Marketing Libraries and Librarians

Oh dear. Whereas I have enjoyed working through the Cam 23 things I do wonder if the Fellows and authorities who manage the finances have quite as much enthusiasm for social media. When I suggested that I could be followed on Twitter and Facebook the following email exchange took place:

No, Fairport Convention, Marmalade, The Archers, Corduroy trousers, Sandals
..... are all indicators of sentient humanity!, which is more than can be
said for

Simon Cowell, Facebook, Russel Brand, Twitter, Big Brother, etc etc

R

--On 25 February 2010 10:40:25 +0000 Suzan wrote

> Went to a Fairport Convention gig last week where they dedicated a song
> to Phil Archer aka Norman Painting.
> Does that count?
> Suzan
>
> r@cam.ac.uk wrote:
>> Twitter!
>>
>> Facebook!
>>
>> You'll be telling me that you listen to boy-bands next!
>>
>> And very best wishes to you two, including on the Adriatic

Andy's marketing suggestions the 4 Cs of content, context, connections and conversations can be achieved by regularly updated websites, engaging with academics and managers in committees and meetings with student reps. Blogging, and setting up links to blogs via twitter, facebook, the library home page etc is probably the most useful thing that Librarians can do to raise awareness of resources, services etc on offer rather than hope that institutional accounts on the various social media will attract followers

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Zotero

Catch up time.
Am sure I loaded Zotero on the office machine, some time ago but never used it, have now loaded it at home, and tried to save some items but doesn't want to play.
Ah well you cant win them all.

LinkedIn and networking

There is an over the pond feel to LinkedIn with its openness about educational background and work experience and the ability to post recommendations about co-workers. Perhaps it is of more use in employment areas with high turnover. The weekly digest of group news to my in box has not yielded much of interest yet, and I have been a member for about a year, and I am bemused by the people you may know suggestions. I would also like to know who has been headhunted as a result of joining.

Library use of facebook

A year or so ago I created a College Library facebook page loaded some interesting images of the older and newer library and put useful links on it to COPAC, the library OPAC and JSTOR. Eight or so librarians became fans plus a few randoms with no Cambridge connection and then Facebook had one of its revamps, the carefully designed pages were split over several tabs and advertising appeared down one side. No College students were fans so I took the page down.

For several years however, I became a fan or liked the Freshers page and shortly before the beginning of Michaelmas term posted a reminder about Library tours to the wall, or to a discussion. Don't think it had much impact but I did get an invite to an 18th birthday party. Think I was washing my hair that day.

There are various facebook groups which might be of interest for networking or professional development but in general the activity in them is slight. I use Facebook to stay in touch with family and friends and share photographs and apart from Scrabble have resisted the lure of the various games on offer. If students want to befriend me that is fine, but each summer I weed my friends list. Facebook offers a means of staying in touch, offering support, organising social activities and establishing an online persona distinct from that portrayed in the office at home. It's fun, and we all need that, but perhaps it is not worth the time needed to maintain and update an institutional page when websites, emails, camtools etc are already used.

Widget - anyone want to test?

Library thing widget.

Seems to work

Library thing

I used Library Thing in my previous life as a College Librarian to search the tags of the Central Science's Library account for possible purchases at the end of the financial year in subjects with lower accessions than normal. I thought that the Medical Library was also on Library Thing but cannot find the booklists and tags so must be mistaken



So I have set up, by following Kirsty's instructions a personal library account, and keeping to the alias I have created called it CalonLan (no spaces were allowed). I grabbed some books next to the laptop which were purchased in student days and entered them, one a catalogue of Burgundian sculpture had to be done from scratch, others had records but not necessarily book images.

Library Thing is very useful for tagging, and provides "good enough" catalogue for home use or perhaps current awareness, but for Cambridge Library users I thing that RSS feeds of recently added books, or the new books listing provided by LMS systems such as Softlink Liberty3 are well established and do not require additional data entry.

Reflection

This image comes from a BBC news link that arrived today in my Google Reader feed, one of the tools I have set up since starting the Cam 23 programme. In very small print it is credited to Reuters

Many of the social networking and other tools explored in the first half of the programme were not new to me. I had registered as an enthusiastic early adopter when they were launched but then not made the time to explore them comprehensively. The 23 Things Cambridge programme with the additional links and exercises have prompted me to investigate further and I am looking forward to finding out more about Zotero and Mendeley.

We acquired a laptop with windows 7 at home and igoogle was the default home page so I set up a google ID, a new email address and a google webpage, which is far easier than writing the html script for a homepage before Cam 23 was launched but did not explore reader until Thing 1. Gmail or googlemail does not have features which are present in hermes webmail, such as the ability to sort columns according to subject or sender, but does keep related messages together, has folders and keyword searching of messages. For quick access to email messages I prefer putty access to hermes.cam.ac.uk but this is dependent on the programme being loaded on the computer in use, webmail is accessible on any system, and in Internet cafes google is often the default home page. In an office google mail or thunderbird or outlook can be kept running in the background so that you can be aware of incoming messages but time management skills are required to concentrate on the task in hand rather than check messages, or worse still engage in chat because a friend is also online.

Blogging has been great fun, and has been taken up enthusiastically by Cam 23 participants, but who has the time to read and comment on all the entries. For chartership candidates and new entrants to the profession a blog will be a worthwhile addition to a portfolio of skills acquired but for many librarians it will be hard to maintain a schedule of blogging in term time.

Doodle and Google calendar are useful tools for keeping track of meetings and events. I have found the email prompting for google calendar and can see that in an organisation with several staff it would help in forward planning, but wall charts with stickers and paper diaries still have a place, especially the university diary with board and term meetings pre-entered.

Twitter, Flickr, Slideshare were lovely to explore but suck the hours out of the day. I think that in Twitter effective use of # hashtag and bit.ly urls enables sharing news and links to conferences #npc2010 but believe that this is a tool for professional development rather than engaging with users. Any tool which requires a log in is setting up a barrier in the exchange of information.

Tagging and sharing links appeals to the cataloguer within me. There has been some very effective subject use of delicious by faculty libraries, one example here linked from the webpage, but I have found it hard to search across all Cam23 blogs for references to specific topics. The solution has had to be bookmarking an item when found with a todo tag to read later.

I would like to thank the programme contributors for writing the instructions to the things and the participants for their comments and extra links. This programme is bringing together the Cambridge library community in a way that the annual libraries@cambridge or brown bag lunches cannot hope to achieve.
Best get back to sorting out my paperwork:





Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Cambrige Libraries on Twitter

Which Cambridge Libraries are on Twitter?
A couple of days ago, I created a private list of Cambridge Libraries, as opposed to Librarians, on Twitter, from the #cam23 comments and members.
The first list of seven libraries was expanded by clicking on the followers’ link and scrolling down, a time consuming exercise which added three libraries.

At the drop in session I chatted to Andy about lists and institutional use of Twitter and he pointed out lists such as @followalibrary/United Kingdom


Later I revisited the blog by The Passion and the Fury “Why I created a library Twitter account”
It seemed that it might be interesting to find out as of 1st July 2010 :

How many Cambridge libraries have Twitter links on their websites?
How many people are following?

Is Twitter better used for personal and professional development and networking or as an additional means of marketing the library? If so who is being targeted, other librarians, faculty/department/academic staff or post and undergraduates?
Although there a variety of librarian lists on Twitter, and you can sort on #hashtags I found it hard to identify institutional users from Twitter search screen and went back to the web pages listed in the Cambridge Libraries Directory. There were some Libraries with Facebook but no Twitter links and some College Twitter links but very few libraries have yet embedded Twitter links in their webpages

Institution Followers Following Listed
ebookscambridge 153 199 25
libatcam 197 209 17
The UL 65 862 80
Homerton College 74 111 16
Wolfson College 3 15 0
Economics Marshall 74 160 12
Education faculty 7 37 8
Earth Sciences 46 41 4
Music Pendlebury 2 18 0
Philosophy Casimir Lewis61 57 8
Management Judge 23 137 17

(apologies - have spent longer than I intended trying to get a table into the blog and have given up)

We are tweeting, to each other about interesting developments but students and perhaps faculty may not be engaging with this method of communication