Hands on Play With Facebook!

I took a look at Facebook this week for my project. As a Facebook user, I have a lot of experience with the interface and the different aspects of the Social Media outlet. I specifically looked at what libraries are using Facebook for by perusing several different library pages. What I noticed was pretty similar across all the pages I looked at. Facebook was most often used to advertise events in the library. Some librarians used it to put up funny informational posts as well. There were often pictures included with posts, which made them interesting to look at. From some readings that I have done, I learned that many people like short status updates and pictures when they are viewing library Facebook pages. I found this to be true for myself as well. I was more likely to stop and read a post if there was an interesting picture along with it.

Something else I found helpful, from a librarian who is posting's perspective is the graph icon when you click on the "likes" section of the page. There the number of "likes" and "mentions" that a Facebook page can be tracked over a span of time. This can also be useful to see which events and other posts are being looked at and talked about online. I also noted that some libraries have separate pages for their youth section. I am not really sure how effective this is. It gives the youth their own space when it comes to interacting, but it could also alienate them as a group. I am interested to look more into this and see if teens tend to "like" the library's Facebook page. When speaking briefly to youth, many of them seemed surprised when I asked if they "liked" the library's Facebook page. My common response was "Oh! I didn't know they had one, I'll have to do that." Overall I thought playing around with libraries specifically on Facebook was really interesting and I  "liked" my library as well.