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Social media and the Internet of Things is coming to a library near you.

There are many ways in which social media and specifically the Internet of Things, can help at the library. Some of the things that I personally would love to see first are:

 -- Tracking items within the library. This would allow automatically checking items in when they first enter the library and automatically checking them out as they leave the library as well as being able to find an item that has been miss-shelved. No more having patrons insist they turned in an item already but the system saying they still have it checked out. And eventually having the patrons be able to use their phones or devices to lead them to the item they are looking for (sort of like a gps turn-by-turn but for the library)

 -- Using data to help organize the library more efficiently. If we know that certain items always seem to be checked out together, we can more efficiently place the different items so they can be found quicker with less wandering patrons. (for example if biography books always seem to be checked out with mystery novels)

 -- Due date reminders and other reminders for library events (or community events) could be pushed out to phones and devices for patrons who have elected to have them sent out. This would be quicker and more efficient that sending out notices in the mail or even by email.

There are so many ways that IoT could contribute to making the library easier for the patron to use (and for the librarian as well). The more of the basic tasks that we can automate, the more time librarians can spend helping patrons with the things that technology cannot yet.

However, there are many concerns and decisions to be made before these things can come to pass. Specifically, people need to decide where concerns for privacy of data and security of data are in relation to their desire for the conveniences that technology can offer. Also how much do we trust these devices and their makers? Do we trust them with controlling our environment yet? Or do we prefer to maintain control instead of giving control over to the technology? These devices offer convenience, increased efficiency and less wasted time and resources, but is that enough?

The best things to do:

Listen first - Before you do anything, listen, watch and explore the social media site(s) you are interested in joining. The people you want to reach may not even be a presence on your favorite site. Figure out first, where your audience is and what they are interested in. Then you can make sure that your time is not wasted and that you are posting the right messages to attract the right people.

Have a plan - Anytime you are starting a new project at work, you will be expected to have a plan with goals and a way to measure success. Social media is no different when you are doing it as a library. You don’t want to waste your precious and limited time when you have so much else to do (and your supervisors will not appreciate that either). Establish a schedule and stick to it, have goals that a quantifiable to prove your success.

Interact - Social media is meant to be social. It is not a new advertising route, make sure you are not just talking about your library in the same way as you create fliers or notices on your website. Ask and answer questions and comments, share things of interest from others and start or join interesting conversations already going on.

Optimize for sharing - Make it easy for others to share your content. Don’t forget to place share buttons on your website and postings. Learn how to use hashtags correctly to make you content more findable. Make sure you add links to your other social media accounts on each account. Be easier to find by using the same name, avatar and banners on your accounts. Don’t miss the small things by rushing on to your postings. There is so much already out there, you need to do your best to make your library findable and your content easily shareable. That way the work you do will go farther.

Analyze - Learn how to use analytics and determine how often is right for you to check them. Know what stats are of interest to you and don’t get bogged down with too much data. This should be part of your social media plan as well.

The worst things to do:

Jump first - Getting excited about joining social media or just in hurry and posting stuff without looking around first, makes the poster look more like a spammer than someone who cares about their message/community.

Wherever, Whenever posts - People may follow or like someone just because they see one post that interests them. But, they are not paying attention and truly listening to you until they know they can expect posts on a regular basis. By posting inconsistently, you give the impression that you don’t really care. Sort of like the friend that will call once and then not again until they want something from you.

All Advertising, All the time - No one keeps listening for long to that one person that only talks about themselves and their own problems.

No buttons, no problem - If it is not easy to post something from your site, then the person will move on to the next thing to post and you are the one losing out, all for the lack of a button.

Well, at least some ideas on how to measure success in social media for libraries.

In order to tell how successful your social media efforts have been, you first need to make sure you have listed your goals. Different libraries will have different goals based mostly on their audience. For example, a library in a small town vs a library in a big city will have very different expectations both in numbers and in types of interaction they are hoping to encourage.

Every library will have different measurements that they want to follow based on their different goals as well. Some libraries will be most interested in seeing their likes and reposts go up, some will be more interested in increasing their interactions with people online (comments, etc).

There are many different options to track the measurements you are interested in for your library. One option to start with is to use the free analytics that most of the social media sites have on offer, for example facebook and twitter both have their own analytics. Facebook has Facebook Insights and Twitter has Twitter Analytics. Both are good places to start with the basic measurements. They are not customizable like many of the 3rd party services, but then those services can add up fast as well.

There are many ways to market your social media accounts and they will continue to grow and change as social media/technology grows and changes.

When first setting up a new social media account, there are a few things to make sure to do to help with marketing.  Make sure you use an account name (user name) that is the same as any other social media accounts you use (and it is recognizable as your library).  And also try to make any pictures and backgrounds consistent across your accounts. Make sure you list links to other social media accounts on each new social media as well as prominently on your library website.  Make sure your staff and volunteers all know about your social media accounts and can connect to them with their own accounts if they would like to (also good so they can answer any patron questions about your social media presence).

In the library, you can market your social media by posting information near the patron computers, have handouts (maybe as bookmarks) with library information and your social media information, and even add the social media info to handouts about programming in the library.

While posting to your social media accounts you can help market them, by making sure you understand and are using tags and hashtags properly, add pictures, animation and video as these draw more interest, make sure you post things other than library related posts that your patrons will find of interest, and consider using contests or polls to increase interaction levels on your social media accounts. If you use contests, consider always adding a way for patrons to participate outside of social media entries (like a “no purchase necessary” option).

Libraries can benefit greatly from using big data. In collecting and using big data however, libraries should always make sure it is used to the benefit of their students/patrons and that the information collected is secure.

I would say there are two types of information here, the patron information required when getting a library card or using the library services, and information that is voluntarily given by the patron (such as posts or comments on a library’s social media accounts). The required patron information has policies in place already to protect it (or should), these policies should be updated regularly as computer systems and networks that can access the patron databases, change with technology changes.

This patron information can be and has been used to pull out statistics of use for the library. For example, how many patrons in distinct age ranges are actively using the library. These statistics can be used to help a social media plan as well, by watching to see if the activity of certain patron groups change during or after a change in the library’s use of social media accounts.

In using either the patron data or other volunteered information for any use, the most important thing to consider is transparency. Most people very often will accept “terms and conditions” but never read them until they have a problem. Because the purpose of libraries is to serve the needs of their patrons/students/faculty, I think it is even more important to be upfront with people about how you might intend to use any information they give you. Especially the new kind of information that they are not used to considering such as entries on social media that relate to the library. People have grown used to the idea of their data being used by companies, we don’t need to constantly put forward about how the info we have gathered will be used, but it should be available for people to easily find and very easy for people to understand. So many companies create “terms and conditions” that are extremely long and wordy and often seem written in legalese that was never meant to be read through let alone understood easily.

Most recently, when preparing for the interview for my current job (that I got, yeah!), I used LinkedIn to look up the people at the library that I might encounter in an interview and Youtube to research and learn about some of the terms in the job listing that I didn’t know about. 

Personally, I spend most of my time on Pinterest repinning (”curating” sounds better:) onto lots of boards that cover my varied interests. On Twitter, I spend most of my time retweeting things too. I don’t have alot of family on social media to keep up with and am not really a “social” person so haven’t used that side of things.

Working at a rural public library, I am actually finding a greater need for me to have a good understanding of a wide variety of social media rather than to create content on those social media sites to promote our library. I am the “computer tech” person at the library, so have spent time sitting at one of our computers with a patron helping them to post/respond to craigslist ads, solve problems with FB posts, and figure out problems with Youtube videos. Alot of our patrons have social media accounts, but come to the library to use those accounts as they don’t have internet service at their homes, so any problems or questions they rely on us/me to answer.

Hi! My name is Stacey. I am originally from SoCal, but moved to Arizona following family. I now live in Chino Valley, about an hour north of Phoenix. We are high enough to not get Phoenix’s triple digits but low enough to not get as much snow as Flagstaff. We get snow a couple times each winter and it lasts long enough to admire without becoming a nuisance.

I am just starting back in school after quite a few years. I seem to be doing things a bit backwards since I got my job as a cataloger first and am now looking to go back to school to get my MLIS. But whatever works, right? Our library is small enough that I get to wear many hats including cataloger, collection development, purchaser, tech support for our patron computers, web design and occassional circ desk. But we are also big enough to never be bored! We have a great group of people including our very large friends group that helps my job enormously by going through all of our donations, and also running our book sale section and selling books on Amazon for us.