libraries, librarians & social networking

Libraries, Librarians & Social NetworkingLibraries, Librarians & Social NetworkingAlison Miller

@millerlibrarian

Social NetworkingSocial Networking

Individuals, organizations, businesses and others

Social sites used to connect with others, sharing interests, causes, services, etc.

Leads to Social Capital – connections within and between social networks

A few examplesA few examples

Social networks

FacebookFacebook

more than 400 million active users

50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day

average user has 130 friends

people spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

TwitterTwitter

twitter now has more than105 million registered users

new users are signing up at the rate of 300,000 per day

twitter users are, in total, tweeting an average of 55 million tweets a day

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/14/twitter-user-statistics-r_n_537992.html

YouTubeYouTube

more than 2 billion views a day

24 hours of video uploaded every minute

the average person spends at least 15 minutes a day on YouTube

more video is uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than the 3 major US networks created in 60 years

http://www.viralblog.com/research/youtube-statistics/

FlickrFlickr

over 5.5 billion images

more than 80% are public

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flickr

So…why is this important?So…why is this important?

the average American now spends about 13 hours each week surfing the Web

there is value to social networking!

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/consumer&id=7186413

Libraries & Social NetworkingLibraries & Social Networking

Academic, Public, School, and Special libraries

Lib Success Wiki

ValueValue

In general…

• social contacts affect the productivity of individuals and groups

Specific populations…

• a way to provide information and services to members where they live

• additional access points to the library

Goals for librariesGoals for libraries

promote services

promote collections

promote events

promote resources

facilitate communication

FacebookFacebook

Hennepin County Library

http://www.facebook.com/hclib

Facebook applications for librariesFacebook applications for libraries

legitimate research portals, combining a marketing tool with a research tool

• My Delicious and Delicious Box add Delicious links to a Facebook page

• Libguides is an official Libguides application which freely adds a library's Libguides to their Facebook page.

• JSTOR app allows patrons to search your library's JSTOR account directly though Facebook.

• a Widgetbox to allow users to search the OPAC through Facebook

http://www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Social_Networking_Software#Facebook

TwitterTwitter

Binghamton University Libraries

http://twitter.com/bulibraries

YouTubeYouTube

The Library Channel – The Library Minute

Arizona State University

http://www.youtube.com/user/librarychannel

FlickrFlickr

DeKalb County Public Library's photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcpl/

Librarians & Social NetworkingLibrarians & Social Networking

New, veteran, retired, reference,

technology, etc.

Librarians and the Internet, Social Media, and Web 2.0

ValueValue

In general…

• social contacts affect the productivity of individuals and groups

Individual librarians…

• share information and services with colleagues and peers

• form relationships and create personal learning networks

Goals for librariansGoals for librarians

share service ideas and models

share professional and library resources

facilitate collaboration

FacebookFacebook

Buffy Hamilton

aka The Unquiet Librarian

TwitterTwitter

Joe Murphy – Yale Librarian

@Libraryfuture

YouTubeYouTube

Stephen Franceur

Blog:Digital Reference

FlickrFlickr

Jessamyn West

Blog: librarian.net

http://www.flickr.com/photos/iamthebestartist/

What can you do?What can you do?

learn a new tool’s culture

PLAY with it. Experience it. Use it.

connect to some Facebook apps, join some Facebook groups

create a Twitter account and connect with librarians

add some favorites to YouTube

browse – see who’s using Flickr and what images they are uploading

Then…Then…

figure out what you can add that those people (your library members, after all) might find interesting or useful

http://www.davidleeking.com/2007/09/11/facebook-and-libraries/

Finally…Have fun!Finally…Have fun!

Librarians Do Gaga

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_uzUh1VT98