My library has a Facebook Page, and I’ve been experimenting with it lately. I have loosely broken down what I’ve done into three sections – Basic Info, Facebook Functionality, and Social Stuff:
Basic Info:
- photo of the library
- basic library info, like our address, phone number, and hours of operation
- shared our website’s URL
Facebook Functionality:
- YouTube app – showing some recent YouTube videos
- a couple fan photos of books
- Facebook fans – 192 of em so far
Social Stuff:
- RSS feeds – sending my website’s main RSS feed to the Facebook page via Simply RSS (doesn’t appear to be working today – drat)
- Favorited other Topeka-area Facebook pages (local sports team, the performing arts center, a local church, etc.)
- I make sure to thank people when they write something on our wall
- I sent one “Update to Fans” broadcast message – no direct responses, but more people favorited us after the message went out
- Started one discussion board topic – “What would you like to see here?” (no one has commented on it yet 🙂
I also asked my twitter friends for input – what were they doing with Facebook Pages, and what other innovative library Facebook Pages have they found. Here’s what they said:
- bmljenny – we use the “Blog RSS Feed Reader” app to post our blog feed on our page. Seems to sync OK.
- sharon370 – I like Purchase College Library’s space on fb – Bookshare, Events, RSS feed from lib blog, OCLC app
- fabi_k – i like the fb page of the UoM graduate library: http://tinyurl.com/6bw87u – esp. the “ask us” and catalog search feature
- debrouillard – student program and event advertising mostly
- amylibrarian – I use facebook to promote the CiteMe application.
- shelitwits – found it! do you send out event notices or just use the feed to include events? i think sending FB updates to fans helps a bit
Another person said this, via a Facebook message: “One thing I would like to see happen here, is spreading out control of the page. I wish we had someone from each department who would post events and contribute to updating fans. Like, if reference has a new database, they can send out a notice that way … or if reader’s service has a cool new recommendation they can do the same. I would like to see that happen w/ our Myspace page as well. We have WAY more friends on Myspace than FB. We have a bunch of feeds sent to FB, but that only works if our fans are coming to our page.”
Things I still need to add:
- Library catalog search app (need to talk to my web developer about this)
- Flickr app – so we can display our Flickr photos in Facebook
What other ideas do you have? Are you doing something cool in Facebook or on a Facebook Page that’s not listed here? Please share!
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Definitely set it up as a Facebook Page. They’re meant for businesses and
organizations. Facebook Groups are really more for interests, hobbies, or
topics.
That’s not really the script source code, it’s the HTML output of the script for one particular day. Being able to paste HTML wasn’t what I had in mind — I want to run the script so that it dynamically self-updates daily just as it does on the news blog.