Things 13 & 14 – Social networking
- Thing 13: Write about how libraries can use different features of Facebook to connect with their users.
- Thing 14: Explore and sign up for LinkedIn.
I have been a member of Facebook for a good few years now and find it helps me keep up with friends and family who I don't see on a regular basis. What I like about it is probably what everyone else hates - I like hearing about the minutiae of my friends lives because that's the stuff that often gets forgotten in a phone call or email. I could do without Farmville though.
The Sainsbury Library has had a Facebook page for around 6 months now and we have a modest number of fans - the current count is 66. For me the main reason for setting up the page was that prior to this all information about the library was hosted on the Saïd Business School intranet which meant that we had no public presence on the web other than the basic information provided on the OULS and School websites. Thankfully this is no longer the case and we have a much better presence on the newly designed Saïd Business School website.
I have been reading a lot of posts by 23 Things participants that can't get over the idea that social media profiles for libraries come hand in hand with duplication of content and effort. I want to dispel this myth....
I really don't think it matters if content is duplicated across multiple sites. The first point of contact with your library is not necessarily going to be the same for everyone - some users might pitch up on your doorstep, some might land on your website, others might find you via a profile on Facebook or Twitter - as a result the library needs to provide at least the same basic information everywhere.
As for duplication of effort, it is so easy these days to connect different social media accounts so that you can post one update that will then be posted on all of your profiles. This is made even more easy with the use of RSS feeds - a prime example of this in practice is from our very own Vere Harmsworth Library who use their blog to feed information to their website and Facebook and Twitter profiles.
Wow, I never knew I felt so strongly about Facebook. This leaves me only just enough breath to say that I have also joined LinkedIn and have created what is at present a very basic profile. I do plan to explore this further at a later date and add a bit more meat to the bones.
Things 11 & 12 – Podcasts and YouTube
- Thing 11: Find and listen to some podcasts
- Thing 12: Search YouTube for videos and discover YouTube channels
When I was a kid I didn't read that much I was much happier listening to story tapes and when I listen to the radio I would much rather hear spoken word rather than music - these are the two main reasons why I love podcasts. I started listening to podcasts when I worked on the Oxford Digitisation Project. One of my main tasks was surveying the collections across Oxford's libraries to see what could be digitised; it was a very repetitive and mundane task and podcasts were the only thing that kept me sane.
The podcasts I am currently listening to are
Now what about YouTube. I like YouTube but I'm not the kind of person who can spend hours searching for videos on it. I tend to only go to it when someone shares a link with me and more often than not I find the videos I watch are information related. Whilst on holiday recently I spent an evening sitting in the hotel bar observing a group of businessmen huddled around a laptop watching videos of car crashes on YouTube - I don't understand the appeal.
For thing 12 I signed up to a couple of YouTube channels. One of them was the Common Craft channel. If you've not heard of Common Craft's In Plain English series then I'd thoroughly recommend you check it out. Here's their video on Twitter to get you in the mood for next week's things...

