{"id":25,"date":"2015-02-09T12:23:27","date_gmt":"2015-02-09T19:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libraryliz\/?p=25"},"modified":"2015-02-09T12:43:03","modified_gmt":"2015-02-09T19:43:03","slug":"how-are-libraries-using-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libraryliz\/2015\/02\/09\/how-are-libraries-using-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Media Use and Policies in Libraries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I recently read a white paper by Taylor &amp; Francis (October 2014) titled, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tandf.co.uk\/journals\/access\/white-paper-social-media.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Use of social media by the library: current practices and future opportunities<\/a>. The paper provides an overview of how libraries world-wide are using social media, finding that current use of social media tends to be &#8220;ad hoc and somewhat experimental.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Some interesting findings:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>More than 70% of libraries use social media (I was surprised it wasn&#8217;t more)<\/li>\n<li>Only 28% of librarians surveyed said their library had a social media policy!<\/li>\n<li>Facebook &amp; Twitter are the most popular channels, but libraries are increasingly adopting visual channels (Pinterest, Instagram, Youtube, etc.)<\/li>\n<li>The main reasons libraries give for using social media is promotion<\/li>\n<li>88% of those surveyed believe social media will become more important to libraries in the future<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I was very surprised that so few libraries have official social media policies. Considering how frequently social media blunders are putting organizations in the news these days, I&#8217;d consider that to be a top priority for any organization that uses social media. At the same time, I think it&#8217;s essential to keep a casualness and a feeling that actual people are posting from the accounts of organizations, and this means granting the people who manage social media at libraries and other organizations a certain amount of freedom when posting content.<\/p>\n<p>The report provides links to three libraries that have implemented social media policies:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lib.umd.edu\/about\/social-media-guidelines\">University of Maryland: University Libraries Social Media Guidelines <\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/biblio.csusm.edu\/site\/social-media-guidelines\">CSUSM Library Social Media Guidelines<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/net.educause.edu\/ir\/library\/pdf\/LIVE1210.pdf\">University of Pennsylvania Social Media Guidelines<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It&#8217;s interesting to see the differences in each of these policies. <strong>The University of Maryland Libraries<\/strong> policy is very short and\u00a0basically states that all postings, comments, and messages are the opinion of the editor only: &#8220;Publication of a comment does not imply endorsement or agreement by the University of Maryland or the University Libraries.&#8221; I was very surprised to see this policy, as it indicates a lack of an overarching social media strategy and the lack of concern about representing the university of its library system as a unified organization.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The CSUSM Library<\/strong> policy is longer and gives much more clearly defined instructions about the library&#8217;s goals in using social media, who\/what the library should follow, information about administration of social media accounts, and a very helpful <a href=\"https:\/\/biblio.csusm.edu\/site\/social-media-guidelines\">list of best practices<\/a> which I recommend you check out.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The University of Pennsylvania<\/strong>\u00a0seems to be still in the process of developing a university-wide social media policy that is not specific to the library, and focuses on other aspects of social media including its use in hiring people to the university.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently read a white paper by Taylor &amp; Francis (October 2014) titled, Use of social media by the library: current practices and future opportunities. The paper provides an overview of how libraries world-wide are using social media, finding that current use of social media tends to be &#8220;ad hoc and somewhat experimental.&#8221; Some interesting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28712,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libraryliz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libraryliz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libraryliz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libraryliz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28712"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libraryliz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libraryliz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libraryliz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions\/30"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libraryliz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libraryliz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/libraryliz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}