Social Networking Literacy Competencies for Librarians - Training Task 1

I'm not sure that this was an entirely fair example!! These sites are obviously done by dedicated council staff, not by a few already stretched librarians AND they have a lot more happening in their precinct than we ever have.
Will get back with more positive comments soon, just feeling slightly overwhelmed at the moment!!

I currently work on my Sutherland Shire Amnesty group's Facebook page and it doesn't take a lot of effort to update.
City of Sydney Council's FB page is good in that it is frequently updated. I had a quick search online and found Facebook pages for Stonnington, Yarra Plenty Regional and Sunshine Coast Libraries. Here are the addresses:

http://www.facebook.com/stonnington.libraries

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Yarra-Plenty-Regional-Library-Service-Australia/6261694141

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sunshine-Coast-Libraries/71802767417?ref=mf

I couldn't find any NSW public Libraries on Facebook which surprised me.

I follow a few libraries on Facebook and Twitter just to see how inventive some libraries have become.

I only used City of Sydney as an example of a Sydney metropolitan library using a range of social networking tools and keeping the content current.

My favourite is a US library.

Any discussion is positive!

No - not a fair example but a great and relevant example of what is possible!

In terms of social networking sites - my personal preference is Facebook. I love that it allows me to keep up to date and connected with all my friends and family at the one time and at a time (usually 12am!) that suits me. I hate realising I have spent far too much time on it and still have lunches to make, washing to do...

I think using Facebook to connect to our customers is a great idea - a ready made, huge and rapidly growing installed user base.

I can also see (from my limited exposure to) the benefits of using Twitter for promoting anything and everything and reaching people beyond just 'friends'.

Regardless of which way we go I strongly agree with Angela when she states 'it is becoming increasingly obvious that librarians need to become more social networking literate...'

AJ

I think Facebook will be the way to go (just can't see the point of Twitter - maybe if I had internet access on my phone it would become more attractive?).

I've also read that Facebook are beta testing a "new 'ask a question' option" on their site - tailor-made for Librarians.

Barb

Facebook sounds good. The business style can be used to promote services and invite people to events. It is an easy way to get a quick message out to many people. I joined Twitter for library 2.0 purposes but have failed to sign in and read tweets - too busy stickybeaking on facebook.
Videos of storytime etc could reach out to those who can't get parking either outside the library or for their prams inside.
Di

Podcasts

We could have them covering various aspects of the services – Ref digital and print collections, special kids’ activities or a regular storytime for customers unable to get to the library. It would be great to get some done in different languages so that we could cater to a wider audience. The author talk videos that we had on our website were really good. It would be difficult having regular podcasts because they do have a time commitment. It would be good if we could grab some of the audio from Karen’s book talks at the local radio station

Facebook

This seems like something that we should definitely be making use of. Even if you’re not personally a fan it seems a little silly to ignore the vast membership that we could be tapping into. Everything is so interactive these days we really should provide a way that customers are able to interact with us in a more informal way. It would be another way to encourage feedback, both positive and negative. In addition library catalogue links could be provided on the library facebook page along with a review section where readers could post opinions about any items borrowed.

Twitter

Initially it’s harder to see the advantages of Twitter. But just think about getting a tweet to tell you that the latest thriller by your favourite author has just been ordered by the library. Or to tell you that the activity that your child was desperate to get into suddenly has a cancellation. Good for us, good for customers. Could we create accounts for each branch so that we can tweet whenever we want? Or at least separate from the Council, which the City of Sydney’s is not. It’s important to tweet regularly as people don’t want to look at tweets that are a month old. It would be nice to tweet things such as ‘HSC students – don’t forget to come in early if you want a study table’

I think both facebook and twitter would be great social networking sites to use to connect with our customers. They would both enable us to easily promote activities and communicate with a large amount of people.

In regards to twitter I think it would definately be a great way to provide customers with quick up to date information, such as when events/activities are on. This would be a useful way of being able to quickly inform customers of any changes in concern with events and also just as a general reminder of the date/time.

I had a look at some libraries that are using twitter, these include Geelong Regional Library, the State Library of Queensland and Campbelltown library. The amount of followers varies quite a lot -
Geelong (80)
SLQ (1126)
Campbelltown (18)
However I guess you have to consider factors such as library size, customer numbers, community interest and relevance, how long each library has been using twitter, and how well it is being used/promoted.

I also think the use of You Tube could be interesting, especially in being able to provide demonstrations to customers on how to access and use various resources, such as for example our online databases.

Melissa.

YouTube would definitely be a great way to connect with customers. It would be great to create more podcasts of author talks etc as well. I'd also like to try screencasts - these are like instructional podcasts showing shots of your screen. They are great for showing people how to use catalogues, databases etc. I like the idea of posting a sound recording of my radio interviews except for the fact that it's me speaking - if anyone's ever recorded their own voice they'll understand why. Nevertheless, I could talk to 2ssr about this.
On another note, I've added 'Share' buttons to the blogs. This allows you to share blog posts on Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, Blogs and Email. I've been trying this out on my own Facebook account to see if I can get friends interested in the Library. I haven't had a lot of responses however one of my friends did comment that she would have liked to attend the Engadine Parenting sessions, so at least I know that it has the potential to draw some people in.

Karen and Lisa already promote library events on facebook
Di

Ok, I'm ready to be a lot more positive.

Yesterday I was at the Sutherland Shire Multicultural Network meeting and this question was being debated there between the Community organisations.
Did they have to get into these social medias and if so which ones to use their precious time resources on.
They had invited 2 people to speak on the topic who were from community organisations. One a youngish young woman with a marketing background who has grown up as the technology has. She was from The St. George & Sutherland Community College and was running both Facebook and Twitter accounts.
She informed that 50% of enrolments are now online and they are expecting that to be 80% by 2015. Therefore online is necessary. They have had their Facebook account running for about 2 months she said and they already have 500 friends. She gave ideas for how to send out to our usual networks to encourage them to "like" us. etc.
One very important thing she said about Facebook over webpages was that, once you have got people to "like" you then they are a captive audience as such. Every message you put up on your page will automatically show on their wall. That means they do not have to think to go check out what the library is doing, they are just told! They do not have to come to us, we go to them. They have had a great response from it already. Twitter she said, was not so successful, but they are still adding to it. She called it a great way to "shout" "spruick" about your activities, but really should just lead people back to the Facebook page.
http://www.facebook.com/SGSCC
The other speaker was a woman originally from the Indian subcontintent. She has only been using Facebook for the last two years as she has moved from Newcastle where her grown up children live to Sydney, and this is the medium she uses to keep in touch with them. Through doing this on a personal level she has realised the potential for her community organisation (whose name escapes me)and has had great success reaching their target audience via this method as opposed to any other.
Hearing their stories I'm convinced that we need to have have a Facebook page, but we also need to create good relationships within that media, not just be there for ourselves, but also find out about what others are doing...create a good list of who we "like".

Facebook
I agree with all the positive comments about Facebook that have been made so far. It is a great way for the library to reach potential market, to engage with our community, promote activities , events and services. Facebook seems to be a growing trend among libraries, with many high profile libraries such as the State Library of NSW having a Facebook page. Teens particularly seem to all have Facebook accounts, and the library can show itself to be up to date with technogical trends by having one.

Podcasts

I think this tool has great potential as well. Apart from the great suggestions from Miranda why not use it to promote the HSC lectures?

Twitter

I don't have a twitter account and don't really get the point of it. I can see it has potential to reach people who use it. I think it would be good for all the reasons that have already been suggested.
Monique

Like most of the other comments I agree that we should utilise Facebook and possibly twitter. As a staff member I appreciate the branch photos on Flickr, to get an idea of what other branches are doing with displays etc. Though I am not sure of how much interest this would be to our patrons.
I am optomistic about the future of the Check me out blog and think it has a lot of potential for customer interaction, although if the new LMS has the capacity for patrons to rate books and leave reviews this could conflict with the blog, or they may be compatible, I guess I will have to wait and see.
For me the exciting thing about the 2.0 technologies is that they are a continual work in progress, so once they are up and running we can watch and help them evolve and see where they take us.