visitors and residents: useful social media in libraries
TRANSCRIPT
Visitors and Residents USEFUL SOCIAL MEDIA
in LIBRARIES
Visitors and Residents USEFUL SOCIAL MEDIA
in LIBRARIES
#Interlend15 @ned_potter
RAISE YOUR HANDS
Keep your hand raised if you’ve heard the term
DIGITAL NATIVE RAISE YOUR HANDS
KEEP YOUR HAND RAISED IF YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF TO BE A
DIGITAL NATIVE
Digital Natives are:
Digital Natives are:
1) BORN AFTER 1980
Digital Natives are:
1) BORN AFTER 1980 2) INNATELY GOOD WITH
TECHNOLOGY
Digital Natives are:
1) BORN AFTER 1980 2) INNATELY GOOD WITH
TECHNOLOGY 3) NOT ACTUALLY A REAL
THING
The digital native is a MYTHOLOGICAL BEAST
MYTHOLOGICAL BEAST
(So too is the digital immigrant.)
The digital native is a
“There is no evidence that there is a single new generation of young students entering Higher Education and the terms Net Generation and Digital Native do not capture the processes of change that are taking place.”
Jones, Chris and Shao, Binhui (2011). The net generation and digital natives: implications for higher education. Higher Education Academy, York.
(Basically there are all kinds of factors that influence how effective your use of technology is, and your date of birth isn’t that high up the list. It’s a lot messier than that.)
As we all know, being technologically literate is not the same as being digitally literate.
Just like knowing how
kitchen utensils work isn’t the same as being able
to cook a really nice meal…
DON’T LET ANYONE TELL YOU WHAT YOU
CAN AND CAN’T DO WITH TECHNOLOGY
BASED ON YOUR AGE
NOR SHOULD WE MAKE ANY ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT STAFF, STUDENTS OR OTHER USERS
BASED ON THEIR AGE
“…the cliche, lazy generational generalizing that Digital Natives indulges in is an imagining of a seamless present, wherein THE MERE PRESENCE OF TECHNOLOGY results in expertise that is untaught, in fact fundamentally unteachable, and therefore pre-existing, and something to expect from students of a Certain Age…”
PREACH IT, DONNA LANCLOS
“Visitors and Residents is a simple way of describing the range of ways individuals can engage with the Web.”
DAVID WHITE
“Visitors and Residents is a simple way of describing the range of ways individuals can engage with the Web.”
DAVID WHITE
VISITORS
Use the internet like a tool to help them achieve a particular task. They complete the task and move on, usually leaving very little trace of themselves.
“Visitors and Residents is a simple way of describing the range of ways individuals can engage with the Web.”
DAVID WHITE
VISITORS
RESIDENTS
Use the internet like a tool to help them achieve a particular task. They complete the task and move on, usually leaving very little trace of themselves.
Use the internet more socially, to connect with people, and share / obtain information about life and work. There is an identifiable legacy to their online activity.
“It’s a continuum of ‘modes of engagement’ not two distinct categories..”
DAVID WHITE
“It’s a continuum of ‘modes of engagement’ not two distinct categories..”
DAVID WHITE
We provide information and help for people in Visitor mode, via
the website, libguides, and the social media platforms above
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK
For people closer to the Resident mode end of the continuum we have Facebook and Twitter
All of these platforms are flexible. They’re multi-function according to our student and staff needs (and the mode they’re in).
OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL COULD BE FOR RESIDENTS, BUT THE STATS SUGGEST IT’S PRIMARILY FOR VISITORS
854 hours of views – but only 15 comments!
THAT’S ENOUGH
THEORY!
Okay.
Let’s talk specifics.
For actually engaging with students and staff, twitter is hard to beat. Its role is primarily for Residents, but by embedding it on our homepage it serves a function for Visitors too.
The tone is like face-to-face conversation. This colloquial nature makes it ideal for getting feedback which isn’t extreme…
The most important thing to remember about twitter: it’s a conversation. How interactive are you?
Twitonomy.com will tell you how interactive you’re being. Take a print-screen this week – then check back in a month and see if you can get the percentages up. Remember the 1 in 4 rule!
DON’T GET CAUGHT UP IN THE NUMBERS; TRACK ENGAGEMENTS
INSTAGRAM IS COMING!
INSTAGRAM IS COMING!
It now has 300million active users (more than Twitter), who spend an average of 21 minutes a day on the site… That seems pretty Residential. (41% of internet using 16 – 24 year olds are on there)
INSTAGRAM IS COMING!
Show off your buildings, show off your stock. Show off your librarians! Provide behind the scenes access, sneak peeks.
It now has 300million active users (more than Twitter), who spend an average of 21 minutes a day on the site… That seems pretty Residential. (41% of internet using 16 – 24 year olds are on there)
INSTAGRAM IS COMING!
Or host a hashtag contest: “Share a photo of you in the library using the hashtag #librarycontest to win a prize!”
INSTAGRAM IS COMING!
Above all, make it specific. Ideally, each social media platform your library runs should perform a particular role for your users (even if there’s some overlap).
BLOGGING IS DEAD; LONG LIVE BLOGGING!
(Blogging used to be more Residential, with a thriving blogosphere. That’s less the case now, but does it matter? I’d argue not. For the
Visitors, it doesn’t even matter if they know it’s a blog or not. It’s just useful information that’s easy to find.)
5 reasons to set up institutional
1) THEY’RE MOBILE READY
1) THEY’RE MOBILE READY Give your users something to read, even when they are in the queue for the bus
2) GOOGLE LOVES BLOGS
2) GOOGLE LOVES BLOGS Actually that’s not quite true - Google loves regularly updated content. Which blogs are. Be findable!
3) YOU CAN HAVE LINKS FOR EVERYTHING
3) YOU CAN HAVE LINKS FOR EVERYTHING
A content-pool is not to be sniffed at. Specific, indexed, findable information which you can point people towards both now and in the future.
4) THEY’RE REALLY, REALLY EASY TO USE
4) THEY’RE REALLY, REALLY EASY TO USE
If you can use Word you can basically use any of the major blogging platforms. Wordpress is perhaps the nicest to use, but Blogger won’t put any ads on your posts.
5) YOU DON’T HAVE TO SPEND ANY MONEY
5) YOU DON’T HAVE TO SPEND ANY MONEY
You can spend money, of course. But you don’t have to. The free blogging options will do the job.
(It’s where all the young
people are…)
Short posts, lots of images, animated
GIFS…
Easy to ReBlog
APPEALING TO YOUTH
SUPPLEMENTING EXISTING BLOGS
SHOWCASING SOMETHING VISUAL
Reasons to
AND FINALLY
YIKYAK IS A COMPLETELY ANONYMOUS, LOCATION BASED SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM
YIKYAK IS A COMPLETELY ANONYMOUS, LOCATION BASED SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM In many ways YikYak fits the criteria for being a Visitor’s social media platform, in that users leave no trace of themselves by definition. But actually, many YikYak users are Resident for at least some of the time.
YIKYAK IS A COMPLETELY ANONYMOUS, LOCATION BASED SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM In many ways YikYak fits the criteria for being a Visitor’s social media platform, in that users leave no trace of themselves by definition. But actually, many YikYak users are Resident for at least some of the time. And they may be discussing your library!
You may well decide not to interact on YikYak. But if you’re an academic library, it may be at least worth going on there, running some searches, and hearing what your students are saying….
Final CALLS TO ACTION
Fight the urge to make any kind of assumption about the way people use technology to find and critically evaluate information based on their age.
Make time to provide ways for both Visitors and Residents to interact with
the Library on social media.
And if you hear people using ‘digital natives’ uncritically, tell them the Digital Native is as real as the Easter Bunny…
There is a blog-post to accompany this presentation here.
ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHT FREE VIA UNSPLASH, GRATISOGRAPHY AND PIXABAY Except the V&R Continuum courtesy of David White, and Donna Lanclos copyright of David Tilley
MORE ON V&R Donna Lanclos introduced me to the Visitors and Residents theory as an alternative to thinking about Digital Natives. Here’s the (fantastic) blogpost from which the quote used in this presentation was taken. The capitalisation was mine. David White developed the Visitors and Residents model, with Alison Le Cornu. Read their paper here, and see Dave’s introductory website on the topic here. There’s an ongoing Twitter discussion about Visitors and Residents, which you can join using the hashtag #vandr. There’s been much debunking of the Digital Natives myth, but the particular paper quoted in these slides is available from the HEA here.
MORE SOCIAL MEDIA The twitter stats packages mentioned were Twitonomy and Analytics. My favourite example of how libraries can use Instagram is the State Library of New South Wales’ account. There’s more on reasons to set up an institutional blog here. The popular University of Iowa tumblr is here. 9 reasons to love the BL’s Mechanical Curator tumblr here. You can visit YikYak here; the site is not without controversy, which is detailed in this useful post from JISC.
