Building a Social Library

Another great presentation. This time from Slideshare and given by the folks from NY Public Library: Michael Lascarides, Sr. Manager forWeb Initiative; Ben Vershbow, Manager of NYPL Labs; Angela Montefinise, PR and Marketing Director; and Johannes Neuer, eCommunications Manager. I think they are one of the most talented teams out there and what they have to say is valuable for every library- large and small.

Topics covered in the presentation:

• Our Catalog: the Core of the Social Library 
• Crowdsourcing NYPL's Research Collections
• Using Social Media to Reach the Mainstream Media
• Our Framework for Social Media Success 

Angela's section on using social media to reach the mainstream media demonstrates all the best practices we have discussed over the past few years and proves they really work.

• Present compelling stories and the press will call you
• Use the new rules for press releases: send links to blogs and other social media, use images and be creative with text
• Share photos and video clips ( okay granted, they have photos of JayZ when he came, but you have compelling stories to tell that will appeal to your community too)
• Highlight original content on your web/blog - reporters love a good story!
• Highlight your library's unique assets- NYPL has the Biblion app, think about what your library has that is unique
• Conduct exclusive social press meet-ups. I guess this is considered the "new" press conference and would warn that this must be newsworthy and "special" to be effective. 

Run through the entire presentation and be inspired! I know the tendency is to think that since you don't have the resources NYPL has, you can't replicate their ideas, but that's not the case. What they are doing is applying excellent practices, and while you may have to scale them to fit your resources, the concepts are always replicable.

Web 2.0 Expo New York 2011: Building a Social Library

View more presentations from Johannes Neuer