Good point about the difference between marketing and advertising. Advertising raises awareness of what you are and what you do but marketing is so much more that this. Understanding our users and their needs is essential in libraries.
Thinking about the services we offer in our library - different types of space, facilities, training programmes, website & Library blog, vle resources, resource fairs, circulation policies, self-issue, copiers/printers, and so on. All that we do should be based on knowledge of our customers and therefore meeting their needs but then also anticipating new things that they need and providing them almost before they are aware of it.
Creating content via social media has interesting associated problems. As is described in the 4Cs, content that is published via a context such as a blog can make connections which lead to conversations. BUT better take care that the throw-away comments made so easily on a blog are accurate and carefully researched! In the 'old' days publishing information about a display through normal printed methods would probably have meant a lot of care taken over content and accuracy of information and grammar etc. After all it cost money to print information. Blogs cost nothing to put together, apart from time. In all the 'easiness' of using social media we need to have at the back of our minds the potential for slips and mistakes, much more easily made.
Take the Library's blog post on Sir Wilson Harris. The display was a great idea and has attracted a great deal of attention, and was very ably put together by a work experience pupil. However, being made so public so quickly there were some issues that had to be resolved after the event which happily are all sorted out now. A small error on a facebook announcement, although encouraging comment, was something that shouldn't have happened (all my fault, I'll confess now). It's just too quickly done.
Still it's the speed of using social media that in itself is so appealing!
It's an interesting tension.To comply with the 'to do' of this Thing we are going to make more use of a blog in our library, linked to our current website, in order to produce bite-sized online learning tasks. The context of the blog seems ideal for this - after all 23 Things has made use of blog technology extremely well for this very purpose - so we're going to give it a bash. I would also like to explore LibraryThing for new acquisitions.
My Endnote and Endnote Web training sessions have faltered at the point where my own experience with referencing differed to that of an Arts student. I'm a social scientist and had never taught students who needed to use footnotes - which is what Arts students use in Cambridge. Imagine the frustration that the only way to use Endnote and footnotes satisfactorily together meant that a specially designed 'style' was required - I eventually discovered that UCS had created one; one which allowed a footnote to be edited as much as one pleased. I had been promoting Endnote Web but realised that this was even more frustrating for Arts students as they have minute, but essential changes to make to ANY style. Endnote Web does not allow self-editing of bibliographic styles. Students were not happy with making the changes to their footnotes/bibliographies at a later stage.
........and just can't manage another deluge of information?
