Facebook and Branding

Bubble Room is a blog written by Alison Circle, a marketing professional under the employ of both the Columbus Metropolitan Library and Library Journal. In yesterday’s post, Alison briefly points to several reasons library systems should commit to a single Facebook page, rather than create individualized pages for each of the system’s branches. Her reasons plead for consistency.

How will it be possible that each branch page reflects the overall library brand? You’ll have different messages, different voice, different strategic focus. This is confusing to customers.

When we talk about using social media in libraries, it’s important to remember who are the benefactors. Putting aside the inadvertently condescending nature of the passage above, I find myself wishing Alison had written a much more thorough evaluation. The original question is an interesting one and deserves examination. However, the post addresses Facebook’s value solely to the library’s brand and does so only cursorily. It fails to explore the utility of localized Facebook pages in two ways: their value to the brand and their value to the user.

I’m willing to entertain an argument for the boilerplate philosophy of the brand. That methodology is part of what makes the corporate world go round. It’s what allows Anheuser-Busch to continue to tell us their product is the best product for everyone. Yet, for the most part, libraries don’t have a product. As many say, the library is its own product. And in systems where needs and expectations differ from branch to branch, a library may not be able to be all things to everyone, but it should certainly address diversity. Can a Facebook page using a “Locations” tab accomplish this? Branch pages for the Columbus Metropolitan Library would suggest the ability is limited. They offer hours, a map, the manager’s name, and a link to the library’s event calendar. Functional? Sure. Offering users an interactive, community-specific Facebook presence? Not so much. A well-branded library is a well-connected library–one that goes to where the users are and makes itself at home. It’s local. It’s hyperlocal. It gives its branches the keys to the neighborhood.

A regular Bubble Room reader, I can tell you that Alison’s thoughts on branding and marketing would be invaluable to any librarian. Yet, when it comes to limiting Facebook to a branding tool and denying users a participatory relationship, it’s easy to remember I’m reading the sentiments of a marketer–not a librarian.

Blogging Libraries: The Crowdsourced Blog

In my last post, I was thinking about participatory blogs hosted by library websites. How can we make library blogs more effectual? Should public library websites offer broader topical blogs, potentially appealing to a wider audience?

Then I started drafting a follow-up. About an hour later, Toby Greenwalt, of the Skokie Public Library, tweeted the link to his latest post on the library’s The Studio blog. SPL hosts a handful of interactive blogs that touch numerous subjects from research methods to book reviews to patron suggestions. As Toby tweets, it can be a lot of work to keep a regular stream of content on all these blogs.

Not all libraries have one or two people on staff who can squeeze regular blogging into their schedule. So I asked around to see if and how libraries are mining the talents of their users to pick up the slack–to gauge people’s experience with crowdsourced blogs. The resounding collective reply suggests a dearth of activity. Despite constraints of time and staff, libraries are managing their blogs, largely, without involvement of the community.

What’s to stop a time-strapped library from fielding and posting community-centric articles from their users? The crowdsourced blog could be age-specific or reach out to community writers of all ages. The mission is to source a participatory digital playground and encourage intellectual exchange while farming out as much responsibility as possible. Volunteer editors would help ensure fairness and the general integrity of the blog.

Blogs could be specific to community topics or to general subjects like literacy, the arts, or education. The library could host a poetry and short-story blog, mingling suggested reading and reviews with user-written pieces. Subject-specific blogs, like a YA or anime blog, a foreign language blog, a nonfiction or movie review blog, might help stimulate microcommunities within your usership.

Of course, the library must not necessarily host even more than one or two of these blogs. Start with one–perhaps a general discussion blog, allowing contributors to share whatever they’ve been thinking about lately. Sure, there are a million corporate websites where people regularly share comments and opinions on topics of personal relevance. But in the interest of hyperlocality, I want to give these people a local voice–a forum in which they aren’t always relegated to the comment board, but where they may initiate their own discussions.

The goal is your own–to get regular users involved in a library-hosted digital discussion or to conjure a blog of interest to community groups who may not be using the library’s services and try to bring them into the fold.

Do these things work? I’m guessing many fine veteran librarians would deem this a potentially colossal can of worms. So call me a rebel. I want to try it anyway.

What are the potential wins for the crowdsourced library blog? If your library is hosting, or has hosted, a crowdsourced blog, I’m sure we’d all enjoy the opportunity to learn from your experience.

Blogging Libraries: Making Connections

Librarians from various areas have recently commented on the underwhelming interactivity that takes place on their public library blogs. These are blogs, hosted by the library’s website, that encourage patrons to share thoughts on a variety of materials and services. For whatever reason, these blogs simply haven’t inspired the level of participation the libraries had hoped to create. My questions are 1. Why not? and 2. What types of interactive blogs have met measured success?

Has your library’s website experienced interactive blog failure? Were you able to find a remedy and garner more interest and discussion? What types of blogs have you found to be both valuable and productive? Please share your experiences or thoughts on potentially effective interactive blogs. Regardless of the type of library, the blog’s nature is one of connectivity, and I suspect these connections succeed or fail for many of the same reasons.

Will Blog for Food

In his post, “A New chapter for our Unwinders Management Book – Evaluating Candidates from their Internet Profile”, Will Manley raises some compelling questions regarding jobseekers on social media sites and blogs. Hiring managers are sure to perceive elements of a candidate’s public profile differently. Some, as Will suggests, may attribute varying degrees of conceit, narcissism, or calculation to a candidate’s activity on social media sites and as a blogger.

What Will wants to gauge is how people in Libraryland consider or would consider candidates’ social profiles when scouting resumes. Do you weigh social profiles heavily, lightly, or not at all? Given the opportunity, I would incorporate all available elements of social profiles into my evaluation of the candidate. And why not? Depending upon the information not veiled by privacy settings, a cursory look at a Facebook page or tweet compilation may expose character flaws or suggest endearing traits. What a candidate makes available for public viewing may also indicate her familiarity with social profiles and her ability to manipulate privacy settings, knowledge that all new reference and programming librarians should probably have.

More to the point, I’ve been thinking lately about recruiting practices in situations where new LIS graduates are competing with experienced librarians for jobs. The rookie librarian may have the experience of internship or volunteering or may have no practical library experience at all. She has her MLS, her relevant work experience and tech skills, and her vision. But vision isn’t tangible and won’t be much help to a discriminating department head or hiring manager. Unless, of course, she lays it out in writing–on a blog.

Narcissistic? Ego-driven? Some tenured LIS bloggers may certainly exhibit those traits in their writing. After all, many use the blog as an engine for professional critique–to share opinions. But when it comes to rookie librarians, I can tell you from experience that Joe Jobseeker’s ego classification rates somewhere between Beta and Omega male. Again, different hiring managers and HR people will perceive each person’s cloud profile differently. Still, most job hunting “tips” lists suggest the inexperienced jobseeker be involved daily in professional discourse, whether advocating on social media sites, commenting on blogs and LinkedIn discussions, or writing a professional blog. Some, like me, write LIS blogs because they want to. They feel compelled to do it. It’s no strike against Judy Jobseeker that she blogs and Nings to exhibit some professional participation. She is calculating only insomuch as she is doing what she was told to do to aid her prospects. Given this, I have to think that the consensus sentiment among hiring managers regarding new librarians with book review blogs or LIS blogs is one of encouragement or, at least, cautious acceptance.

Thoughts on neophytes in the Libraryland job market? We’re always listening. Please share.

Exit the Echo Chamber

I read another blog post the other day in which the term library echo chamber was used to describe professional discourse that goes unnoticed by every person in the universe who works outside the Info Circle. There’s been a lot of talk lately about the library science intellectual vacuum and it’s occurred to me that many librarians and students may wonder how they can make their professional voices heard on the other side of the library walls.

One very convenient solution occurred to me while talking with a colleague. Our discussion settled on how libraries and library-related issues have been treated by different areas of the press. The FOX News piece of last summer was ill-conceived and summarily swarmed upon by everyone from library patrons and students to librarians to the director of the Chicago Public Library. It was a sophomoric story–a regrettable attempt by a girl who may or may not have known she was kicking a beehive. But create a buzz it did. Other stories around the country have garnered similar attention and LIS people have piled on.

Still, plenty of library stories show up on news sites and blogs and receive no attention at all. It’s occurred to me that these are missed opportunities for library people to connect outside the echo chamber. A few weeks ago, I noticed a little piece in one of our local fishwraps, submitted by a patron of the Chicago Public Library who was curious about a new change in ILL and circulation. I knew the change had something to do with the number of trucks being used to carry materials among the system’s branches, but as I don’t work for CPL, I certainly didn’t know enough to give a decent explanation and would be no help the curious patron. No big deal. Some good CPL employee would see this and supply an informed response, right? Curious, I looked for a reply the following day and was surprised to find that no one had commented at all. A little opportunity, but a missed opportunity nonetheless.

How can we little library voices express ourselves outside the echo chamber? One simple way starts with a daily check of what the rest of the world is saying about us. When you see a library-related story or opinion piece on a news site, study it and gauge whether the discussion is one to which you can contribute. When we contribute to these types of articles, we’re sharing with the general public. We’re helping readers (and often the writers) to understand library issues from an insider’s point of view. Librarians are the victims of our own underrepresentation. We should take every opportunity to share what libraries and librarians do, how each is evolving, and what communities have to gain from us.

A tip: Be academic. There are a few remarks left on my cyber footprint that I’d definitely like to have back, including the ones I left on the aforementioned FOX piece. Yikes. No matter that my comments received “likes” from 46 people. I could have and should have done better. Too often our contributions to discourse are the result of reactionary writing while ill or on little sleep, food, or java. We always need to comport ourselves better when submitting any material for public evaluation. (Some fruit and a fiber bar might be a good idea, too.) As I’ve written before, you never want to submit something for broad consumption which may later prove a source of regret. Treat any public comment as you would treat materials submitted to a professor. Assume your audience is intelligent. Be clear, concise, and professional. Organize your thoughts and write your submission out entirely as a Word doc. Edit it well and paste it onto the message board. Mention that you’re a librarian, archivist, cataloguer, LIS student, or whatever it is that qualifies you to make your remarks.

And who knows? Maybe you’ll get so comfortable writing and contributing in this way that you’ll decide you don’t need to start that LIS blog you’ve been kicking around. Who wants to be trapped inside this lousy echo chamber, anyway? It’s noisy and crowded in here.

Writing the Wrongs

In my travels around the blogosphere and LibraryLand, I’ve been somewhat troubled to find people pooh-poohing the importance of writing skills. One misguided person, whom I’ll call Tweep, checks in on Twitter with this: surprised so many ppl still talk abt writing skill, what abt freedom of expression! Right on, Tweep. The humanities are all about freedom of expression and so am I. Like e.e. cummings wrote, “feeling is first.” But poetry aside, the freedom to express oneself is no excuse for poor grammar, spelling, and mechanics, especially when writing anything of a professional nature. Why do we still talk about writing skill? Well, maybe we’re not talking about it enough.

Textese and other budget-conscious SMS language have created a serious devolution among American language arts learners where there already existed widespread deficiencies in student writing abilities. You can read this as, Kids weren’t writing well. Now they’re even worse. The influence of technology is always growing and spreading. Now in an age of digitization and mobile communications, educators have had to adapt and develop methods of teaching literacy skills to students who want lightning-quick communications and on-demand connections. And here comes the funny part: Texting, IMing, Tweeting, e-mail, Facebooking, blogging, and other cloud applications have everybody writing all the time. Multi-age writers of every skill level are writing for more reasons in more formats than ever before. That’s good. Writing, sharing, and getting involved in written conversations are all great ways to strengthen fundamental writing skills. All this writing–this transliteracy, if you like–can make people smarter. Great! We love smart. Smart is good.

Still, constant engagement with the typed word doesn’t necessarily mean an emergent writer is getting better at the craft of writing. She has to be conscious of what she is writing. She needs to be not only writing, but practicing writing. In order to learn, writers must have some awareness of the fundamental guidelines that, when followed properly, can be the difference between an acceptable product and an unacceptable product. Otherwise, all this writing amounts to nothing more than useless repetition. Many people like Tweep have been engaged in multiple forms of written communication outside the classroom for years. Yet they still don’t get it. To many, Textese is more than a cheeky budgetary consideration. It’s an acceptable means of communication. It’s second-nature.

So I can’t help feeling a bit worried when I bump into literacy humbugs like Tweep in LibraryLand. They are students in graduate library programs. They are librarians. Sometimes–and this is the uh-oh part–sometimes they are blogging about libraries.

Increasingly, educational technology pushes literacy instruction beyond traditional learning methods. Computing technologies and the Internet give students and library people power to communicate worldwide in many formats, and the need for strong reading and writing skills is greater than ever. By altering how information is processed, interconnected, and applied, technology is changing how people read, write, listen, and communicate. It can be a tremendous instrument for teaching and learning. Misused, it can be spell failure and embarrassment.

I’m all for using digital media of every kind to promote literacy and make stronger, more confidant writers. Many hep, progressive teachers and professors encourage student writers to use blogging as a means of practice and growth. How they suggest students manipulate the public accessibility of those blog posts, I wouldn’t know. Different strokes, I suspect. But people in the library field–in fact, people in every field–should hold themselves to a higher standard of quality when adding their two cents to the professional cashbox. Particularly in a field like library and information science, one that aligns itself with educational institutions of all types and all levels, bloggers of professional content should conduct themselves as professionals and understand who they represent. Most bloggers, like me, write and publish on their own time and are accountable to no one. So it should move any professional contributor to hold himself accountable to his colleagues and his readers.

I’ve met all kinds of professional people in LibraryLand, but I’m sure not one of we smartypants librarians would dare submit a résumé and cover letter without first making sure those materials were proofread and free of error. Professional bloggers should consider their public blog posts in the same regard: your posts are professional documents submitted for the evaluation, education, or even casual perusal of your peers (and a hell of a lot of peers, at that). Many of those peers are close readers and may even be gifted writers. They may not be snobbish literary elitists or armchair editors, but they will hold your work to a higher standard and they do want to be impressed. Try to impress them. Don’t be a twirp and don’t be like Tweep. Why are so many people hung up about writing skills? Don’t find out the hard way.

Anonymous Authorship

Back in November, two of my fave LIS bloggers kicked up dust around the topic of anonymous professional authorship. On the In the Library with the Lead Pipe blog, Emily Ford outlined her feelings about anonymous and pseudonymous authorship. Emily condemned all forms of professional discourse in which an author hides his or her identity with anonymity or veils himself with an assumed name.

Undisclosed publications lack credibility and are prone to counter-productivity. As a teacher and librarian I always encourage my students to consider their source. What authority does that source have to make that argument and those claims? Without knowledge of an author’s expertise, experience, and general knowledge of the subject, how are we to even consider this kind of discourse as valid?

In response to this piece, Andy Woodworth posted “Anonymous Rex” on his Agnostic, Maybe blog. In it, Andy takes exception to several points, linking to Louis Gray’s 2009 blog post, “Welcome to the Reputation Economy”, and making some interesting suggestions regarding source credibility.

With the rise of the reputation economy, what matters is the establishment of the identity. If they are a consistent writer of meaningful content, then it builds towards that of a contributor. If they are loaded with divisive and invective terms or attacks on one’s person (as opposed to ideas), then it shifts towards a detractor.

It’s the credibility of this detractor that most interests me here. Inherent is the suggestion that credibility is subjective. A librarian and editor of educational materials, I’ve always thought of source credibility as a minimally relative concept. When judging the reliability of a source, one evaluates certain criteria. For instance, Wikipedia and other shared-authorship dot-com sites are largely unacceptable as sources for scholarly research, while everyone accepts encyclopedic sources like World Book as authoritative sources. This is mainly because the people who write entries in World Book are known scholars and researchers, their credentials disclosed plainly.

What most strikes me is what we’re saying about information literacy when we begin teaching students to consider anonymous blog articles as credible academic literature. Questions are certain to arise. Where do students draw the line between credible and unreliable? Why can’t vitriolic articles be treated as credible if the criticism is sincere and the supporting details are factual? How thin are we spreading the field of credible literature?

Self-published doesn’t intrinsically equal unreliable. But neither is a published print article any more authoritative than its self-published counterpart. Rather, the problems stem directly from anonymity. If the credibility of the author cannot be confirmed, then neither can the credibility of her work. Of course, one can verify or disprove factual legitimacy of any alleged qualifiable or quantifiable piece of information within a self-published work. Yet the authority of any original material contained within an anonymous work remains asterisked. The fact that the work is published without accountability of an established publisher renders it deficient where professional and scholarly research is concerned.

Andy goes on to ask whether the library profession should defend those who choose anonymity in professional authorship.

Is there a compelling reason not to extend this courtesy to professional discourse when the content is well written, well reasoned, and within the scope of professional literature?

To this I would say not necessarily, because the anonymous author of this type of content has no reason to hide behind a pseudonym. He simply chooses to, for whatever reason. Still, although I wouldn’t dissuade library students from consulting or using these pieces as professional information sources, I would suggest these sources be used off the record. I may encourage students to consider the content of these pieces and to allow the anonymous sources to inform their thoughts, arguments, and viewpoints, but, for purposes of academic research, to treat them as supplementary and confine their official research to professional sources who have the credibility of disclosure.

Why Aren’t You Here?

In my travels this week, I noted that a certain north-suburban public library had not tweeted since June. Curious as to the reasons for the lapse, I decided I should contact the library and satisfy my professional curiosity. And I still might. Instead, I decided to blog about it.

It could be that the person who was tweeting took a position elsewhere and her position remains open. Perhaps delayed or slashed funds have left the library understaffed and short of time for social networking. Maybe the director has found that they simply have too few Tweeps to justify continual use of the network. Or maybe somebody decided the whole thing is just stupid.

Perhaps I should have my head examined, but I remain among those in LibraryLand who believe social networks are a great tool for not only contributing to professional discourse, but for seeking library ubiquity–for getting hyperlocal. Blah blah, yawn. I know. You’ve heard it all before. Still, one shouldn’t pooh-pooh the potential benefits of these simple cloud tools. They’re free. They’re fast. They’re reciprocal. They can be collaborative. They push programs, services, and your brand.

Yet many astute library professionals, particularly administrators, have yet to bring their libraries onboard the social media boat. Others have made brief appearances on social networks only to disappear soon after. Another suburban library, one whose director is notably proactive about marketing strategies, has no Facebook or other social network presence.

This is the part where I might write, Everybody else is already there, so shouldn’t your library be there too? But I know that everybody is not there. It may often seem like everybody is there, but the digital divide simply does not allow everybody that type of access. Many public libraries serve very small communities or communities comprised largely of poor and immigrant families who can’t afford daily computer and web access. Many of these people have little or no experience with computers or the Internet. Many others have no interest.

I’m not a library director. I don’t manage a staff of programming librarians, reference librarians, techies, clerks and pages. So I’m curious about the practical reasons why libraries don’t use social networks, particularly Twitter and Facebook.

Please share your thoughts and experiences.

Tweeting Libraries

Many librarians remain unfamiliar with the concepts and practices inherent in what we know as Library 2.0. I suggest free social software is the place to start if you want to get savvy regarding technological tools that aid library success. You might have a look at this list by a site called Accelerated Bachelor Degree. http://acceleratedbachelordegree.org/100-ways-to-use-twitter-in-your-library/ the list is almost exactly what the URL suggests–100 ways a library can use Twitter to push its brand and get hyperconnected with its community.

The recommendations in this list are very brief and come without elaboration. Yet, while I would not suggest that a librarian who is new to Twitter should use it to become instantly adept at Twitter’s numerous useful applications in the library, it is certainly a useful listing of Twitter presences to check out as you get started. Following are several excerpts from an essay I recently wrote on the use of cloud computing in libraries. Highlighted here are some of the most useful applications of Twitter for librarians.

The Skokie Public Library uses its free Twitter account to communicate on a daily basis with its community. Twitter is advantageous to libraries in a number of ways, not the least of which being a means of performing reference. Twitter acts as an SMS service, as users from anywhere can easily direct a short question to SPL’s Twitter page and expect a prompt response from a professional reference librarian. Furthermore, a Twitter user does not have to direct his question solely to his own library’s Twitter account. The user has access to every library using Twitter for purposes of reference, giving him an entire network of reference professionals to locate information on even the most daunting queries.

Twitter is especially useful to libraries as it can be used to serve several functions beyond reference. For one thing, libraries can use Twitter to push programs and services to the tweeting community. In this way, Twitter functions as a means of free advertising for new acquisitions, book clubs, children’s and adult programming, special events, and other forms of community outreach. Librarians can also use Twitter to link to other sites. The Ela Area Public Library can use its Twitter page to link to larger advertisements on the library’s main website, directing users to fast information about forthcoming events and other library news. The Madison Public Library regularly links to photos on its Flickr site to showcase construction progress at several of its smaller branches. In this way, users can stay mindful of what is going on with their local libraries while getting a sense of involvement.

Another function of Twitter is brand monitoring. As practiced on sites like Twitter, Yelp, and Technorati, brand monitoring is a smart and practical use of cloud technology for libraries. The Skokie Public Library has a very active usership where Twitter is concerned. Librarians not only market events and programs, but they are also able to monitor conversations among users to analyze what the community is saying about the library. Conversations among library users may include praise for a service or event, criticism for a change in floor plan, or simply a tweet about a favorite chair or quiet corner of the library.