Internet Librarian 2010, part 4

Managing Your Library’s Online Presence

Jennifer Koerber of Boston PL talked about your library’s presence on social networking sites:

• Common logo, font colors (as much as allowed)
• Use the same name everywhere if possible, or similar
• Spell it out if you can
• Use for IM names, user names
• Have generic e-mails (such as webmaster@, reference@, etc.)

[Update: Jennifer Koerber’s slides are at www.slideshare.net/JenniferKoerber/managing-online-identity-il2010]

SuHui Ho, UC San Diego:

Moving online: analog services have digital counterparts:

• Collections
• Services:
  • ILL, circulation
  • Reference (texting, IM, e-mail)
  • Instruction (LibGuides, podcasts, Camtasia videos)
  • Outreach (social media)

Building vs. managing a web site.

Life cycle management is like weeding the print collection. Bad links are bad PR.

Use metrics to determine:

• Links on the home page (what’s popular)
• Keywords to put in metadata (search terms)

Colleen Brazil, Sno-Isle (Wash.) libraries:

Overdrive subscription not easy to use.

Detailed error form and tracking db.

Brand Awareness

Librarians from Colorado State University talked about paying for advertising on Google and Facebook to target students who might be interested in their full-text databases. In Facebook, you can target people at a school, but people on Facebook are not interested in doing research at that moment (who knew?). With Google, you can exclude IP addresses, but not target them. You can, however, target a small radius (c. 10 miles). A much higher percentage of Google users went on to do a search. (At the time of the conference, if you went to Google and set your location for Monterey, Calif., then searched “Awesome CSU librarians,” you’d see one of their ads.)

Librarians from Providence College talked about putting your logo everywhere — signs, tschotschkes. “Your web site is your Sgt. Pepper’s.” Think about mobile. Have regular, interesting content on your blog. Ubiquitous, consistent presence. Software like xtranormal and blabberize converts text to video. Jing does video of computer transactions.

Digital Managers

David Lee King, Sarah Houghton-Jan, Bobbi Newman, and Matt Hamilton talked about being the digital managers at their libraries. No slides (yay!).

David: Role is to expand services, 2-way communication with users. Digital collection is like a building: it has a collection, a building, staff, even a janitor.

Sarah: Asking all San Jose Library staff to write content.

Discussion of whether staff content should be unmoderated. All thought it should be, but some were overruled by higher-ups.

Interaction with IT: Tell them it’s a 3-month beta test, then everyone forgets.

Requirements: project management, inspiration, creativity, marketing, not being afraid to experiment in public, communication, perseverance.

David’s roles: digital branch manager, long-term planning, social media.

Sarah’s roles: web site, databases, ebooks, social media, tech training. (Breaking news: Sarah’s redesigned web site just debuted today, Nov. 15. It looks great!)

Bobbi: Everything with no staff and no money.