So I was lucky enough to attend a staff conference at Vancouver Public Library yesterday that focused on the use of social media to promote library services. Originally, it was just meant to be about Twitter, but it turns out that the library’s intentions are more reaching in scope than just the use of one tool. Over the course of the hour and a half, the head of IT informed us of the many different ways that VPL is trying to assert its presence on the web, with extended talks regarding FaceBook, YouTube and Twitter. She started off, however, discussing FourSquare: a program that allows you to identify where you are at any given moment so as to alert your friends. This program is already being used by businesses in order to promote their services – she noted that many pubs around the city will offer you a free drink if you identify that you’re at their location, whereas stores will offer you discounts on their merchandise. The director suggested that VPL offer something similar (whether this be gifts or greater loan periods) for people willing to advertise their presence and use of VPL.
This was really the underlying message of the talk, being advertisement and marketing. Searching VPL on Flickr, for example, yields hundreds of photos not posted by VPL itself (and, problematically, a host of photos representing the other common meaning of VPL: “visible panty line”) – a recurring theme is that we often don’t have control over how our institutions are represented on social networking sites, so regardless of whether or not we have the time to get involved, the public is involving us already. Failing to acknowledge this and keep current with the library’s online image means that we aren’t responding to the way that we’re being referenced, whether this be in either a positive or negative light. More importantly, she implied that diverting funds to marketing on these sites would be more productive than traditional, paper-based marketing, especially since the public does the majority of the work for us here. She even noted one patron’s development of an application that you can use to search Amazon to find reviews of information resources that directly links to VPL’s database – again, this application was developed entirely at the patron’s expense, without even the knowledge of VPL that the patron was working on a tool to provide better access to the library’s collections.
The use of these tools, however, is still in its infancy for the institution itself. The director did note that VPL has one of the most active library Twitter accounts in North America (fourth, by her ranking), and that its FaceBook page has been developing at a good pace (currently with 800 fans), with side pages added for group discussions about the library’s services and events. Its YouTube account, however, hasn’t been much of a success given that there are only eleven videos at last count each with less than a hundred views. Despite this, there was definitely a concentration on using video both to promote the library and offer diversity in our teaching tools – she named several sites (jing being the best) for screencapture that we could use in order to show patrons how to access information via email. They may, as well, be instituting screencaps as demonstrations in a “how do I use this?” type of link on their website for the more challenging tools (namely databases) that VPL offers.
There were, however, some problems identified with using SNS’s, and while some of these were more obvious (ie issues of money and time to develop and implement them), there were others that I hadn’t considered. Some of the programs that seemed to have real value to them (like applications that would allow easy access to Twitter feeds from the reference desk) couldn’t be integrated into the library’s ILS due to technical reasons, and it’s often very difficult to develop workarounds for these. Moreover, the hierarchy of an organization as large as VPL plays a role in developing communication about policies and practices between branches that are taking their first steps into the SNS environment – there is currently no formal policy regarding how the library should be representing itself in these various mediums. And this is a problem, as the library is arguably more accountable for its actions than, say, a random user – copyright infringement and issues of privacy are quite significant, and the library has already gotten in trouble for posting video of its patrons using its services without thinking of the importance of consent. There are a lot of legalities surrounding the use of SNS’s when incorporated into business practices that seem to make them more far more problematic that when employed for personal use.
This said, the session was definitely a call to arms for the library to start creating content that can be posted online. While it’s not mandatory that the branches each set up Twitter and FaceBook accounts, it was strongly promoted as a direction which we should all be moving towards. We were also informed that we can (and should, perhaps) create innovative and interesting videos that we can then post to YouTube or other video sharing sites – that we can do this over the phone (as we were shown how to do) made the idea seem all the more realistic. Many in the audience seemed skeptical, however, and it was obvious that time constraints were a large factor in the apprehension displayed by the staff. Given that SNS use is now a mandate of VPL’s future direction for the library and its branches, it looks like it will be moving forward with a greater presence that capitalizes on the available technologies as they arise regardless of the challenges that it presents. As the director mentioned, VPL’s presence on social networking / media sites is going to happen anyway – we might as well get involved so that we use them to their full potential.
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