Facebook and Twitter

I am an unabashed Facebook addict. In my defense, it is a great way to keep in touch with my extended family and friends. Facebook is also a great place to get a good chuckle from the funny memes my friend's post. It is also where I get a lot of my local news because I don’t watch the news hours and I don’t read the local paper; Knowing that I am not alone when it comes to this addiction lessens my guilt about my method of news intake, and the amount of time I spend on Facebook.

Considering the popularity of this social media outlet, it is no surprise that school libraries across the world have set up Facebook pages in the attempt to reach their students, parents and faculties. 

                      

I visited these pages:

  

Barrington High School Library Information Center

-Barrington, IL

Barbara Rose School Library

-South Barrington, IL

Elizabeth Page Elementary

-Springfield, Oregon

Overall, I don’t think that Facebook is a successful platform for school library promotion and interaction.  I think that the failure of school libraries on this social media platform can be chalked up to the redundancy created by having a library website and a Facebook page.  These pages create extra work for librarians that in the end is not worth the effort.

My school district has made a push to have us more active on Twitter and I created my account a few years back. (@vSaenzEcisd).  This platform, at least for me, does not hold the same appeal as Facebook but I believe that is because I’m a busybody and Facebook allows me to indulge in this deplorable trait.  But just because I like Facebook more does not mean that I think that it is better than Twitter when it comes to school libraries.  

Twitter, in my opinion, provides a more effective platform for librarians to reach out to their patrons, interact with each other, and learn about different resources available to them.  I chalk this up to the brevity of the messages. When librarians use Twitter they must get straight to the point and in a world with an ever shrinking attention span, brevity is paramount. This, however, does not mean that librarians must lose their human warmth in these posts.  In fact, when visiting leading technology and library expert Twitter feeds that the ones I wanted to spend more time exploring were the ones who shared slices of life with their audience. My two favorites were Buffy Hamilton- @buffyjhamilton - and Gwenth Jones- @GwynethJones.