Earlier this morning, I saw a tweet from Jennifer (@typealibrarian) where she announced the new logo for her library’s Twitter page. What I saw there made me smile.
If you’re not a library type, you might not see anything all that unusual about this page, but as a public librarian, seeing a library that chooses to put an actual name and a face to their public library is — to my mind — a very rare occurrence indeed. By putting a name and a face to the library as a whole, the library is saying to the community that they are interested in building a more personal relationship with the community they serve.
Furthermore, in making this move, they’ve introduced a level of accountability to the exchanges they make with their (online) patrons. Once you attach a name and a face to your organization, you provide your public with an easily-identifiable channel for interaction. It’s a customer service tactic that we’ve seen from companies before, take Zappos for example, but it’s not something we typically do in public libraries. Academic libraries seem to be more open when it comes to attaching names/faces to library services.
Even at my own library, which is considered a leader in social media among City of Vancouver divisions, we use a generic all-in-one account for Twitter. We have several people who post on the library’s behalf, and we made the decision that people it was more important for people to connect to the organization than to any one individual. But seeing what the Columbus Metropolitan library is doing is making me rethink that strategy.
It is important for libraries to make a connection to the communities they serve; I don’t think anyone can safely argue against that position in this day and age. But being out in front of the public, being willing to give up some degree of privacy in exchange for helping people build a more personal connection with the library as a whole seems to me to be a worthwhile trade.
Well done, Columbus Metropolitan Library.
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