I participated in a Friday afternoon session where presenters shared their experiences implementing social media at a variety of institutions.
Amy MacDonald shared the results of assessing her social media program which just hit the two year mark, as a University Archivist at Duke. Across all Duke libraries there is a blog that all can contribute to, 5 different Facebook pages, 1 Twitter account, 5 Flickr accounts as well as a Duke Library YouTube channel.
Here are her suggestions:
#1 “Have Fun/ Take it Seriously”: consider social media as integral and not separate from your general PR strategy, and work to unite with other content creators to push out a cohesive message.
#2 “Bringing In/Sending Out”: push out content through social media may not result in bringing new or more users into your repository, but it increased the chance that these remote users can experience the treasures you have.
#3 “Community Finds Us/ We Find Community” : just pushing out content, doesn’t mean a community of users will materials.
#4 “Your Content/ Their Content”: as archivists we may have a different interpretation of our materials, than a user might. Both interpretation can be valid and valuable.
Greg Hansard from the Virginia Historical Society shared a fascinating project called “Unknown No Longer”. On this site, staff have scanned and uploaded records in their repository that allow users to trace their genealogy and research the history of slaves in Virginia. As the site’s name implies, it’s purpose is to provide names for the often faceless category of slave.
I would have liked to know how the site was put together, not just its functionality. Is this a grant funded project? What software does it use? How much staff time is needed to maintain the site and answer user questions on the community forum?
From this session I felt encouraged that archivists are approaching social media in different ways and are beginning to pay attention to assessing these activities in the same way we track exhibit viewers and reference queries.