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Managing Social Media in Libraries: Finding collaboration, coordination, and focus

Troy Swanson, Moraine Valley Community College, USA

Chandos Publishing Social Media Series No. 9

This book is a reflection and critical analysis of the use of social media in libraries that rises above and beyond the typical tool-of-the-month style tomes and provides something much more important: a detailed analysis of the whys of social media and the hows of getting staff and library users involved.
Extract from foreword by Michael Stephens

 - provides practical ways of thinking about social media for library managers and leaders
 - provides examples of policies, workflows, and uses of social media tools for library managers and leaders
 - defines organizations as coordinated systems and discusses how social media tools can emphasize the benefits of coordination
 - presents a context for social media in libraries

Web 2.0 first created a scramble among librarians to participate in Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and other social media applications, and the turn is now towards management and consolidation. Managing Social Media in Libraries explores the developing information environment, the collaboration among library organizations, and the ways social media may convert the loose connections between library staff members. The book takes librarians beyond the mechanics of using social media, and establishes a framework to move library managers and leaders toward making social media effective. Managing Social Media in Libraries is structured around key topics in this area, including: refocusing after the first use of Web 2.0; library organisations as loosely coupled systems; social media within such systems; defining a purpose for the use of social media; connecting messages and tools; and integrating social media into standard websites.

Readership: All those interested in social media in libraries, including practicing librarians, library managers, and students.

£47.50 / US$80.00 / €55.00

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About the author

Troy A. Swanson is Teaching & Learning Librarian and Library Department Chair at Moraine Valley Community College in the USA. Troy has managed the library’s web presence since the year 2000. He implemented his library’s blogs in 2004 using a content management approach, and the library’s first podcasts for cultural events in 2006. He has published on the library website design and usability in the Journal of Academic Librarianship and Internet Reference Services Quarterly. Troy also writes as a guest author on the Tame the Web blog. His Ph.D. dissertation focused on the management of Web 2.0 in higher education. He has also written on information literacy instruction for college students.

Titles which may also be of interest:
Local Community in the Era of Social Media Technologies
The Plugged-In Professor
Public Interest and Private Rights in Social Media
Social Information
Social Media for Academics

Contents

Where have we been with social media?
 - Introduction
 - Filtering vs searching
 - Attention is expensive, while storage is cheap
 - Time to step back and refocus

Library organizations as loosely-coupled systems
 - Introduction
 - Coordination tools
 - What are coordination tools?
 - The library as loosely-coupled system
 - Strengths and weaknesses of loosely-coupled systems

Social media in loosely-coupled systems
 - Introduction
 - Internal: capturing knowledge
 - Internal: collaboration
 - External: marketing and outreach
 - Internal and external: giving your people a voice
 - Internal and external: connecting virtual and physical
 - Disintermediation

Defining a purpose
 - Introduction
 - Technology adoption
 - The difference between marketing and community
 - Joining the conversation
 - Generated content vs curated content in a fact-checking world
 - News about the library
 - Capturing events
 - User contributions
 - Capturing internal knowledge
 - Collaboration
 - Decision making
 - Visibility
 - Finding a focus
 - Start a good blog
 - Challenges of participation

Connecting social media tools to the organization
 - Introduction
 - Conundrum of control
 - Coordination tools and social media
 - Policies and engagement
 - Crafting a Social Media Policy
 - Impact of budgets
 - Organizational culture and participation rules: creating a shared vision
 - Management and coordination
 - Motivating employees to use
 - Living with mistakes
 - Finding collaboration, coordination and focus

Integrating with standard websites
 - Introduction
 - The homepage is the homepage
 - Land wars
 - Usability testing
 - Integrating across the sites
 - Gaining efficiency through RSS
 - OPACs, subscription tools and social media
 - The death of social media pages
 - Unified voices

Leadership: big ideas do not have to be that big
 - Introduction
 - New librarianship
 - No one can predict the future
 - Predicting the future
 - Identity crisis