Mary Anne Hansen

The social media toll road: The promise and peril of Facebook advertising

In the world of Facebook, can money really buy popularity? At the Montana State University (MSU) Library, armed with a small advertising budget, we aimed to find out. After two years of using the library’s Facebook page as a free avenue to reach users, we decided to explore different paid routes available within Facebook. Our goals for implementing a Facebook advertising campaign were primarily to increase user awareness of library services and resources, and secondarily to understand the mechanisms of Facebook advertising. Our experiences allowed us to get a glimpse of life on the Facebook toll road. Most libraries with a Facebook presence will be familiar with the concept of organic growth. This type of growth represents social media interaction that does not result from the aid of paid promotions or advertising. Organic growth is driven by strong content, and it results mainly from a community engaging with social media posts in the form of likes, shares, and comments. Engagement is a key metric here. Not only does it indicate positive community reactions, but when a post receives high engagement, that post is more likely to appear in the News Feeds of friends, resulting in further engagement and the increased potential for new followers. The News Feed is the continuously updating list of status updates, likes, and other activities from people and pages that a user follows on Facebook. As the primary way users interact with content, the News Feed is an important element of the Facebook experience. In studying the News Feed and the engagement levels of different types of content, we noticed that two posting categories often result in high engagement and organic growth for the library’s Facebook page: “Library Events” (Fig. 1) and “Library Employee Highlights” (Fig. 2). We used these

Innovative Solutions for Building Community in Academic Libraries

Innovative Solutions for Building Community in Academic Libraries is about librarians taking an active role in engaging with the community they are supposed to serve. The editors recognize that “[m]any students and faculty alike do not turn to the library first for either their research or their social needs” (xvi). The challenge for libraries in the new century is to be more visible and active. Outreach has become more and more the focus of academic libraries. In the introduction the editors present their view that academic-only outreach alone is not sufficient. Bonnand and Hansen want to move the understanding of outreach beyond more technology or coffee shops to building relationships. Social outreach to students is now part of what libraries must do; this engagement is what creates community. This book presents a wide variety of projects that academic libraries have undertaken to build community, expand the borders of engagement with library users, and broaden what the library understands as community.

Reference Knowledge and Skills for the School Library Media Specialist: An Emphasis on Advocacy

This article discusses the role of the K-12 librarian as a teacher-librarian, highlighting the self-advocacy that school library media specialists often needs to exercise in promoting themselves as equal partners in the education process. Through a strong grounding in reference and instruction, such as that offered in one online school library media specialist certification program, school library media specialists will be prepared to be their own advocates and thus generate support from colleagues, including teachers, administrators, trustees, and parents. With a strong grounding in reference and instruction, they will be prepared to collaborate with teachers and contribute to the educational experience of the students while ensuring the future of the profession.