Facebook for the School Library

Facebook is a social media tool that enables people to connect. It allows people to communicate with friends and relatives, but it is also a communication tool for community members of a school and it’s library. The purpose of a school library is to serve its patron’s needs and to ignite a love of life long reading. Getting the community and patrons involved in the library can be accomplished through communicating what it has to offer. Many elementary, middle and high school libraries have a Facebook Page for this reason.

After exploring a few K-12 library Facebook Pages, I noticed many similarities. They all post information and pictures about events taking place in the library, special school activities and news as well as local public library happenings. I was especially happy to see posts giving readers’ advisory based on books that are campus favorites, approaching popular author signings and new release movies based on beloved books.

A few noticeable differences are also present between the Pages. Posts containing information about uses of technology are more prevalent on high school Pages than middle or elementary Pages. On the other hand, elementary Pages have more user interaction through parent comments than middle and high school Pages. Parents post their positive thoughts toward the library and offer support by volunteering for upcoming events. This leaves me with the impression that the high school Facebook Pages are geared toward student users and elementary pages are tailored for parent users.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Communication tool for students and parents	Lack of student users at the elementary level
Provides opportunity to promote and advocate	Lack of parent users at middle & high school levels
Encourages school and local community involvement	Opportunity for posting negative comments
Blogs can be imported to automatically appear
Multiple tabs can be created for specific content or uses

So even though having a library Facebook Page may have some disadvantages, the benefits outweigh any drawbacks. I will be creating one for my future library!