The Tweeting Tumblrarian

By this point, most people are aware of the importance of being connected, up-to-date, and generally modern, cool, and awesome as a 21st century librarian.  While some may still not be aware of how trendy librarians can be, others have come to expect a certain level of pop culture and technology mixed with their library services and research shows that there are numerous benefits and uses for a social media library.

Social Media

 

Our library belongs to three different social media sites to keep our patrons updated and connected and vice versa: Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.  Having these accounts means dedicating a lot of time and effort to updating them regularly, keeping interest with a combination of library news, pop culture, and other relevant (or, if you are on Tumblr, random) posts, photos, and videos.  It also means reaching a larger, more eclectic group of people, taking part in conversations as well as creating and sharing content to make our presence known.  Worth it!

As a library, we are still starting out on the fronts of Tumblr and Twitter, but have created a stronger Facebook presence with more frequent and more meaningful interactions.  The staff in charge of social media attempts to make time to update, or at least schedule posts, regularly with a variety of content.  There is still a fairly large divide between the staff when it comes to social media...

The Masters:

 

The Novices:

 

Overall, the library has managed to create a small niche in social media.  Our social media influence, according to our Klout account, is hovering slightly above average with a Klout score of 41 currently.  Not too shabby.

P.S. What is a Klout score you ask?  It is a accumulated quantitative measurement of your social media influence built over time over your registered social networks rated on a scale of 1 to 100.  Anyone with a score over 63 is ranked in the top 5% of users.  We're not quite there... yet.

IRL (In Real Life)

 

The bridges social media create transfer smoothly into the real world.  By being an avid Tumblr user, I and many others can become more culturally aware librarians.  An example from around the Oscars may be...

Teen Patron: "Did you hear about Benedict Cumberbatch photo-bombing U2 last night?"

Librarian: "Yes! So awesome!  I even retweeted a design for a bookmark of his pose."

Teen Patron: "What?  I've got to find that!"

Conversations are hardly ever this cut and dry, but this is the general gist of how being aware through social media can help quite a lot.  Something along these lines happens often enough that I am glad to keep up with pop culture in a variety of fashions.

While knowing about Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and other pop culture is not absolutely necessary for interactions with teens, it certainly helps when you can have a conversation about what they are into at the moment.  This also comes in handy for programming, decorations, displays, and other little interactions in the library. Just also make sure you're ready to deal with the many different emotions that come from bringing up fandoms in a group of teens.

Don't even get me started on OTPs... We'll be here all night.