How to create a Facebook fan page for your library

Since opening itself up in late 2006 to anyone with an email account over the age of 13, Facebook has exploded. 2008 seemed to be the year of Facebook with everyone setting up an account. The Facebook culture changed from college students sending pics back and forth of the party on Saturday night, to a bunch of parents trading kid pics. While this may be an oversimplification, the reality is that Facebook has turned into one of the most important social networking tools on the internet.

Because of this, 2008 was also a year when a number of libraries set up Facebook "fan" pages to create a presence in Facebook for their libraries. If your library hasn't set up a Facebook fan page you should consider doing so. It's easy, quick, and a great way to connect with your patrons in the Web 2.0 world.

Step 1: Create a Facebook account. If you haven't done so already you'll be amazed at how many of your friends and family are already on Facebook. You'll also need to do this so you can be the administrator of the fan page.

Step 2: Find another library's fan page. In the upper right hand corner of the Facebook page type, "Skokie Public Library" in the search box, and you'll see a link to their fan page.

Step 3: Scroll to the bottom of that page. You should see a link that says, "Create a Page for My Business". Click on this link.

Step 4: At this point you should see a page called, "Create New Facebook Page". The "local" category should be selected and highlighted in blue. There is a drop down menu. Click on this and you'll see that one of the options is "Library/Public Building" Select this option.

Step 5: Click on the box titled "Name of Library / Public Building" and put in the name of your library.

Step 6: Click on the "Create Page" button at the bottom of the page.

Step 7: At this point you should be presented with a new template page for your Facebook fan site. At the very top you should see a box that says, "Your Page has been created. To start, add information or upload a picture". Click on the "add information" link in this box.

Step 8: You should see a page where you can now input basic information about your library. Fill in the Address, City/Town, Zip, Phone, and Hours fields. There are also tabs for "Picture" and "Detailed Info". Click on the Picture tab and upload a picture of your library if you have one available. Clicking on the Detailed Info tab will bring up a page where you can put in your library's web address and field for any general information about your library.

Step 9: At this point you should get a message that your changes have been saved. Click on the link for your library's fan page that should appear in the upper left hand corner of the page. You should be back at your Facebook fan page template and you should see any information or pictures or links that you created in the previous step. At the top of this page you should see a message that says, "This Page has not been published. To make this Page public, publish this Page." Click on the "publish this Page" link.

Congratulations! You have just created a basic Facebook fan page for your library. In our next post we'll go into more details about other information and features you can add to your library's Facebook fan page.

Twitter me!

One of the hottest internet trends of the past few months is Twittering. I have a friend who is about to go on a tour of the US visiting friends, making music, and twittering. It seemed that a bunch of my friends were twittering away on election night.

What does it mean to Twitter, and can librarians use it?

Twitter.com was started several years ago as another social networking experiment. The basic idea is to write short updates to let your friends know what you're doing. These updates are limited to 140 characters in length and can be displayed on the Twitter site or through other services such as Facebook.

Twitter updates can often be identified because they often start with the person's name followed by "is". The idea is to twitter as often as possible to give your friends an idea of what you are currently doing.

Ted is writing in his blog.
Ted is really looking forward to dinner tonight.
Ted is making home made lasagna for dinner right now.
Ted thinks the lasagna smells great and can't wait for it to be done.
Ted is taking the lasagna out of the oven and is about to eat.
Ted is really full of lasagna right now.

These are all examples of typical Twitter posts. As you can see some people's lives may be more interesting than others!

When Twitter first came on to the scene it quickly exploded with popularity as people found it a great way to keep in touch with what their friends were doing. Some people however have found it to be a bit of a bother. Always getting messages from friends at all times of the day can be a bit overwhelming for some.

Can librarians and libraries use Twitter as a communication method? To be honest this cutting edge librarian has trouble thinking of practical applications for the average library. Perhaps a community affairs director of a library could use Twitter as a way to advertise, promote, and raise awareness of library events? It seems that there are other internet applications that would serve these sorts of purposed better however. The cutting edge librarian should be aware of Twitter and twittering as it is a very popular social networking tool that a number of their patrons may be using.