Reaching out to students in online spaces such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace can be both potentially touchy and a positive outreach tool for librarians. There is certainly a fine line between effectively reaching out to students (or patrons) and overstepping the boundaries of professionalism. Mack et al’s article Reaching Students With Facebook: Data and Best Practices (2007) was written when Facebook was mainly used by students, but the ideas presented for librarians can be adapted to patrons of public libraries as well.
The article stresses creating an online presence to meet the users where they are, rather than hope that they come to the library’s static web page. Creating a profile in Facebook adds a human element to the library, so that users “might begin to identify their librarians as approachable individuals” (Mack, 2007). When the article was written, Facebook did not allow entities to have profiles, only individuals, so the article is calling for librarians to create individual profiles. This has since changed and one can now create a profile for an entity such as a library. I feel this is a good thing, that a person can “like” a library’s profile and then receive updates from the library in their newsfeed. Similarly with Twitter, patrons can follow a library’s Twitter feed.
I get a little uncomfortable with the idea of librarians actually contacting patrons individually through their Facebook accounts. Facebook users tend to value their privacy and seem to enjoy having their conversations with their friends in a private space. As a future librarian, I would feel a little awkward sending individual messages to people offering reference help. On the other hand, sending out a public message via the library’s Facebook or Twitter feed with an offer for reference help and the subsequent contact information feels like a more appropriate way to go.
The proactive reaching out to the public might be less awkward on Twitter, where people are aware (I hope) that the messages they send are visible to anyone and everyone in cyberspace. If a person on Twitter tweets a reference-type question or library-related question, I think it is perfectly appropriate for a librarian to reply to the tweet and provide an answer.
Mack, D. et al (2007). Reaching students with Facebook: Data and best practices. Electronic Journal Of Academic and Special Librarianship, 8(2). Retrieved from http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/content/v08n02/mack_d01.html
I think it is particularly important for librarians that have an online account like twitter to actively search for the people in their community that are talking about libraries or asking questions. Interacting with the patrons who've made the first move seems like half the point of the online presence to me.
ReplyDeleteJenn