ASU Libraries demonstrate that they are definitely making outstanding progress with providing information to the users of their library through a range of social media tools.  “Once viewed as tools for young people, social networking sites are now mainstream tools of communication for individuals in all age groups” (Cardon & Marshall, 2015, p. 274).

The Library Minute videos are such a clever way to connect to people. Firstly, they are short so immediately one knows they can learn something very quickly.  Secondly, they are quite humorous and quirky so they are entertaining to watch and thirdly they are keeping students and staff informed and connected in such an easily accessible platform.

When perusing the ASU Library Channel suite it was interesting to look at their Twitter, Facebook and Instagram pages.  Once again these were extremely informative, the Facebook and Twitter pages obviously had similar content but the Instagram page was quite different.  ASU Library is clearly reaching students and staff by using Web 2.0 tools and quite a few of them which in turn makes it easier to reach a wider group of people as I am sure they would be hoping that if someone isn’t using Twitter that they are using Facebook and they are then receiving the information in that format.

In all of these platforms, they allow for collaboration of thoughts and ideas, conversation regarding what has been posted, a sense of community as everyone can be involved and content creation as a result of Web 2.0.  It is evident that there is a great sense of community however there was not a ‘large’ amount of conversation or co-content creation as the university provides such fabulous amounts of information however people were not responding to it with their thoughts and ideas.  Many factors can contribute to this such as lack of time and wanting to see the information but not feeling the need to respond.

Overall, ASU Libraries are connecting with their clientele on such a great level.  It is easy to see in The Library Minute videos that thousands of people of watched these and there are many people connected to their Twitter and Facebook feeds so even if people are not necessarily conversing in these forums they are still seeing them and receiving quality information.

References

Cardon, P. W. & Marshall, B. (2015). The hype and reality of social media use for work collaboration and team communication. International journal of business communication, 52(3), 273-293.

doi: 10.1177/2329488414525446