Social Media Use in Libraries

I just reviewed Marketing with Social Media (A LITA Guide), edited by Beth C. Thomsett-Scott. It was published by ALA TechSource in 2014, and costs $60.90 on Amazon (ISBN 9781555709723).

I haven't been heavily involved in the use of social media in libraries, but this book makes a good case for how and why it can be succesful. It's clear that whether you use blogs, twitter, facebook, or another platform for your marketing efforts, it takes a lot of time to do it thoughtfully. In preparation for writing my review, I used the subject headings in the LC CIP data block to find other books on the same topic. The top two subject headings were Libraries--Marketing, and Online social networks--Library applications. I used the latter to search in our own catalog, Minerva, and found many other books on the topic:

• Laura Solomon. The librarian's nitty-gritty guide to social media. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2013.
• Charles Harmon, Michael Messina, editors. Using social media in libraries: best practices. Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, 2013.
• Terry Ballard. Google this!: Putting Google and other social media sites to work for your library. Oxford: Chandos, 2012.
• Melissa A. Purcell. The networked library: A guide for the educational use of social networking sites. Santa Barbara, CA: Linworth/ABC-CLIO, 2012.
• Sarah K. Steiner. Strategic planning for social media in libraries. Chicago: ALA TechSource, 2012.
• Troy A. Swanson. Managing social media in libraries: Finding collaboration, coordination and focus. Oxford: Chandos, 2012.
• Laura Solomon. Doing social media so it matters: A librarian's guide. Chicago: ALA, 2011.
• Cliff Landis. A social networking primer for librarians. New York: Neal-Schuman, 2010.

I did a quick search on WorldCat, and found several similar titles published in the past few years:

• Walt Crawford. Successful social networking in public libraries. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2014.
• Denise A. Garofalo. Building communities: Social networking for academic libraries. Oxford: Chandos, 2013.
• Joe Murphy. Location-aware services and QR codes for libraries. Chicago: ALA TechSource, 2012.

These twelve books (counting the one I just reviewed) were all published in the last four years, and I'm sure there are many more on the same topic that we don't have in our collection. I find it interesting that there are three published by ALA Editions, three by ALA TechSource, three by Chandos, and one each by Scarecrow, Linworth/ABC-CLIO, and Neal-Schuman (now part of ALA Editions).  Obviously, a hot topic!