Wrap Up Questions

What kinds of social media apps do you think you might use in your library? 
I see myself using Instagram to create photos for our Facebook page, as well as Goodreads for creating a social group for our library. I've discovered that some random patron who no longer lives in our area has already created an inactive book club on Goodreads for our library, so I'm going to have to work on getting that deleted somehow or making an official group.

If you use some already, what ideas did you get for making better use of them?
As mentioned above, I already use Facebook but plan to use Instagram to make it more fabulous. Also we have a community book club, but I'm going to work on Goodreads to create an online book club as an experiment.

Week 4: Instagramming It

While I wasn't previously a big Instagram user, I was aware of the program and I'd dabbled in it on my phone. Well, thanks to the class, our library is now a bonafide Instagram machine.

Check us out! So far, I've posted some of our holiday book displays along with Prairie Reader and audiobook displays.

http://instagram.com/plattepubliclibrary
 
As for finding Instagram users who are affiliated with libraries, I had a little trouble. Some of the users with library names were definitely not appropriate. Then, as I looked for individual libraries, such as NYC or those in SD, I drew a blank. I did come up with a couple of interesting users when searching for libraries, which will follow. However, my advice to those searching for user accounts related to libraries should look for books, authors, publishers, or story time groups: anything related to libraries in a sense.

For example, one of the user accounts I discovered is libraryloves: http://instagram.com/libraryloves 
This user interests me because it is focused on literature. Collections of old classics and cartoons highlighting a love of books are on their feed.

Another user, libraryofebooks is a book related Instagram page featuring the covers of new titles. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to get one of their covers on my feed to copy their URL. I can see this would be a fun Instagram feed in which to find new books and images of covers to share on my website.

What is Social Capital?

I discovered a cool way to advertise your library; post a video about how to have fun at a library!

In addition to being interesting, it also promotes several different aspects of the library that go into the realm of community organization. Who wouldn't love to hang out at these libraries!? Now just to translate this into a small town, public library...