Internet Librarian International 2016
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In Ireland, University College Cork crowdsourced an exhibition celebrating the much loved Cork Club Sir Henrys. The project celebrated nostalgia, love and engaged the Cork community and diaspora. This presentation shows how UCC Library used social media to tap into the nostalgia around the club
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Internet Librarian International 2016
- 1. Internet Librarian International 2016 Happy Days! How a Library Revitalised a Nightclub Community #ili2016 Martin O’Connor UCC Library Martin.oconnor@ucc.ie @martinoconnor3
- 22. Some random reflections (1) O When doing an exhibition consider setting up specific Social Media accounts for the exhibition O Social Media was absolutely essential to the success of the exhibition – without it there we feel there would literally have been no exhibition O Social Media is a conversation, to do it properly you need to converse, not broadcast, it’s a dialogue, not a monologue O Social Media is all about the engagement O With social media, the platforms are only the tool, it is the engagement, the social, that is important O The blog was key – by allowing people a space to tell their story we got them involved and they wanted to be involved O
- 23. Some random reflections (2) O Personally I’m not a fan of Facebook – but it was essential for us – without Facebook we would not have engaged the Henrys community to the same extent – Facebook is where most of them were O To do social media properly it needs to be done properly – time, thought and energy needs to be invested in it O But with good use of social media a great deal can be done with very little –it can create snowballs & actually do work for you O The exhibition was such a success because, as we found out, we tapped into something that still means so much to so many Cork people
- 24. Some random reflections (3) O Crowdsourcing was a wonderful way to collect the material – it threw up some of the most wonderful material and surprises in terms of material. As Eileen says, ‘I didn’t know half this stuff existed, let alone survived’ O But, more importantly crowdsourcing the material made people feel engaged and they therefore felt invested in the exhibition (some people too much ) O If you catch the popular imagination, as we were lucky enough to, then you can have a really successful exhibition that will engage your community and, if lucky, the media exposure will follow O & finally, what untold stories exist in your community? What stories do you community have to tell? If you find some, tell them. It is a fantastic way to engage with your community, your users.
- 25. Benefits to library O The exhibition increased the profile of the library locally, nationally & even internationally – the media were very engaged by it. The exhibition gained academic exposure and was even being cited in library conferences a year later O It also, importantly, raised the profile of the library within UCC and amongst the local UCC community O It led to an appreciation of what the library does and raised expectations of what we can do O It brought different peoples and content into the library – it went some way towards breaking down those awful Ivory walls O And Special Collections team are very happy as our exhibition space is now booked up nearly two years in advance…
- 26. O Slide 4 – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Atlas_of_Ireland O Slide 5 - https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/34pyns/the_dublin_map_of_ireland/ https://granta.com/raingods-green-dark-passion/ O Slide 7 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LARjsNE4Fvw O Slide 9 - Matthieu Roscio http://rosciography.com/index.html O Slide 10 - Tomas Tyner http://ttyner.photoshelter.com/index Matthieu Roscio http://rosciography.com/index.html O Slide 20 - Jack Lyons https://soundcloud.com/sirhenrys-exhibition/that-place-henrys Tuathla Lucey https://soundcloud.com/tuathla-lucey/sir-henrys Jez Collins http://www.archivingmediaculture.org/sir-henrys-exhibition-cork/ Jim Morrish https://fanningsessions.wordpress.com/tag/sir-henrys/ O Slide 21 – Youth Work Ireland, Gurranbraher http://www.ywicork.com O Slide 27 - http://melissallarena.com/interviewing/5-questions-will-impress-hiring-manager/
Editor's Notes
- Thanks Andy for that lovely introduction – your cheque is the post. And I for one would be happy to let that music play for the rest of this session. So, before I start proper I need to say – the last time I presented at a conference a few things happened: the computer froze, the Internet stopped working. And then, to top it all, the fire alarm went off. And nobody left the room. So, just in case, if the fire alarm does go off today whilst I’m talking the fire exits are here, there and there and please leave in an orderly fashion.
- The title of this paper begs a question – how did UCC Library, engage and revitalise the Sir Henrys community? The short answer is through Social Media.
- But, since this a twenty-minute slot I will fill out the remainder of the time with the following. I will start by setting the context; I will talk about what we did. How we did it. I will then provide a quick overview of some reflections on the process of using social media for the exhibition
- First off, many of you probably know nothing about Cork. It is ‘officially’ the second city and as this official map of Ireland shows it is the big county down Here in the South of the country. The ‘first city’ or capital is Dublin. This little county here… now where is it, oh yeah, this little county here...
- BUT! Cork being a second city Cork people think they’re the best and they have tremendous pride in and love for their city and anything to do with it. They love celebrating Corkness and anything to do with it. AND this is why the exhibition was so successful. Sir Henrys was something so many Cork people had fond memories of and they all wanted to engage with it again – and this exhibition afforded them this chance. We could tap into that nostalgia and love for the club. such an exhibition
- So what was Sir Henrys? It was a Cork City nightclub, opened in October 1977. It began life as a piano bar and over the years became a live venue for generations of rock bands and their fans. In the late 80s it began to host (rave / dance) nights and soon became known as a destination dance club for the Irish clubber. Sir Henrys finally shut its doors in June 2003. And what was the Sir Henrys Exhibition? It was an exhibition hosted by UCC Library in 2014. It began life with an exchange on Twitter, which led to the idea - let’s have an exhibition on this legendary Cork Club. I brought on board two other curators – Henrys’ people in their day – Eileen Hogan, an academic whose PhD research topic was Cork popular music and Cork legend Stevie G – DJ in Henrys back in the day. It was a physical exhibition – in our exhibition space on the ground floor. And a virtual living growing exhibition – on Facebook, Twitter and Wordpress…
- I’m now, happily, going to take a two-minute break to catch my breath, drink some water and allow Jennie O’Sullivan – herself a regular Sir Henrys goer in the late 70s early to mid 80s do the talking. This is her news report for RTE, our National Station. (RTE, Radio Teilifis Eireann is our National Broadcaster – our BBC if you will) Enjoy (and Andy, as a breakdancer back in the day you might just enjoy the dancing in this...)
- Some context provided I’m now going to talk about the engagement with the Sir Henrys Community And, how we went from this – our first tweet, posted at 5.29pm on the 23 Jan 2014…
- To this, a full physical exhibition containing detailed storyboards and timeline, display cabinets packed very tight with crowdsourced material / artifacts. The items we finally used were whittled down from nearly 2,000 thousand items that we received, that we crowdsourced, from the Sir Henrys Community.
- And to this the 9th July, opening night with nearly 150 guests. Many of them graduates of the school of Sir Henrys… And many who had never stepped inside the gates of UCC let alone the doors of UCC Library
- And finally to this – pure saturation reportage of the exhibition by the media. All the Irish media – television stations, radio stations, newspapers, online news sources - wanted a bit of it, to be involved and to report on it or feature it in some way.
- So how did we do it? Simple answer: Social Media. We engaged extensively and tirelessly with our users on Facebook, Twitter and Wordpress. We continually talked to the Sir Henrys community as they shared their memories and their photographs. A small side bar (and something worth considering if you do something like this) We set up separate social media accounts, independent of our UCC Library accounts, as we wanted the focus of these accounts to be purely Sir Henrys. They were solely sites for engagement on, about Sir Henrys by the Sir Henrys community. We wanted to provide a space where Sir Henrys was the focus. – we used a comments book.)
- In a personal capacity I am not a fan of Facebook. So it was with great surprise, that I saw very early how essential Facebook was going to be to the exhibition – in terms of engagement promotion and the gathering of material. Facebook is where the exhibition really took off. By the time the physical exhibition was taken down we had nearly 5,000 friends on our Facebook page. (This was in under 9 months remember) (And as we had decided to set up a Personal Facebook account rather than an Official Page – we felt it gave us better functionality and permitted much more personalized engagement – we couldn’t have had more than 5,000 friends)
- Facebook is where the exhibition really engaged the Sir Henrys community. About a week after going live I opened up our page to see we had nearly 200 notifications from over night. Needless to say I was rather engaged the next few hours. We had many such days. Take this picture for example. 52 people got involved in a long detailed thread as to who this team was (initially we were not sure if it was either Man City or Notts Forest) and why they were in Sir Henrys. (In case you want to know – it was Man City and they were in Cork to play a friendly and they retired to Henrys after) And a note for the Irish people in the crowd – note Martin O’Neill, current Irish manager in the back. And Trevor Francis, first million pound transfer in Football – to the far right of the pic
- I’m a massive fan of Twitter and I really thought prior to the exhibition that it would be the platform where most of the engagement with the Sir Henrys community would happen. But I was wrong. Most of it happened on Facebook. But, and this is a massive but, the engagement around the exhibition that happened here was essential as this is where is where the media engaged with the exhibition. It’s not only librarians who love Twitter. Journalists do too. Most of the requests for interviews we received came through Twitter. Mostly from journalists who had been Henrys heads in their day. We stirred memories and emotions in them and they wanted to share these. They wanted to celebrate something that meant so much to them from their younger days.
- Here is one quick example of engagement on Twitter. This was our first engagement with Jennie O’Sullivan. Out of this initial tweet we ended up on RTE News thanks to Jennie.
- My favourite social media platform was the blog. This blog consisted of stories from and written by the Sir Henrys community. We were very lucky as we didn’t know what to do with the blog until we got a wonderful email from a lady saying she was so looking forward to the exhibition and she set out what it meant to her and how she met her husband there (and her sister met her husband as well) It perfectly caught what Sir Henrys meant to so many people. So we asked could we post it. And she was delighted to allow us to. This was the first of many such blog posts telling what Sir Henrys meant to the people of Cork (and beyond) For the indie music heads in the crowd – we even got a blog post from a member of Pavement – one of the most important American indie bands ever – telling us how and why Henrys was the best venue they ever played.
- This map shows engagement with the blog. Wherever there is colour somebody engaged with us. It’s a visual representation of the more than 13,000 views of the blog, (mostly between May and September.)
- These figures and the map perfectly illustrate the Sir Henrys diaspora
- The Sir Henrys community engagement with the exhibition also went as far as people doing related activities off their own back in their own time. There were talks organized, recorded and shared. Radio documentaries and radio programmes made and shared. All these lovely recordings can be found on citations slide.
- One other piece of engagement we were particularly proud of was a collaboration with Youth Work Ireland in Gurranbraher on the north side of Cork City. Youth Work Ireland works with teenagers who have left school very early, often in their early teens. Some of teenagers from the centre created an art piece inspired by a talk, about Sir Henrys, that the, Eileen, Stevie and I gave to them. The resulting piece hung in UCC Student centre for six months and people who came to visit the exhibition would go to the student centre to see the piece.
- The following slides contain some reflections on the process of using social media to engage with the community. But because of time I will provide an overview. Suffice to say Social media was essential to the success of the exhibition. It provided us a large space where we could engage with the Sir Henrys community. Without it, there would have been no exhibition.
- Social Media is not about the tools; it is about the people behind the tool.
- Now I want you to reflect for a moment – what stories are out there in your community waiting to be told? Find them and tell them. It is an amazing, fun rewarding way to engage with your community.
- Again, I’ll quickly pass over this slide. But for me the main benefit to the library was that UCC Library was part of the Public Imagination and consciousness in Cork from the moment we posted our first Tweet and Facebook post until the exhibition closed 9 months later. UCC Library was everywhere for those nine months.
- Well, that’s the tough bit out of the way, thanks for listening and now – any questions… nice easy supportive ones please.... And if not, we can chat at the Drinks Reception in the Sponsor Showcase.
- Well, that’s the tough bit out of the way, thanks for listening and now – any questions… nice easy supportive ones please.... And if not, we can chat at the Drinks Reception in the Sponsor Showcase.