Interview with Latrice Ferguson, U-High Head Librarian

I interviewed Latrice Ferguson, head library media specialist at University High School in Normal, IL. (I work there; she is my boss.)

The library has a website, a Facebook page, a Twitter feed, a blog and a Pinterest page. What she finds is that social media takes up a lot of time and that to do it right, she needs to be constantly engaged and a consistent poster.

Both Pinterest and Facebook are blocked at school, which makes it harder to target and engage students in these forums. Our awesome Pinterest page affords us an opportunity to promote our library in the community and to curate resources and materials for faculty.

She uses social media mostly as a contact medium to members of her personal learning network (PLN). She is a member of a Ning for Black Librarians and several other wikis. She also follows several blogs and twitter feeds. She uses the iPad app Flipboard as her RSS feeder. She also follows the listserv for the Illinois School Library Media Association, which is a wealth of information for pre-service and practicing librarians.

She employs Digsby as the reference chat, though it is sometimes misused by students. As part of her job, she teaches about digital literacy, citizenship, especially cyber-bullying, and privacy issues—other common SM problems in high schools.

Overall, she has positive feelings about social media, but she often struggles to find time to do it professionally and personally.

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