Here is David Lee King’s interesting post [http://www.davidleeking.com/2008/10/09/what-can-you-do-with-a-facebook-page/] about tinkerings with Facebook for his library:
“My library has a Facebook Page, and I’ve been experimenting with it lately. I have loosely broken down what I’ve done into three sections – Basic Info, Facebook Functionality, and Social Stuff:
Basic Info:
- photo of the library
- basic library info, like our address, phone number, and hours of operation
- shared our website’s URL
Facebook Functionality:
- YouTube app – showing some recent YouTube videos
- a couple fan photos of books
- Facebook fans – 192 of em so far
Social Stuff:
- RSS feeds – sending my website’s main RSS feed to the Facebook page via Simply RSS (doesn’t appear to be working today – drat)
- Favorited other Topeka-area Facebook pages (local sports team, the performing arts center, a local church, etc.)
- I make sure to thank people when they write something on our wall
- I sent one “Update to Fans” broadcast message – no direct responses, but more people favorited us after the message went out
- Started one discussion board topic – “What would you like to see here?” (no one has commented on it yet
I also asked my twitter friends for input – what were they doing with Facebook Pages, and what other innovative library Facebook Pages have they found. Here’s what they said:
- bmljenny - we use the “Blog RSS Feed Reader” app to post our blog feed on our page. Seems to sync OK.
- sharon370 - I like Purchase College Library’s space on fb – Bookshare, Events, RSS feed from lib blog, OCLC app
- fabi_k - i like the fb page of the UoM graduate library: http://tinyurl.com/6bw87u - esp. the “ask us” and catalog search feature
- debrouillard - student program and event advertising mostly
- amylibrarian - I use facebook to promote the CiteMe application.
- shelitwits - found it! do you send out event notices or just use the feed to include events? i think sending FB updates to fans helps a bit
Another person said this, via a Facebook message: “One thing I would like to see happen here, is spreading out control of the page. I wish we had someone from each department who would post events and contribute to updating fans. Like, if reference has a new database, they can send out a notice that way … or if reader’s service has a cool new recommendation they can do the same. I would like to see that happen w/ our Myspace page as well. We have WAY more friends on Myspace than FB. We have a bunch of feeds sent to FB, but that only works if our fans are coming to our page.”
Things I still need to add:
- Library catalog search app (need to talk to my web developer about this)
- Flickr app – so we can display our Flickr photos in Facebook…”
