Library Social Media and Social Media Policies

I have been eager to create a facebook page for our Teens and Tweens for our library.  Actually thought about creating a proposal for our director to get that approved.  Well, at the ILA conference this year there was great hype about creating blogs and facebook accounts for libraries that my director was quite pleased to hear.  Later that day she went to a luncheon were there was an attorney talking about the downsides of creating these social media tools.  He had mentioned how one library was sued for deleting someone’s comment. 

I was a bit turned down because I have seen really neat library facebook pages.  It really is a nice tool to market programs and new books in your collection.  It even gives authors to promote their new books.

So, I went to a meeting where local libraries gathered to discuss upcoming events and on the agenda was marketing ideas and social media.  Interesting, right? Well, we discussed that there has to be some kind of library social media policy to help staff members stay safe and to provide rules on what could and cannot be put one these social media tools. 

I do believe, to play it safe, libraries should have social media policies for both staff and the users on the other side.  I think this should not discourage anyone from creating these great social media tools that are made available to us.  As more people are on their phones and electronic devices I think its a great tool to use for our library patrons to market our programs and library collections.