“Ui mai ki ahau, ‘He aha te mea nui o te Ao?’
Māku e kī atu,
‘He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.’
If you were to ask me, ‘What is the most important thing in the world?’
I would reply,
‘It is people, it is people, it is people.’

Traditional Maori saying.

(“Glossary and Whakatauku,” 2009).

Evaluative statement

Social media is more than a collection of tools it is a way for people to connect with one another. People are finding that social media can enhance their lives, allowing them to participate in conversations and community no matter where in the world they are. Online participation is growing as wireless internet and mobile technologies develop and become cheaper and more accessible to the public. Social media is all about people connecting with people. David Lankes, Professor for New Librarianship at Syracuse University, challenges libraries to be “of the people”. When someone comes to a library (either in person or online) they must see an opportunity to contribute, to be an integral part of the community that is the library. Community members don’t support the library because they are satisfied customers but because they see the library as part of who they are (Lankes, 2012, p.37). Social media offers a way for libraries to connect with people and build community.

Library 2.0 is about participation and building community. Instead of providing collections and having our patrons come to the building to access them Library 2.0 takes the library out into the community and into the Internet environments through social media. The Internet has not only enabled libraries to be accessible 24/7 it has also allowed them to invite conversation and participation with patrons. Library 2.0 acknowledges that there are communities and conversations that would be enhanced by librarian participation and that this is a two way street. By identifying specific groups and catering for their needs online, libraries can build trust, partnership and good will (Bond, 2016a).

The appeal of social media tools for many librarians is that they are free and that their patrons are already using them. However, to create and maintain a social media presence takes time and planning. While the tool may be free the staff time involved in successful social media presence is not (Crawford, 2014, p.3). A first step is to find out what social media tools your patrons are using and how they are using them (Bond, 2015b). Are they residents or visitors to the platforms? Residents and visitors is a way to describe people’s participation and presence on social media (White, 2014). We can be a resident or visitor at any given time depending on our purpose. A ‘visitor’ simply uses a website without leaving any trace of themselves there whereas a ‘resident’ logs in, creates posts, interacts with others (White, 2014).  It is possible to collect information from people and see where they are residents or visitors with the technologies they use (“Visitor and Resident Maps,” 2014). Libraries can be informed about where to invest time in social media once they know where their patrons are mostly resident.

By creating a way for people to feel connected to community and increasing their knowledge of other people, social media can bring reciprocity and feelings of trust (Young & Rossman, 2015, p. 21). This is where involvement in social media communities can be essential for libraries. People will share their experiences good and bad within their social media communities. If the message is negative it is important to know about it in order to respond and do something about it. Positive feedback also should be acknowledged. Social media has a broad reach with messages being passed on from one community to the next. A social media presence can build social capital for libraries, earned over time as people interact positively within the online community (Solomon, 2013, p.26).

Creating a plan around the social media tools patrons use and the content and the frequency of posts will assist libraries in developing communities on the Internet (Bond, 2015b). The plan should identify goals so that evaluation of progress can take place (Steiner, 2012, p. 56). Having a way to gauge success is helpful. Often social media tools have inbuilt statistics, page views, likes, retweets and so on that can be an indication of how well the social media strategy is working to build community.

When utilising social media an organisation needs to be develop a social media policy so that everyone involved will know what is expected and acceptable. This is especially true for school libraries which serve a wide range of people, some of whom are impressionable and vulnerable children. A social media policy which clearly articulates expectations, best practice, guidelines and procedures would assist in maintaining a healthy and respectful online community. Involving the people within the community in creating and reviewing the policy will ensure it is robust and respected (Bond, 2016b).

Public and University libraries have been at the forefront of using social media to develop dynamic online communities. By studying their use of the tools school libraries can utilise the best practices already formed and create successful communities of their own.

Reflective statement

It would be true to say that I enjoy participating in social media. I reside in Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and as a blogger. I found to my surprise that I enjoy creating content, interacting with others and participating in a variety of online communities. Before this course started I knew of a lot of social media tools and used them along the continuum of visitor through to resident. I was already using some of them at school. All teachers at my school blog using WordPress and I am expected to blog weekly about the library. I tweet about each blog post using hashtags to link in to the school social media accounts as well as some that relate to education – thus expanding the audience.

This course has shown that with planning and goal setting, my haphazard blogging and tweeting can actually do more than highlight what is happening in the library. In my first blog post for the course I expressed a desire to use social media to promote the work of our library (Bond, 2015a). I now see that social media offers more than the opportunity to broadcast to colleagues, parents and students about our services and resources. It has the potential to be a community with the people involved exchanging ideas, recommending books and participating in developing a positive school library culture. When there is a shift of focus from use of social media for marketing to that of community building, the library can help people share in research and learning (Young & Rossman, 2015, p. 22).

Social media is a long-term process of building relationships with individuals, rather than marketing to the masses. It is about creating personalized connections that allow for conversations between members of the library community. It helps to build good will and is faster and wider spread than word of mouth (Solomon, 2013, p. 191). I have learned that a key to building relationship with students, parents and colleagues is to listen to them. I want to find out what social media tools they are using and how they are using them. During the project I conducted for assignment 3 I made the mistake of assuming that because teachers of grade 7 were using Google + to communicate with their students that the students themselves were using that tool for discussion. As it turned out the use of Google + was to share and reinforce information from their classes and there was little interaction expected from the students.

I learned from that experience that I need to investigate thoroughly before committing to a social media tool. It is helpful to take some time to explore the functionality of the tool with the students so we use it effectively. I have recently started to use Pinterest more due to our school building project. I was saving pins of library designs. While discussing ideas for our “Love reading week” our Marketing Director, Jen Gokmen, showed me how to search Pinterest for specific topics, follow boards, and send messages.

Our school has a closed Facebook group for parents, staff and alumni and a twitter handle. The marketing office maintains and manages all school social media accounts. Our library team can post to the Facebook page and add the twitter handle to our tweets. An advantage to this is that people are able to see us as members of a wider school community as well as participants in the online communities of Facebook and Twitter. We can be active participants in building the online school community through existing channels rather than creating our own.

I will develop a plan that will give guidelines for how we use social media in the school library, which tools we will utilise and who is involved (Bell, 2012, p. 218). The plan will also need to have a goal, specific actions, frequency and possible subject matter, and a way to evaluate impact.

Our school does not at present have a social media policy. I will form a group to create one – this can be a professional learning community for the 2016 – 2017 academic year.  A social media policy would give clear expectations, guidelines and procedures to protect everyone using social media and promote positive community building.

I have gained so much from participating in this course. I am passionate about using social media to enable our school library become a more “multidimensional socially connected space” (Young & Rossman, 2015, p. 22). The most important thing is the people and the community we create together.

References

Bell, S. (2012). Students tweet the darndest things about your library – and why you need to listen. Reference Services Review, 40(2), 217-220. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/00907321211228264

Bond, A. (2015a, November 22). Social networking – beginning INF506 [Blog post]. Retrieved from Wondering @ work website: https://abond.edublogs.org/2015/11/22/social-networking-beginning-inf506/

Bond, A. (2015b, December 12). Module 4.1 Building school library 2.0 [Blog post]. Retrieved from Wondering @ work website: https://abond.edublogs.org/2015/12/12/building-school-library-2-0/

Bond, A. (2016a, January 12). Module 5.2 5 reasons why school libraries should be using social media [Blog post]. Retrieved from Wondering @ work website: https://abond.edublogs.org/2016/01/12/5-reasons-why-school-libraries-should-be-using-social-media/

Bond, A. (2016b, January 21). Module 6.2 Developing a social media policy [Blog post]. Retrieved from Wondering @ work website: https://abond.edublogs.org/2016/01/21/developing-a-social-media-policy/

Crawford, W. (2014). Successful social networking in public libraries. Chicago: ALA Editions, an imprint of the American Library Association.

Glossary and whakatauku. (2009, October 8). Retrieved January 23, 2016, from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/The-New-Zealand-Curriculum/Glossary-and-whakatauki

Lankes, R. D. (2012). Expect more: Demanding better libraries for today’s complex world. San Bernardino: R. David Lankes.

Solomon, L. (2013). The librarian’s nitty-gritty guide to social media. Chicago: ALA Editions, an imprint of the American Library Association.

Steiner, S. K. (2012). Strategic planning for social media in libraries. London: Facet.

Visitor and resident maps. (2014, May 7). Retrieved January 23, 2016, from https://www.jisc.ac.uk/guides/evaluating-digital-services/example-visitor-and-resident-maps

White, D. (2014, March 10). Visitor and residents [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPOG3iThmRI

Young, S. W., & Rossman, D. (2015). Building library community through social media. Information Technology & Libraries, 34(1), 20-37. Retrieved from EBSCOhost database. (Accession No. 103786230)