Social Library, Volume 116
For this edition of our Social Library series, we took some time to browse a few of our favorite groups on Facebook, Library Think Tank - #ALATT, Libraries & Social Media and The Shareable Clique to find these great examples of libraries engaging with their communities. We learned about two of these groups last year in our Social Media and Libraries Webinar Series, hosted in collaboration with TechSoup. The webinars are packed with great ideas, strategies, tips and tricks, for leveraging your library’s social media. We’re also featuring a library that reached out to us with details about their summer art exhibit - we love to hear from our readers! If you'd like to see your library featured in an upcoming edition, please let us know via [email protected] or find us on Facebook.
- Waynesboro Public Library in Virginia has revived #librarianshaming, made popular on Tumblr a few years ago, with a wonderful post featuring over a dozen photos of staff hiding behind their reason to be shamed. The post received numerous likes, shares and comments. A special thanks to the library's publicity coordinator, Kathy Hiserman, for sharing their success in The Sharable Clique group.
- Piqua Public Library in Ohio hosted a Tattoo Art Exhibit this summer, with art by a local tattoo artist who owns the oldest tattoo studio in Piqua, Extreme Tattoo. Courtney Denning, the library's marketing and programming coordinator reached out to Social Library to share the blog post about the exhibit and told us that they used social media to spread the word and to ask tattoo related questions using the following hashtags: #PiquaLibraryArt #tattoosatthelibrary #piquatattoos. One post included an engaging poll, asking, "How many of our patrons have ink of their own?" which garnered 104 votes! Be sure to check out the album, The Fine Art of Tattooing, to see photos of the exhibit.
- Owen County Public Library in Indiana caught our eye when Brooke Bennett, the library's program coordinator, shared a PDF Google document to Library Think Tank - #ALATT outlining her plan for their highly successful Harry Potter Escape Room program. Brooke provides all the details and advice, everything from space, budget, timing, staffing, along with all the core elements of an escape room. The How-To Guide is illustrated with photos from the event, but you can also browse this wonderful album of photos on the library's Facebook page.
- Newberg Public Library in Oregon posted about the mystery of the mixer beaters turning up at the library, in different departments and months apart. The post generated some nice engagement, even some jokes! "Back in June someone left a similar mixer beater in the children’s room. On Friday we found a different style at the computers upstairs. What does it all mean??
At least they didn’t have frosting on them
." Thanks to Leah Griffith for her post in The Sharable Clique group, alerting us to the mystery!
- Chandler Public Library in Arizona began sharing short videos on Facebook this summer, featuring new book releases. You can browse all the videos, tagged with #cplpreviews. Thanks to Rosanna Sidhu Johnson for sharing the latest video to the Libraries & Social Media group, where she's answered a few technical questions about recording the videos.