Having spent sporadic parts of last week at Social Media Week Toronto events, I am feeling incredibly inspired and geared up to throw all my learnings into my work as a SML.
Now, you might think this is the part where I would proceed to list and discuss all the cool findings, insights, and tips that I picked up in attending #smwto–But it isn’t. What I learned will be revealed through my incorporation of these elements into upcoming projects and initiatives. It’s more interesting that way, and besides, the discussions and ideas thrown around were far to awesome to jot down in point-form how-to points anyway [they were much better captured in live tweets and scribbled on my Starbucks paper cups…see my twitter feed for former, my instagram for latter].
I will, however, do you a big fat favour in sharing the realization that as a Social Media Librarian, it is often very easy (and detrimental, I would argue) to focus exclusively on the “librarian” portion of your title. It could be caused by the fact that those years you spent on your Masters degree were almost exclusively aimed at librarianism which shaped your career goals of achieving high librarianhood, which are then aggravated by your placement within an institution which almost exclusively sees you as a librarianoid trying to make sense of this new and scary world of social media…
But here’s the thing — like it or not, social media has JUST as much to do with your job as librarianship does! It has to! What makes your job so tremendously terrific is that you are bridging these two worlds, not translating one for the sake of the other. Own your unique position, be fearless in the possibilities, and always, always, be proud of what you do.
That is a really long-winded way for me to get around to urging you to PLEASE make it a priority to attend just as many Social Media industry events and conferences as Library ones. You must see yourself as a professional in both fields, and must be prepared to put in the effort of keeping on top of the trends and discourses of both respectively. Innovation will flow much more freely, and your passion for your work will thrive. promise.
Social - Media - Librarian. All of the above, please.
Ok, maybe I’ll divulge one awesome take-away for all who were not at Social Media Week Toronto…
The tweet2hold tree ! A beautiful physical manifestation of the #smwto tweets of the week, colour coded based on sentiment.
A fabulous way to optimize the twitter-activity of an event and regenerate the the buzz and interest that was created online into a physical space [ which then gets instagramed and tweeted all over again — a brilliantly vicious cycle]!
Don’t know how yet, but I MUST do something like this for an upcoming event [and you should too!]
being a social media librarian 