How can social media be used to enhance library services?

My library established a Social Media Committee and teams for FB, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. The Committee reviewed who uses each service (we started with about ten social venues and selected four) and will complete an ROI, assessment, and recommendations for dropping or adding other media at the end of the semester. 

This white paper is very interesting:

It provides a good summary of the situation of the field...

Thanks for sharing Mark and Giuseppe.. I am in the process of writing a paper for publication so anything that you can share from that experience please let me know.

Hi,

It makes sense since libraries are social entities providing benefits to the community.  Perhaps more like in the sense of goodreads where a person can browse and create libraries of books read, recommendations, etc.  

Every academic library in Israel is connected to social media, please have a look at the university library of Haifa

on the lower left side of the web page you will observe the links to social media. The use of social media helps create an immediate interactions with library users, and more important, convert non-users into becoming library users. The social media allows for presentation of news, exhibitions etc, and reduces the information load of the library's homepage.

Regards

Dr. Avishag Gordon

Certainly social media should be used to expand the library's services. But it is necessary to carefully organize this work. Social media should provide high-level information. We can not allow unprofessional presentation of the material in any form.

It totally depends upon how and to how much extent, we incorporate social media in library services... In the era where we have to test and authenticate each piece of information, utmost care in handling information must be taken while using the social media in library services. Social Media may proved to be a boon in marketing of library services if used in a proper manner.

I don't think we can afford to opt out of social media given that students are virtually all using it as their primary communication tool, specifically facebook and to a lesser extent twitter. We need to join their informal groupings around courses and subjects (in HE) to pick up complaints and enquiries and turn them into positive experiences.

We cannot survive if we stay behind as far as social media is concern. Most of our student are on social media. We therefore need to be where our primary clients are. First we can use it as our communication tool, which is to inform our students with the changes in our libraries e.g. changes in opening hours. Secondly we can use it as a marketing tool to market our products and service. Thirdly we can use it for data collection to obtain feedback from our students with regard to the service we offer and their rate of satisfaction with that.

Thank you very much for your contibutions; they are very useful.

Social Media is an ideal instrument for marketing the services of libraries to patrons. Flickr is an excellent marketing tool which could be used by librarians to sensitize the users on general library services.

Majority of the students are not aware of the different services offered in the library such as reservation of books, reference services and Strategic Dissemination of Information (SDI), Current Awareness Services(CAS) etc.

you can spread awareness of library services to those who may not be aware of these services via social media.

 also develop subject-specific blogs and play a leading role in advocating the use of blogs for scholarly communication and commenting on research findings etc. 

You can also use social media to offer virtual reference services to your library users, in addition to other services mentioned by other respondents.

social media is very effective to offer or promotion services of library. The news book  can promotion to user through social media. In Indonesia,facebook is social media that is effective to offer or promotion all services of library.

Yes. I agree with you. We can inform our library services via social media like facebook. We can inform our collection especially our new collection and we can also inform article titles that is published in our own journal. Besides that, our users can ask us for information that they need via media social like facebook, whats app etc.

Wow, thank you all so very much for your input.  Social media if used properly can be a low cost way for any library to market products and communicate with customers.

Dear Madam Carr

If you want your library to reach today's younger generation users, there is no other go except using the social networking tools such as facebook, twitter, blogs, youtube, etc. You can use the social media to disseminate about your library additions, services and user related information services. Gone are the days where users frequently visited the libraries. Now, we, the librarians have to visit the user through these social networking tools.  Regards

Social media allows libraries to target the audience with tailored messages.

We use FaceBook and Twitter and to a much smaller degree Instagram to help cover special events, exhibitions and celebrations of e.g. Library Week or a link to a famous alumni. The Library links with the student association pages and work with the Student Administration to help spread the message that we are here to help. We also use very targeted emails to connect with the post Graduate community who are difficult to establish contact with as they arrive at different times of the year. Our Library is very lucky to have a specialist communication team that send out the messages which are worded in a manner that is inviting to a younger audience. Absolutely agree with other comments - the  library today must be in the student spaces.

If we cannot beat them (students), we have to join them. That is the way to go now. Social media will help the library to present its service to its users and allow the user to comment and give you feedback on time.

Social media resources is about the best communication tool around. It is certainly one of the most embraced. It has the capacity to keep the library in front of the user more than library web page. I am sure there are more people on any of the SMR per-time than on the web page, particularly among the youths. Therefore, libraries can use the social media resources to, inform its users of new arrivals, CAS/SDI, enhance e-learning, teach user education, give links for inter-library loan or access to a useful site. The beauty of it is that it is interactive and have the capacity of accommodating too many users at a time. However, the Librarian handling it must be smart, dedicated, competent (ICT usage, knowledge of lib resources/services) etc.

Please, I also need a practical experience to be shared by librarians that are already using it.

Thanks

The adoption and use of social media for library services is inevitable in this era. Virtually all user-based services of libraries can be promoted and delivered to users via social media. Social media is also facilitating scholarly communication practices among library professionals, like ResearchGate and LinkedIn.

The saying "if you cannot beat 'em, you join 'em" goes with the surge with which the social media has towards information provisions and services, this has an implication to the existence and library patronage. I feel the library should rather use social media as a tool to reach users and market its products and services.

Yes. We can make sense to incorporate social media in the provision of library services and we can use these tools further to enhance the services and cut short even cost of photocopying, paper cost, postage cost and even save the time of the user who visiting the libraries