Visitors and Residents USEFUL SOCIAL
MEDIA in LIBRARIES

Visitors and Residents USEFUL SOCIAL
MEDIA in LIBRARIES #Interlend15 @ned_potter

RAISE YOUR HANDS

Keep your hand raised if
you’ve heard the term DIGITAL NATIVE RAISE YOUR HANDS

KEEP YOUR HAND RAISED IF
YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF TO BE A DIGITAL NATIVE

Digital Natives are:

Digital Natives are: 1) BORN
AFTER 1980

Digital Natives are: 1) BORN
AFTER 1980 2) INNATELY GOOD WITH TECHNOLOGY

Digital Natives are: 1) BORN
AFTER 1980 2) INNATELY GOOD WITH TECHNOLOGY 3) NOT ACTUALLY A REAL THING

The digital native is a
MYTHOLOGICAL BEAST

MYTHOLOGICAL BEAST (So too is
the digital immigrant.) The digital native is a

“There is no evidence that
there is a single new generation of young students entering Higher Education and the terms Net Generation and Digital Native do not capture the processes of change that are taking place.” Jones, Chris and Shao, Binhui (2011). The net generation and digital natives: implications for higher education. Higher Education Academy, York.

(Basically there are all kinds
of factors that influence how effective your use of technology is, and your date of birth isn’t that high up the list. It’s a lot messier than that.)

As we all know, being
technologically literate is not the same as being digitally literate.

Just like knowing how kitchen
utensils work isn’t the same as being able to cook a really nice meal…

DON’T LET ANYONE TELL YOU
WHAT YOU CAN AND CAN’T DO WITH TECHNOLOGY BASED ON YOUR AGE

NOR SHOULD WE MAKE ANY
ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT STAFF, STUDENTS OR OTHER USERS BASED ON THEIR AGE

“…the cliche, lazy generational generalizing
that Digital Natives indulges in is an imagining of a seamless present, wherein THE MERE PRESENCE OF TECHNOLOGY results in expertise that is untaught, in fact fundamentally unteachable, and therefore pre-existing, and something to expect from students of a Certain Age…” PREACH IT, DONNA LANCLOS

“Visitors and Residents is a
simple way of describing the range of ways individuals can engage with the Web.” DAVID WHITE

“Visitors and Residents is a
simple way of describing the range of ways individuals can engage with the Web.” DAVID WHITE VISITORS Use the internet like a tool to help them achieve a particular task. They complete the task and move on, usually leaving very little trace of themselves.

“Visitors and Residents is a
simple way of describing the range of ways individuals can engage with the Web.” DAVID WHITE VISITORS RESIDENTS Use the internet like a tool to help them achieve a particular task. They complete the task and move on, usually leaving very little trace of themselves. Use the internet more socially, to connect with people, and share / obtain information about life and work. There is an identifiable legacy to their online activity.

“It’s a continuum of ‘modes
of engagement’ not two distinct categories..” DAVID WHITE

“It’s a continuum of ‘modes
of engagement’ not two distinct categories..” DAVID WHITE

We provide information and help
for people in Visitor mode, via the website, libguides, and the social media platforms above AT THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK

For people closer to the
Resident mode end of the continuum we have Facebook and Twitter

All of these platforms are
flexible. They’re multi-function according to our student and staff needs (and the mode they’re in).

OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL COULD BE
FOR RESIDENTS, BUT THE STATS SUGGEST IT’S PRIMARILY FOR VISITORS 854 hours of views – but only 15 comments!

THAT’S ENOUGH THEORY! Okay. Let’s
talk specifics.

For actually engaging with students
and staff, twitter is hard to beat. Its role is primarily for Residents, but by embedding it on our homepage it serves a function for Visitors too. TWITTER

The tone is like face-to-
face conversation. This colloquial nature makes it ideal for getting feedback which isn’t extreme…

The most important thing to
remember about twitter: it’s a conversation. How interactive are you?

Twitonomy.com will tell you how
interactive you’re being. Take a print-screen this week – then check back in a month and see if you can get the percentages up. Remember the 1 in 4 rule!

DON’T GET CAUGHT UP IN
THE NUMBERS; TRACK ENGAGEMENTS

analytics.twitter.com
is brilliant for this

INSTAGRAM IS COMING!

INSTAGRAM IS COMING! It now
has 300million active users (more than Twitter), who spend an average of 21 minutes a day on the site… That seems pretty Residential. (41% of internet using 16 – 24 year olds are on there)

INSTAGRAM IS COMING! Show off
your buildings, show off your stock. Show off your librarians! Provide behind the scenes access, sneak peeks. It now has 300million active users (more than Twitter), who spend an average of 21 minutes a day on the site… That seems pretty Residential. (41% of internet using 16 – 24 year olds are on there)

INSTAGRAM IS COMING! Or host
a hashtag contest: “Share a photo of you in the library using the hashtag #librarycontest to win a prize!”

INSTAGRAM IS COMING! Above all,
make it specific. Ideally, each social media platform your library runs should perform a particular role for your users (even if there’s some overlap).

BLOGGING IS DEAD; LONG LIVE
BLOGGING!

(Blogging used to be more
Residential, with a thriving blogosphere. That’s less the case now, but does it matter? I’d argue not. For the Visitors, it doesn’t even matter if they know it’s a blog or not. It’s just useful information that’s easy to find.) 5 reasons to set up institutional

1) THEY’RE MOBILE READY

1) THEY’RE MOBILE READY Give
your users something to read, even when they are in the queue for the bus

2) GOOGLE LOVES BLOGS

2) GOOGLE LOVES BLOGS Actually
that’s not quite true - Google loves regularly updated content. Which blogs are. Be findable!

3) YOU CAN HAVE LINKS
FOR EVERYTHING

3) YOU CAN HAVE LINKS
FOR EVERYTHING A content-pool is not to be sniffed at. Specific, indexed, findable information which you can point people towards both now and in the future.

4) THEY’RE REALLY, REALLY EASY
TO USE

4) THEY’RE REALLY, REALLY EASY
TO USE If you can use Word you can basically use any of the major blogging platforms. Wordpress is perhaps the nicest to use, but Blogger won’t put any ads on your posts.

5) YOU DON’T HAVE TO
SPEND ANY MONEY

5) YOU DON’T HAVE TO
SPEND ANY MONEY You can spend money, of course. But you don’t have to. The free blogging options will do the job.

(It’s where all the young
people are…)

Short posts, lots of images,
animated GIFS… Easy to ReBlog

APPEALING TO YOUTH SUPPLEMENTING EXISTING
BLOGS SHOWCASING SOMETHING VISUAL Reasons to

uispeccoll.tumblr.com

mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com

mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com

AND FINALLY

YIKYAK IS A COMPLETELY ANONYMOUS,
LOCATION BASED SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM

YIKYAK IS A COMPLETELY ANONYMOUS,
LOCATION BASED SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM In many ways YikYak fits the criteria for being a Visitor’s social media platform, in that users leave no trace of themselves by definition. But actually, many YikYak users are Resident for at least some of the time.

YIKYAK IS A COMPLETELY ANONYMOUS,
LOCATION BASED SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM In many ways YikYak fits the criteria for being a Visitor’s social media platform, in that users leave no trace of themselves by definition. But actually, many YikYak users are Resident for at least some of the time. And they may be discussing your library!

You may well decide not
to interact on YikYak. But if you’re an academic library, it may be at least worth going on there, running some searches, and hearing what your students are saying….

Final
CALLS TO ACTION

Fight the urge to make
any kind of assumption about the way people use technology to find and critically evaluate information based on their age.

Make time to provide ways
for both Visitors and Residents to interact with the Library on social media.

And if you hear people
using ‘digital natives’ uncritically, tell them the Digital Native is as real as the Easter Bunny…

There is a blog-post to
accompany this presentation here.

ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHT FREE VIA
UNSPLASH, GRATISOGRAPHY AND PIXABAY Except the V&R Continuum courtesy of David White, and Donna Lanclos copyright of David Tilley

MORE ON V&RDonna Lanclos introduced
me to the Visitors and Residents theory as an alternative to thinking about Digital Natives. Here’s the (fantastic) blogpost from which the quote used in this presentation was taken. The capitalisation was mine. David White developed the Visitors and Residents model, with Alison Le Cornu. Read their paper here, and see Dave’s introductory website on the topic here. There’s an ongoing Twitter discussion about Visitors and Residents, which you can join using the hashtag #vandr. There’s been much debunking of the Digital Natives myth, but the particular paper quoted in these slides is available from the HEA here.

MORE SOCIAL MEDIA The twitter
stats packages mentioned were Twitonomy and Analytics. My favourite example of how libraries can use Instagram is the State Library of New South Wales’ account. There’s more on reasons to set up an institutional blog here. The popular University of Iowa tumblr is here. 9 reasons to love the BL’s Mechanical Curator tumblr here. You can visit YikYak here; the site is not without controversy, which is detailed in this useful post from JISC.

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