WebJunction

Chrystie Hill forwarded this comment to me:
There's an interesting Time article "Even Gen X is a-Twitter," with data about who’s using Twitter. In addition to 57% being from California (really?) and 63% being male “…the age demographics of Twitterers show a dramatic shift. When the site became popular in early 2007, the majority of its visitors were 18-to-24-year-olds. Today the site's largest age demographic is 35-to-44-year-olds.”


David Lee King recently posted on his blog about how many patrons are already using Twitter and other social media tools. “Yes, people in your community are already connecting and engaging with others via social media tools,” says David, “Are you?”

Yes and no ... and the "no" is about the use of technology. "Yes" is widely variable, with some libraries emphasizing people skills in their reference departments.

But the "no" is only temporary. Social software is eminently teachable.

One might caution, however, that social networks are not necessarily infinitely elastic. There is zero evidence that people actually want institutions and their representatives (librarians, here) as full-fledged (strong bond) members of their social networks. They may be just as happy to access us via our own networks, or by more traditional media such as e-mail.

And isn't calling e-mail a "traditional medium" a hoot in itself?

One big issue has to be ... how large is your pool of potential respondents? A large city library, or one serving a university community, may feel that there are thousands of people wanting to subscribe to their blogs ... and be quite right. A smaller library may feel that the only people who might subscribe are the 20 - 50 people who are already well known library users and that picking up 5 or 10 more might not be worth the effort.

Here's something I think we're going to do (the stars have aligned, I guess), addressing three or four issues at one time.

The backstory is that we have lots of teenage volunteers, many of them "volunteering" as a high school graduation requirement. There are many more than we have interesting jobs (unless you consider dusting books interesting, some might).

We also now have an LTA intern who will begin his 96 hours of work in July.

We don't yet have a Facebook page, in part because we haven't developed content, in part because we've seen too many such paged "friended" only by hopeful authors and nearby libraries, and in part because I'd like to aim something at teens.

The plan is for our teenage volunteers to attend (and help with) various library programs and write reviews for a "Lake Villa District Library Programs" Facebook page. Note that they'd have to Friend the library page in order to write on its wall and that they'd likely want (need?) to point their friends, relatives, and teachers there ... with their Facebook friends, of course, having easy access and a new reason to Friend the library's page. That might go locally viral.

We'd of course post the basics of the upcoming programs on the page for whoever might be interested.

Our intern will work with our publicity/marketing department to get this started. Publicity has wanted a Facebook page for quite some time.

Here's to hoping!