Seminar K. Mess Is Lore: Navigating the Unwieldy World of Social Media

Abstract

Rather than being the sole domain of “qualified scholars” special collections libraries have become more outward facing, engaging with users ranging from established senior scholars to school children working on History Fair projects. Our audience has changed, and so has the means of interacting with them, perhaps none more dramatically than social media. This seminar will examine how social media reframes the ways we engage with our collections, our users, and each other. We will focus less on what types of social media a presenter is using, and more on how these individuals are using social media in a variety of contexts, while providing broadly applicable guidelines that can be adapted by colleagues to suit their particular situations.