Digital Collections As Library Outreach

Last week I gave two presentations on using technology in academic libraries. One was about ways to adopt a social media campaign and the other was about ways of integrating augmented reality with our digital collections. Both of these topics were fascinating to research in their own respect, however the lesson I took away is that technology is forever changing and libraries will always need to find ways to keep up with the current trends. The library that is focused on using technology will need to spend the time learning how the technology is being used and how to adapt it into the library setting.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about the relationship between the library, the technology and the patron. While it is fun to engage with technology and to think about how to employ it in the library setting perhaps the most rewarding aspect is the fact that it allows us endless opportunities to reach out to our students.

Beginning a social media campaign, for example, will not only give us the opportunity to learn how to use platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and so on, but it will allow us to think of ways to teach students how to best use these resources themselves. Despite what the latest Pew report says, I’m sure there are students who enter our library wishing they knew more about how to use social media. Perhaps a 30-minute workshop offered once a month will help those students use those resources. Or maybe there are students who are concerned with safety and privacy on social media. A library that uses social media for outreach will only benefit from hosting a social media privacy seminar once a semester. This will help with the library’s transparency by showing their students that they are concerned with privacy issues.

I do not mean to pick only on social media here. While I know many academic libraries offers hundreds of hours of instruction a year there is still a certain amount of information on our websites we expect our students to simply stumble upon. Every time one of these tools is added to our digital collection it allows us the opportunity to teach our students how to use them. We could even ask the students which tools they would like to learn.

I love learning about new informational technology, yet I enjoy the idea of teaching others how to use these tools even more. By thinking about our digital collections as possible ways to reach out to students we are creating opportunities for students to feel more connected to their library and perhaps in the long run creating an environment where students will feel more engaged and more comfortable using the tools in the digital collections.