eSociety: Discovering Humanity in the Digital

We've been looking mainly at conceptual approaches and analysis of how library staff do and could use social media for the better of their system and communities. However, through the magic of co-worker recommendation, I have recently discovered a Facebook Group created by and for library staff interested in social media. Libraries & Social Media is a public group on social media where staff can connect, brainstorm, and collaborate via the very medium of communication they seek to master. I am in love with how meta this is! As soon as I heard about the group, I submitted a request to join, and now I'm in! But what kinds of things are staff discussing? Bots The most recent post is a poll for staff to consider how they might use bots to improve their social media presence. Mainly, this move is focused on chatbots, which would be helpful for services such as texting to renew materials, and subscribing to texting services for getting info easier. Creations Many lib

Fake news . This recent rash of viral misinformation spread on social media is of great concern to anyone who seeks to understand the world around them. Libraries in particular are hoping to help patrons, and really anyone they can, understand this issue and empower people to recognize fake news when they see it. Libraries are pushing back, both by educating social media users, and by remaining an unbiased, credible source of information for anyone. Some libraries are combating this informative crisis by spreading helpful tips and info about spotting and blocking fake info in your social media feeds. Many libraries are trying to keep users vigilant. This has become such a common goal that the IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) even created a simple info-graphic ready-made to be used & shared on social media. See the source blog post here . However, as we all know too well, one can only be hyper-vigilant for so long, and soc

So we've already talked about library presence on Facebook and Twitter, some pretty expected places. But what about Snapchat? This article about why libraries should use Snapchat blew my mind, and sparked my curiosity - so I did some investigating about how effectively libraries are using Snapchat. Finding library stories and accounts How can you find a library story? Turns out it can be pretty difficult. There are two main ways to find libraries on Snapchat: as individual accounts ('Friends') with specific handles, and as publicly available stories in Discover. Many libraries choose to create library Snapchat accounts as platforms for their library story. While I can see the potential benefit of this may lie in the ability for patrons to snap responses and questions in response to a story, it has the huge drawback of making that library insanely difficult to find on a whim. Patrons will need to know the library's exact handle in Snapchat to find it. One perso