrate the important place the library has in campus life. For example:
I’d like to hear how many other campus building have students publicly confessing their love for the building!
Being on twitter allows the library to hear what people think about the library and listen to how people feel.
Solomon, Laura. Doing Social Media So It Matters: A Librarian’s Guide. ALA Editions, 2011.
I was excited about this book. At only 65 pages, it seemed like a quick read that could point toward some best practices and fresh ideas about social media in the context of libraries. It was clear and well written and provided a good introduction. However, I was slightly disappointed – disappointed that it didn’t cover everything I had hoped and disappointed that such a book was even required to remedy some of the social media blunders libraries still make.
One major reason it was disappointing was its target audience seemed to be people with no background in social media. One way to perceive this is by interpreting the first line from the back cover summary:
Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn: it’s difficult enough to keep abreast of social media Web sites, let alone understand how they fit into today’s library.
If you nodding and thinking “Finally! A book to explain this!” – then you might like this book. However, if you are shuddering and thinking – “No, I pretty much understand these sites.” and/or “Why is MySpace listed?” – then you may want to avoid this book.
Most of the introduction and general advice is accurate and clear, but it is also very basic. “Interact with people in social media, or risk becoming irrelevant.” (p.3). That’s accurate, clear, and even good advice. But what misconception is that clarifying? Who is that helping? Sadly, this information should help librarians! Other studies (for example, Academic Libraries on Facebook: An Analysis of Users’ Comments) have demonstrated that many librarians completely ignore this principle – “Based on this study, the total number of comments on library Facebook pages would be significantly lower overall if it were not for the library staff posting on their own library walls and commenting every few weeks.” A particularly irritating habit – libraries liking their own Facebook status – is one example that demonstrates how out of touch some institutions are with the norms of social media. Sadly, many libraries need the basic reminders that Solomon provides in her book.
My second complaint is that some of the practical advice she offers simply isn’t compelling. On a section titled “Status Update Makeovers” she views this as an ineffective update:
The internet computers are not available due to maintenance.
I’ll admit this tweet is impersonal and formal; but I don’t see how her remade example is substantively better:
Argh! Power surge took down a server – no Internet here this morning, sorry!
I don’t know how/whether the “Argh!” or the exclamations points – and 4 of her 5 good examples have exclamation points! – make the posts more personal or emotional. In fact, a recent article in the Atlantic shows that, for news related tweets, the perfect tweet is actually “kind of boring”. If her goal in writing is to make social media “matter” – I can’t see how her remade tweets “matter” any more.
Without stereotyping or being too harsh, this book fits the standard library model – to learn about a subject, you buy a book (in this case, a $37 book!). The advice is good, basic, and (quite sadly) still important for libraries to hear. However, if you already have a grasp of social media, this book might be disappointing. Final verdict: this book is useful, but isn’t life changing.
I work in the technical services department of my library and I spend most of my time ordering and invoicing all the books for the Brandel Library at North Park University. It’s quite enjoyable (most of the time…) and most entries will be about my work and interest in the technical details of the library.
But, in addition to being the Acquisitions Coordinator, I’m also one of the library’s tweeters.
I (@ameyer24) began tweeting in 2008, but my library (@brandellibrary) started tweeting in March of 2012. I really love tweeting for the library and am quite proud of the small following we’ve built and the conversations that we’ve entered into. In many ways, tweeting for the library is much easier than tweeting about my own life – mainly because I know the library can make big contributions to the conversations happening on twitter. It’s been great.
For this post, I wanted to share a tool I used that really encapsulated the value and importance of twitter. I used Storify to tell the story “Brandel Library, Finals Week, 2012“. Storify is a web service that “helps its users tell stories by curating social media.” I focused on just twitter, but Storify can also pull from facebook, youtube, flickr, instagram, google plus, and other websites. This flexibility and ease of use makes it an extremely valuable way to collect bits of social media and weave them into a compelling story.
I think this is especially important in an academic library setting. Storify can help libraries:
I’m surprised that I haven’t seen more academic libraries create and curate stories to Storify. It seems like a perfect way to weave discrete bits of media into a compelling story that demonstrates the value of social media and that rewards library patrons for sharing their experiences.
I’d love to hear or see how other libraries are using Storify to tell different stories. I’d also love to hear any one speak to whether/how Storify could be used to archive and preserve these digital conversations.