194 pages
6" x 9"
Softcover
ISBN-13: 9781843347118
Year Published: 2012
Web 2.0 jumpstarted librarians’ involvement with social media, and the use of Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and other social media applications is now all but ubiquitous. But the turn is now towards management and consolidation. A detailed analysis of the whys of social media and the hows of getting staff and library users involved, Managing Social Media in Libraries explores the developing information environment, taking librarians beyond the mechanics of using social media to establish a framework for making social media effective. Providing examples of policies, workflows, and uses of social media tools in action, the book is structured around such key topics as - How institutions are refocusing after the first use of Web 2.0
- The concept of library organizations as loosely coupled systems, and how social media functions within such systems
- Defining a purpose for the use of social media
- Methods for connecting messages with tools
- Integrating social media into standard websites
This book shows library managers and leaders ways social media can strengthen connections between the library and its users.
Table of Contents
Where have we been with social media? - Introduction - Filtering vs searching - Attention is expensive, while storage is cheap - Time to step back and refocus
Library organizations as loosely-coupled systems - Introduction - Coordination tools - What are coordination tools? - The library as loosely-coupled system - Strengths and weaknesses of loosely-coupled systems
Social media in loosely-coupled systems - Introduction - Internal: capturing knowledge - Internal: collaboration - External: marketing and outreach - Internal and external: giving your people a voice - Internal and external: connecting virtual and physical - Disintermediation
Defining a purpose - Introduction - Technology adoption - The difference between marketing and community - Joining the conversation - Generated content vs curated content in a fact-checking world - News about the library - Capturing events - User contributions - Capturing internal knowledge - Collaboration - Decision making - Visibility - Finding a focus - Start a good blog - Challenges of participation
Connecting social media tools to the organization - Introduction - Conundrum of control - Coordination tools and social media - Policies and engagement - Crafting a Social Media Policy - Impact of budgets - Organizational culture and participation rules: creating a shared vision - Management and coordination - Motivating employees to use - Living with mistakes - Finding collaboration, coordination and focus
Integrating with standard websites - Introduction - The homepage is the homepage - Land wars - Usability testing - Integrating across the sites - Gaining efficiency through RSS - OPACs, subscription tools and social media - The death of social media pages - Unified voices
Leadership: big ideas do not have to be that big - Introduction - New librarianship - No one can predict the future - Predicting the future - Identity crisis
About the Author
Troy A. Swanson is Teaching & Learning Librarian and Library Department Chair at Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills, Illinois. He has managed the library’s web presence since 2000. He implemented his library’s blogs in 2004 using a content management approach, and the library’s first podcasts for cultural events in 2006. He has published on library website design and usability in the Journal of Academic Librarianship and Internet Reference Services Quarterly, and has also written on information literacy instruction for college students. His Ph.D. dissertation focused on the management of Web 2.0 in higher education. He is also a guest author on the Tame the Web blog.
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