David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

Social Media as Place

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My last post about those billboards reminded me about the difference between a library’s normal forms of content (books, DVDs, music CDs, etc) and social media.

What’s that difference?

  • Content – a book, a video, etc – is something you DO. You read a book, you watch a movie.
  • Social Media is a place you visit in order to DO. You visit Facebook in order to share something with your mom.

Think of social media as a crowded room in a pretty social setting. A bar, a party, hanging out with friends, etc. You go there to talk, to share, to listen. It’s a place you visit so that you can do something.

There are a couple of cool intersections though. Things like this:

  • Go to Twitter (a place) to talk (something to do) about a book that everyone’s reading (content).
  • Visiting the library (a place) to use the computer to access Facebook to reconnect with a friend (something to do).

So librarians … use your mad powers of social media to connect with your customers to talk about your content. Then see what happens.

image by Bigstock

Interesting way to get some Twitter Stats

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Just saw this thing called “You Are What You Tweet” from Visual.ly, which creates a personalized infographic for your Twitter account. I typed in my personal Twitter account (@davidleeking) to see what happened – but then thought it might be fun to add in my library’s Twitter account.

Here’s what came out – interesting stuff! The “face” of the library? Perhaps! But more importantly, this is a great, visual way to get some idea of what your library’s Twitter account looks like, statistically. Try it out!

Wisconsin Presentation

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Wisconsin Librarians
Wisconsin Librarians listening to DLK

Earlier this week, I spoke at the New Berlin Public Library in Wisconsin for the Waukesha County Federated Library System – Wisconsin has some great librarians for sure!

This was a well-attended talk, and there was some really good discussion afterwards. They are definitely thinking about and planning for the future.

And – just for the attendees – I warned you guys! I said I would post this pic to Flickr, and I did. It also makes a great addition to this post. Text is often much better with visuals… 🙂

Anyway – here’s the Slideshare version of my Wisconsin talk. This was a longer presentation (3 hours), and I combined some thoughts from my usual Freak Out presentation and my newer Creating Customer Experience presentations. The content blends together pretty nicely.

Freak Out, Geek Out, or Seek Out: Trends, Transformation & Change in Libraries

View more presentations from David King.

Is the Web Modern Yet?

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Today’s web is the “modern web” – css, HTML5 coming soon, websites designed with grids, lots of functionality. Yes-sirree, this is the modern web.

Just like this was a modern car:

This “modern car” could’t move fast enough for today’s modern highways (top speeds of 40-45 mph), wasn’t automatic, and didn’t have a/c, radio, or an iPod hookup. Or windows, for that matter. But I’m guessing that to the buyer back then, it was a pretty modern car, and a major change for them. They had to figure out the details of the change – i.e., what should we do with Bessie the horse? Where do we park it? Where do we get gas? How do we maintain it?

My point? That’s where the web is today – roughly 20 years after the first web page went online, we have today’s “modern” web. It certainly looks pretty modern to us, much like those cars from 1927 probably looked to the buyer.

Guess what? Much like that Model T … I don’t think we’re done yet. With websites or with libraries.

Car photo from Wikipedia

Why Just This Week?

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Yay! It’s National Library Week! It’s the week libraries remind their patrons they should love a librarian. We make buttons. We remind people that a community thrives when they have a good library. We ask people to tell us their stories. We bake cakes.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with National Library Week. It gets press. It gets us librarians organized a bit for at least one week during the year. And it can be a lot of fun, too.

But I get a little miffed during this week. Some libraries pour a lot of money and planning and time and festivities into a week … that no one else really cares about. It’s just a made-up week sponsored by ALA. Sorta like National Health IT Week (ooh! That one’s coming up on September 12-16, 2011. Be there or be square!).

As I was writing this post, I received a canned email from Michael dowling, Director, Chapter Relations Office at ALA, that starts like this: “Thank you for supporting your state’s libraries during National Library Week, the perfect week to let your state legislators and governor know how important libraries are to you!”

Why is this week the perfect week? Why don’t we do this stuff the OTHER 51 weeks of the year?

What would happen if we very actively pushed the idea of libraries, of loving your librarian, of reminding our community that libraries thrive with a good library (and then backing up that claim with proof) ALL YEAR LONG?

Something to think about…

pic by vanhookc