Librarians as Creators

Librarians are not always creators or creative, but social media, marketing and programs are increasing the necessity for creative, creator librarians.

When viewing the typology of creativity (creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators) you can see information professionals easily fit their activities into many of the roles. However, as the creator the librarian has the most power and influence over a project – and is thus more responsible for the success or failure of a creative project. This can be incredibly taxing – particularly with social media which requires the librarian to be actively maintaining their creation. Does expecting librarians to be prolific and innovative creators put an unfair amount of pressure on information professionals who may already be taxed with extra duties due to budget cuts?

 Librarians as Creativity Promoters

You can’t force your patrons into creativity but you can encourage creativity by providing tools and spaces (both in-library and online) for creative collaboration.

Through instruction & information-providing practices (ex. teaching about creative commons, tech how-tos, etc.) information professionals often provide tools for patrons to be social media creators and knowledgable repurposers.

Libraries can also help provide online social tools by providing software and subscriptions to online services. This can be particularly useful for people like artists and musicians who are increasingly using the online world to collaborate. For example, the online notation service Noteflight often has collaborative music-creation projects, but requires a paid subscription for anyone who wishes to create more than 10 scores.

Collaborative creativity between librarians and patrons

Library social media efforts sometimes start with a librarian that encourages others to also create.  For example, LIBRARY BOOKFACE,  initiated by the Carrol County Public Library in Maryland on tumblr encouraged patrons to join and share their own photos of ‘bookfacing’  (people with books over their faces).

Social Librarian Infographic

The use of social media in the workplace can make it easy for organizations to communicate with followers and patrons, but it can also swiftly expose a large number of followers to any accidental mishaps that occur in the social media feed and cause a backlash of criticism (and in some cases result in termination of the employee who creates content for the social media feed).

Increasingly, employees are also required to heavily self-censor their personal social media use or they may end up facing repercussions at work.

Examples of Social Media mishaps (many of which led to termination) within the last few years:

• http://time.com/money/3019899/10-facebook-twitter-mistakes-lost-job-millennials-viral/
• http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/being-shamed-on-social-media-should-not-get-people-fired/385597/
• http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/06/living/buzzfeed-social-media-fired/
• http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-fired-2011-5?op=1
• http://www.thestar.com/life/technology/2013/08/15/using_twitter_facebook_led_to_these_people_being_fired.html

Although many of these examples conform to the clickbait style of headline and are designed to elicit emotional responses or cater to views of their reader demographic (ex. Money’s article on ‘social media blunders that cost a millennial a job’) they bring up issues about privacy and increasingly non-existent division of work and home.

Ultimately, these stories highlight the importance of a well-crafted social media policy for libraries that is fully communicated to all librarians and staff at the library (or within the library system). Keeping personal opinions out of organizational social media and maintaining polite and inoffensive language should be obvious. However, policies should also cover things such as when employees are allowed to access the organizations social media (should they address patrons responses/posts at all hours of the day or be restricted to typical 9-5 work hours? –  What should be done about the balance of work and home?) or what to do when employees violate the social media policies.

Aside from shielding the organization and employees from accidents that could cause significant problems, policies can also help make the library’s social media more useful to patrons and more efficient and effective at communicating to the library’s audience by directing content away from memes and jokes that will be ignored by patrons and toward things like hours and programs.

Other Resources

http://blog.credoreference.com/2014/06/5-mistakes-libraries-make-with-social-media/

Liz’s Blog (Feb 9) on Social Media Policy