Hi! My name is Elizabeth Bush and I am currently in the second year of my MLIS degree. Learning about libraries and the future of libraries is a huge passion of mine. In the course of my study, I decided to look closely at the relation between Social Media tools and library services. Luckily for me, SLAIS was offering a class about that topic. To make a short story even shorter, this blog is a requirement of LIBR 559M. Strangely enough, it doesn’t feel like I am fulfilling a class requirement when creating this blog, but rather it feels as though I am finding a place to explore a topic I have been interested in for a while now.
I am originally from the State of Colorado in the USA. I have lived in Colorado, Utah, Japan, and Vancouver so far in my life and hope to live in many more countries and states. Because I alternate between living abroad and living in the States, Social Media has become integral to my life. I have accounts on many of the well-known Social Media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat, Pinterest) and accounts on some foreign sites as well (Kakaotalk, Weibo, WeChat, Line). Because it is difficult to call friends from other countries and meet up with them, I rely on Social Media to continue our friendship. I also use Social Media for information about new communities I am travelling to or living in, to discover new adventures to try, and to post about my life so that family back home can keep up with me. I check each site as a lurker daily and often actively participate on my favorite ones. Social Media is where I learn about breaking news, practice foreign language skills, hang out with my friends, learn professional tools, and get help navigating new cities.
Because Social Media has such a strong presence in my life, I am interested in its future and how to harness its power to help make libraries relevant in this era of technology. I am also just excited to have an official reason to explore two of my favorite pastimes together!