My Social Media Tool Kit

Before I can pick any specific tools I need to know who my patrons are.  It doesn’t make sense to include QR codes and text reference services if a majority of my patrons are senior citizens who use the library to socialize and read the newspaper.  Perhaps in that case courses on how to use e mail to keep in touch with family would be a more appropriate use of social media.  What I am trying to say is the social media that you choose should fit with your patrons abilities, uses of social media and perhaps education and opportunities to use new social media that they are interested in.

Before this class I never thought I would have a blog.  I didn’t know what RSS was and I certainly never expected to collaborate via a wiki for a group project.  However, because I was forced to use this things I have a little experience and some skills I can call on in the future.  However, your patrons will not be forced to get a facebook page, contribute to a blog or get a cell phone that can be used as a camera.  So I think the key is to offer social media tools that your patrons are already using.  If your patrons are all using cell phones with all the latest gadgets which may be true in a high school or teen annex section of the library than it makes sense to offer additional resources via QR codes or other cell phone mapping tools.

It is also important to consider what they may want to do.  Then offer opportunities to learn about and explore other social media.  The only way to know what they use and want to use is to ask them, observer their use and make attempts.  As Clay Shirky stated your social media experiment may fail, however, every failure is a learning experience.  I think it is important to be willing to take risks in implementing social media, but it is also important to take an educated risk.  Before taking the risk there should be some indication of what your patrons want to use, and what they are using.  There is no point in wasting resources to create social media experiments for which you have no indication of their success.

That being said in my social media tool kit I would have:

- keen observation skills to learn what is relevant to my patrons

- a willingness to try new things and to fail

- some social media skills to make implementing new ideas possible

- ideally at least one other staff member, or management personnel who supports my new ideas and encourages experimentation

Taking risks, trying new things, change and the inevitable occasional failure are all scary.  However, with the attitude that patrons want to interact with information it is important for the library to attempt to create an interactive space in order to stay relevant.  What form of interaction a library takes must be relevant to their users.  Therefore, the most cutting edge social software may not work for all libraries.  As with any change or service the patron needs to remain at the center of the decision.

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