Tag: social media

Posted in AALL, Government, Presentations

AALL Annual Meeting, Day Two

Posted on by ashleyahlbrand

With the conference officially in full swing today, there was quite a lot going on.  This morning I attended program A-4: Social Media and Your Library: Strategies to Lead the Way.  This was a great panel discussion on the types of social media law libraries are using, both internally and externally, and it also identified some tools that can aid in social media management.  The panelists, Jennifer Murray of Maricopa County Superior Court’s Law Library, Kathleen Brown, of Oklahoma City University’s Law Library, and Steven Lastres of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP discussed their experiences with social media, providing a great look at how different types of law libraries use and manage social media in different ways.  (Ex: Twitter as a competitive intelligence tool?!?  Fascinating!)

A great takeaway from this program was the importance of putting in place a social media policy and strategy (and making sure the two are aligned).  While myriad emerging technologies exist that libraries could be playing with, you don’t want to dive into something just because it’s there: as with any library service, there should be a purpose behind the technologies you choose, and having a social media policy and strategy in place will help you determine what tools are best for your library.  As the resident “tweeter” and Facebook manager for our library, I can tell you how time-consuming social media can be.  You have to remember that it’s a service of your library; once it’s established, you need to maintain it, and this will take time.  This program was excellent for anyone thinking of diving into social media or even for those of us already in the thick of it.  If you didn’t have a chance to go, I would recommend accessing the slides from AALL2Go.

The other major programming event I “attended” today was our own!  B-8: State Constitutions: Current Historical, and How They Change was held at 2 o’clock today in front of a fairly crowded room.  I want to thank everyone who attended our program this afternoon, as well as my co-presenters, Jennifer Morgan and Cindy Dabney, and our moderator, Michelle Cosby.  I was so pleased with the turnout for our program; we have worked on it for quite a long time and were so glad to share it with our colleagues today.  I would also like to thank the GD-SIS for sponsoring our program.

For those of you who were unable to attend, our program discussed the challenges of state constitutional research.  While there are many finding aids on researching the U.S. Constitution, state constitutions can be more challenging, especially if you’re asked to research a state with which you are unfamiliar: there is no uniform method of state constitutional amendment, and different states produce and preserve different documentation along the way, which can be a struggle for researchers.  Our program, therefore, identified tools and documents to look for when researching the current or historical texts of state constitutions, or when researching amendment and revision processes within a state.  The program culminated by us revealing a 50-State research guide Jennifer created from research she and I compiled on state constitutions.

If you would like materials from our program, the handout is presently available on AALL2GO and at the print stations at the conference; our slides will be posted shortly.

With our program complete, I am looking forward to a restful sleep before a very busy day tomorrow.  I hope you’re all enjoying the conference!

Posted in Outreach, Social Media

Fun, Useful, or Ridiculous? Perceptions of Social Media Use by Libraries

Posted on by ashleyahlbrand

As you may have noticed from many of my other posts, I truly enjoy research.  Whether because of my job, the courses I have taken, or simply because of my general interest in the subject, much of my recent research has revolved around social media use in various types of libraries.  Two projects I am currently working on have involved surveys of librarians about social media and other emerging technologies, how they are (or are not) used by their libraries, and the librarians’ general perceptions about the use of these technologies by libraries.  What amazes me is the dichotomy of responses I encounter in these surveys, no matter what type of librarian I survey.

Although certainly not all libraries are involved with social media, the profession is no stranger to it either.  Many libraries have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts; some have YouTube channels and GoodReads libraries; others are even branching into Pinterest.  As evidenced by much of the positive feedback in these surveys, many librarians praise social media as another means of connecting with patrons and the community, through avenues many of their patrons already frequent (ex: Facebook Newsfeeds).

Yet for every positive comment I come across in these survey responses, I also find many opposed to libraries’ use of social media.  Often these comments refer to the uselessness of social media generally, not just for libraries.  Some see it as too time-consuming.  Others see it as a separate sphere of existence, that the social sphere and the professional sphere should not overlap.

Clearly, I am a proponent of social media use by libraries.  My favorite aspect is the bridging of formal and informal; I can post library announcements and links to pertinent news articles and research, but I can also post historical pictures of the library, fun and informative infographics I come across, etc.  For instance, here is an image (of my dog) that I made first as a slide for our digital sign and later posted to our Facebook page: relax copy

Like so many proponents of social media use by libraries, I appreciate the ability to reach our patrons where they already spend regular amounts of time.  With the interconnected abilities of various social media outlets (ex: I can pin something on Pinterest and have it automatically post on Twitter and Facebook as well), I can hopefully reach patrons through their social media of choice — some may prefer Facebook over Twitter or vice versa.  Of course, I realize that not all patrons use any social media, and that’s fine – I think it is important to note that our use of social media does not replace any other services of the library; non-social media users can still receive information about the library in other ways, such as email and print announcements.  I’m not sure that I would support replacing social media with any other library service, because I think you risk isolating a significant patron base that does not use social media.

Social media use by libraries is by no means without flaws.  I think you have to know what you’re getting into when you sign up for social media accounts of any kind.  Social media is unlike static web pages; the content is always changing, fluid.  If your library doesn’t have the time to regularly, at least daily, add a new post or tweet, then now is probably not the time to get involved with social media.  As social as it is, it’s still a real responsibility.  That said, I think it can also be an excellent outreach tool and creative outlet for libraries, and I think its use by libraries will only continue to expand and improve.

Posted in Outreach, Social Media

Pinterest and the Law Library

Posted on by ashleyahlbrand

Digging deeper into social media, I began a Pinterest account for the law library today: http://www.pinterest.com/iumaurerlawlib.

Of all the social media, I find to Pinterest to be one of the most addicting to play around with.  That said, we are certainly not the first library, and not even the first law library, to dive in.  Pinterest allows a user to create “boards” on which to pin images on a subject of the user’s choosing.  A personal Pinterest account might have a board for recipes, another for crafts, and another for books.  (I don’t believe there’s a limit to the number of boards one can have.)  A library could have the same personal categories, or it might tailor them to library services, for instance, images of the dust jackets for their newest acquisitions.  This is the direction our Pinterest account is running.

Apart from creating boards, Pinterest users follow others’ boards, picking them based on their own interests.  So far we are following the few other law libraries with Pinterest accounts, as well as a few organizations related to law schools, such as CALI.org.  If you see a pin on another’s board that you like, you can repin the image to one of your boards, ‘like’ the pin, and/or comment on the pin.

As with so much of the social media out there, Pinterest also allows a user to post pins to Twitter and Facebook accounts.  Since the law library’s Twitter and Facebook accounts are linked, this means I can pin to one of our Pinterest accounts, have it announced on our Twitter page, and have that tweet fed into our Facebook timeline!  Aaahhh, interconnectedness!

Having just begun the account today, our account is quite small.  We have two boards begun, one with quotes from/about lawyers and the law, and one highlighting some of our latest acquisitions.  I would like to add some more boards, highlighting some of our databases and research guides, and eventually some fun boards about the library as well.
I am excited to see where our Pinterest account takes us.  It’s another, different, way for us to reach out to patrons, and we’ll see where it goes from here.