Scott W. Young
Digital Initiatives Librarian
Montana State University
Doralyn Rossmann
Collection Development Librarian
Montana State University
New opportunities for community building are emerging as library users across all demographic categories become increasingly active on social networking sites. This project briefing will present recent research from the Montana State University (MSU) Library that demonstrates successful strategies, policies, and best practices for building community online through social media. By applying these practices, MSU’s Twitter user community grew 100% in one year, with a corresponding increase of 275% in user interactions. The session will include discussion of successful strategies and research approaches for building community and learning about users, including library personnel workflows, user type analysis, action-object mapping, survey methodology, and content analysis of student focus groups. Through this combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses, a picture of the library as a member of an active online community comes into focus. By adapting community-building efforts for social media contexts, libraries can create a valuable dialogue that opens possibilities for understanding and communicating with users in new ways. How to create a social media strategy and research program to build active library user communities online will also be discussed.
