Demonstration 6: Social networking site (e.g. Facebook)

Evaluating the experience on a social media site

I'm not yet very comfortable with the experience of searching on Facebook.  There is a fair bit of clutter and empty content, but it's just a matter of getting used to it. It was not too hard. Either navigate on your browser to Facebook.com and do a search for the library you want the page of, or search in your browser for the library you are thinking of and click on the icon on their webpage that takes you to a link for their Facebook page. The library Facebook pages I looked at tended to be a bit too disorganised and busy for my liking, but they may suit other more regular social media users better.  It was relatively straight forward to save the image below to a png file and upload to my blog using the picture icon in the blog.

How social media can be used in a library

I think that a library can use social networking to publicise when they are going to hold events, to let people know about changes such as when opening hours etc could change during the pandemic.  They can also use it to be aware of their users' likes.  Social networking is a way of keeping in touch with their local library community  Perhaps they could also use it for forums like reading groups for particular interest groups. For libraries that are affiliated with a local council or other larger institution (school, TAFE, a uni etc), they could also highlight interesting or important events coming up for their parent organisation and how the library may have some role on that. Libraries might also use social media to inform users of changes in their collection, now books purchased, expansion of the children's collection etc. 

• An example of a library using social networking is how the Newcastle TAFE library uses its Blog - on the blog it provides updates to students, such as how new students can obtain a TAFE card, and promotes on its blog new resources that the library has. The TAFE library uses the blog to provide brief information to its users and links to further information.

• Another example of how a library can use social networking is the Newcastle City Libraries.  The Newcastle City Libraries use social networking fairly widely - on their Facebook page they include videos for users e.g. story reading, and they list short summaries of up-coming community and cultural events sponsored by the Newcastle Council, and they include a Have Your Say feature where people can provide their views on a specific topic etc.  The Newcastle Public Libraries also use social networking to push information out to their users when people subscribe to an RSS feed e.g. for new titles on Borrow Box, & Press Reader. Users can also subscribe to various types of e-newsletters.        

On the the Facebook page of Lake Macquarie Public Library, I like a page by a lifeguard showing a children's book about creatures in the sea. It is shown below: 

(Lake Mac Libraries, 2020)