Facebook vs. Twitter in the Library

Social media sites are great tools for librarians to utilize to promote what is happening in the library, connect with students in a forum that they enjoy, and use as constant professional development tools.  Facebook and Twitter are both networks that can be useful for a librarian for different reasons.

    In perusing Facebook pages for school libraries, I found that they are used primarily to share information about what is going on in the library.  The pages seemed to be public relations tools.  Librarians shared pictures of their student workers, special programs, announcements and so on.  They posted questions hoping for responses from students on ways to improve the library.  They pages shared information such as hours of operation, and the address and phone number for the library.  I did see a few posts that gave me ideas that I might like to try such as a school library that opened periodically throughout the summer for their students, but mainly, it seemed that librarians use Facebook for positive promotion of their libraries, which is important and necessary.

    As I navigated Twitter, I found that there was more diversity in the kinds of information shared by librarians and school technologists.  While there was some positive promotion of the things going on in libraries, this was usually mixed in with re-tweets that I found to be good professional development resources for other librarians and educators.  Often, the Twitter feeds were packed with links to articles and videos about the latest technologies and strategies being used in classrooms.  Many of the librarians re-tweeted information from authors or other known educators.  The site seemed more conducive to collaboration and sharing that what I saw happening on Facebook.

    Overall, I think that Twitter is a more dynamic social networking site for librarians to become involved with.  It offers a forum to share what is happening in your library, but also offers many more opportunities for communication with others that will lead to finding new ideas that can be useful.

As a librarian, you are often the only person who does your job in the school building, so developing a resource that can connect you with other people in similar situations and provide so much opportunity for articles and posts that can help you constantly improve in your position is priceless.