{"id":54967,"date":"2015-05-20T09:25:51","date_gmt":"2015-05-20T14:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=54967"},"modified":"2015-05-20T09:22:19","modified_gmt":"2015-05-20T14:22:19","slug":"lurk-and-learn-take-advantage-of-library-social-media-as-a-new-or-aspiring-librarian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=54967","title":{"rendered":"Lurk and Learn: Take Advantage of Library Social Media as a New or Aspiring Librarian"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Caitlin Moen, former Head Editor, INALJ Louisiana<\/a>
\npreviously published 12\/18\/13 & 7\/11\/14<\/em><\/p>\n

Lurk and Learn: Take Advantage of Library Social Media as a New or Aspiring Librarian<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"Caitlin<\/a>When I was in library school I had never worked in a library or really had any connection to the library community. \u00a0I knew there were communities and individuals out there, but I was a little lost on where to look or how to integrate myself into a seemingly already cohesive community. \u00a0I am naturally a bit of an introvert, so it makes it much harder for me to insert myself into a group already in existence.<\/p>\n

Enter my new strategy: lurk and learn.<\/strong> \u00a0It started with the Library Society of the World (LSW) group on Friendfeed, which a friend introduced me to. There are amazing and prolific individuals on there having real life discussions about real life library issues. \u00a0I joined, introduced myself, then fell silent – watching the posts and reading about what professional librarians were struggling with, what their successes were, and what they got truly excited about.<\/p>\n

I expanded my lurking to include the twitter-verse. \u00a0I hate tweeting<\/strong> – I never think what I have to say is that interesting and I never know where to draw the line between the professional and personal within the tweets. But I don\u2019t actually have to tweet – just follow people who do and see what they\u2019re all talking about.<\/p>\n

Then I found the ALA Think Tank on Facebook. This is a 5,000+ member group that has no affiliation with ALA – it was just started by ALA members who initially used the group to plan their ALA activities and talk about libraries in the interim times. \u00a0It has grown to be an enormous group of librarians and others interested in libraries, and every day there are discussions about programming, requests for help on reader\u2019s advisory, queries about policies, and discussions about the library world. \u00a0There is some chaff to weed through – 5,000 members and a commitment to not censoring discussions leads to some obligatory cat posts and inevitable drama. \u00a0But it\u2019s easy to avoid the drama when you\u2019re lurking and absorbing what others have to say, and there are some real, quality discussions happening in the group.<\/p>\n

I love online lurking in the library social media world. I absorb so much – I\u2019m made aware of issues that have no real applicability to my current situation, but that I\u2019m interested in as an aspect of my profession. \u00a0All the information helps to keep my brain awake when I am feeling stagnant. \u00a0And inevitably, lurking and learning leads to\u2026. participating.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s right – at some point, as you are lurking and watching and reading, there will be a question that you cannot HELP but answer.<\/strong> \u00a0Or someone looking for empathy on the exact situation you are in. Or someone sharing information you KNOW to be wrong, and as a librarian, you need to step in \ud83d\ude09 \u00a0Or someone talking about a book they loved that you loved too, and you never knew anyone else who had read it.<\/p>\n

This is the glory of the lurk and learn. \u00a0You start doing it because you don\u2019t know enough to participate and you don\u2019t feel qualified to contribute. \u00a0But before you know it, all that lurking and all that learning has helped make you a more experienced and more comfortable information professional.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Caitlin Moen, former Head Editor, INALJ Louisiana previously published 12\/18\/13 & 7\/11\/14 Lurk and Learn: Take Advantage of Library Social Media as a New or Aspiring Librarian When I was in library school I had never worked in a library or really had any connection to the library community. \u00a0I knew there were communities…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[69,3592,4121,3594,3552],"class_list":["post-54967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-caitlin-moen","tag-inalj-louisiana","tag-social-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Caitlin-Moen.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-eiz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/60575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}