Using Social Media in Libraries: Best Practices

Since there’s no point in Twittering if no one acts on your tweets and there’s no point in having a Facebook page with a million “likes” if library use doesn’t increase, you’ll welcome the eight best practices presented here because they will help your library both actually do social media in a way that matters and do it well.

The successful strategies presented here range from the Vancouver Public Library’s innovative use of Twitter to the United Nations Library’s adoption of a social media policy to the Farmington, Connecticut Public Library’s fantastic work using social media to reach teens who weren’t using the library. Other libraries highlight their ventures into media including blogs, Pinterest, and social catalogs.

Table of Contents

1. Blogging for Readers
2. The United Nations Library Is Seriously Social
3. Visualizing Information with Pinterest
4. Navigating the Virtual Horizon: Finding Our Way Using Social Media in Hospital Libraries
5. Beyond the Teen Space: Reaching Teens through Social Media
6. The Library in the Social Network: Twitter at the Vancouver Public Library
7. Successful Blogging Strategy and Design
8. Social Catalogs: Implementing an Online Social Community as an Extension to Our Physical Libraries