Thing 5: Social Media

Social media is the thing.  THE. THING.

When I was teaching high school Spanish back in the day (two weeks ago), my students could not stay off Twitter.  Listen up, librarians! We can either fight this or use it to our advantage. As librarians, we can limit ourselves by saying we don't need to know anything about social media because we're too old for it, or we can use it to our advantage. As I begin my career as a librarian, I plan on using social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads to make the children come to the library!  (Sorry, I don't mean to sound harsh.  But, they will come!)  

First things first: social media can be a detriment if you are not careful.  I just revisited the privacy settings on my personal Facebook page and made sure that everything is set up to keep my personal life...personal.  Don't get me wrong, any good hacker worth his or her salt can find anything and everything that has been put on the internet.  However,  professional educators should set up their social media sites in a way that visitors (i.e. students) do not have access to their personal lives. I have mine set up so that you cannot search for me on Facebook unless you are a friend of a friend and, if you were to google me, my Facebook profile does not appear in the search results.  Again, there are ways of getting around this, so I recommend the following to teachers, librarians, and others in education

 1.) DO NOT add students as a friend on Facebook or any other similar social media site.  Wait until they are out of high school, or even a few years after.  

 2.) DO NOT put anything on a social media site you would be embarrassed for your grandmother or  your spiritual advisor to see. Also, do not write anything on Facebook that could come back and bite you the booty.  Think about it this way: if you saw the same sort of thing on your child's teacher's Facebook page, would you let your child remain in his/her class?  

           

 3.) If you are using the social media site for educational purposes, you may see some of what  your students post.  Keep in mind that, if you see something that could cause them harm, or others harm, or if they post something that shows they are engaging in illegal activity, you  need to report it.  

That being said, social media can be a wonderful tool.  I just "liked' the Brazoria County Library System's Facebook page. My family and I use their services quite a bit and I would like to be updated about their events and reading programs. When I went to their page I also saw that they posted an article titled "Expert discovers ancient Torah scroll in plain sight."  I read this because it highlighted the importance of cataloging. (You can read the article here. )  I also browsed the photos of the new library that opened in my hometown of Pearland.  

Much like the Brazoria County Library System Facebook page was able to share relevant information with me as one of their patrons, I will use social media to communicate with my students.  I plan on listing upcoming events, new books, reminders for teachers, and other relevant news on my library site. I also plan to use the social media reading site Goodreads to share books with students and teachers.