Category: Facebook

I posted this to the 23 Things Kansas listserv tonight, but loved the resources so much, I’m going to cross-blog them here.

I was quickly skimming through several blogs today and remember someone’s blog post for this week’s lesson on online communities (posted at the 23 Things Kansas website) mentioning an NPR story on Facebook as the reason she finally joined Facebook. Intrigued, I stumbled upon a couple of NPR stories from last year and thought I’d share them with you all; I don’t know if it was what she was looking for, but maybe one of these was it:

1. Five Years of Facebook
2. On Point with Tom Ashbrook: Facebook Culture

Also, I posted a link to this third article on the 23 Things Kansas Facebook fan page, but thought it wouldn’t hurt to re-post here:
Social Media Cards: A 2.0 Type of Business Card

Here’s a couple of paragraphs from it:

“You probably know someone just like Juli, because librarians are great at establishing relationships. Talking to patrons, figuring out what they like, helping them find exactly what they need—not a problem. But when it comes to social media, librarians struggle. There should be a policy, a schedule, someone assigned to tweet/facebook/wave for the library—right?

Not quite. The online librarian-patron relationship should be an extension of interpersonal communication. After all, the whole purpose behind social media is to aid in relationships.

Am I saying your library shouldn’t have a Facebook fan page or a Twitter account? Absolutely not. In fact, if you don’t have one now, why not? Online communities are growing, and your library needs a presence on those sites.

But let me ask you this: who do you listen to? An institution or a person you know? Without even realizing it, we ask our friends where they bought their car, if they know a good babysitter, and who cut their hair. Social media serves as a place to enhance our relationships. Since we’ve already established trust-worthy relationships with our patrons inside the library, it’s only natural that we use social media enhance our relationships with patrons virtually.” (end excerpt)

I’ve really enjoyed the comments on the 23 Things Kansas Facebook fan page about how all of you are using Facebook (click on the Facebook icon on the 23 Things Kansas website up at the top or visit http://www.facebook.com/23thingskansas). If you have a Facebook fan page or even a library website with comments enabled, have any of you been able to engage your patrons online and start conversations with them?

This post is for part of the lesson that Janelle Mercer and I co-authored for the 23 Things Kansas lesson on Online Communities. We are both blogging about how we use Facebook, to give examples to 23 Things Kansas participants.

I’m “old” in Facebook age, joining the network back in its infancy in May 2005 when my college received access to Facebook. That was back in the day when only college students (or alums with college emails) were allowed on Facebook. In the almost five years since, my use of Facebook has drastically evolved. What originally was simply a way to stay in touch with college friends has turned into a way to connect and re-connect with friends and family that are all over the world. We can quickly see what’s going on in each others lives with just a few seconds of looking at each others’ profiles. I love it when my 3-year-old nephew has a new “Logan Show” video posted.

I also use Facebook to connect with library colleagues, getting to know them better, and share resources there. I share lots of tech resources on Facebook, although some other friends think it’s Greek most of the time! I manage the NEKLS Facebook Page for NEKLS libraries, which many of our librarians love, because NEKLS news from our various websites is fed to them right through Facebook.