With Power Comes Great Responsibility – How librarians can Harness the Power of Social Media for the Benefit of its Users.
My Masters degree reseach project is focused on academic library patron engagement through Facebook posts so this was the ideal conference for me. In particular, my research will investigate the factors that affect patron responsiveness. There was a call for student papers for the MMIT Conference so I decided to apply to present on my research with a presentation entitled, 'Would you like to be my friend - patron responsiveness to academic library Facebook posts'.
I was delighted to win a prize for the best student presentation.
Leo Appleton with my prize!
Image from https://mmitblog. wordpress.com/2015/09/21/presentations-from-the- mmit-conference-2015- social-media-libraries/ |
I found the whole conference very interesting and gained lots of useful information from the varied presentations and workshops that were offered.
These included: Informal professional development through social media participation and networking by Alison McNab & Judith Wayte They talked about the stages of social media participation - lurk - experiment - practice - broaden scope - fully engaged and addressed a number of questions including 'What shall I share?', 'Who is my audience?', 'With whom should I engage?', 'What shall I keep?'. In the sessions that the speakers run at their university, they will begin by asking participants what social media tools they use and what they find useful. They recommend a personal strategy, including deleting accounts with tools that are no longer used. A useful tip was to use Futureme.org to send yourself an email postcard that will arrive in the future to remind yourself to do something! |
More details of the conference can be found here: https://mmitblog.wordpress.com/2015/09/21/presentations-from-the-mmit-conference-2015-social-media-libraries/