Arizona State University 'Library Minute' Videos

I had a look at 5 videos from Arizona State University‘s ‘Library Minute’ presented by Anali Perry. Over all they were entertaining and very informative. It's clear that ASU is attempting to communicate with students in a more informal way. ASU describes these as 'one minute peeks into services and resources at the ASU Libraries. At the time of this post there were 27 Library Minutes which have been viewed many times. The most popular of the series is the 'RefWorks' video which has been viewed 3,325 times.

· The 5 videos I watched were

• · Mobile web
• · Top 5 resources for online students
• · Meet your subject librarian
• · Academic articles
• · RefWorks (a citation manager for students)

The Library also has a 'Library Channel' on the university web site. This blog has links to the Library's iTunes page, Flickr page, Twitter feed and also links to previously mentioned videos. The Twitter feed communicates news from the Library answers student's questions and the Flickr photostream primarily contains photos from Library events

But do these satisfy the 4 C's of social media as set out in the class reading?

• · Collaboration- The Library Channel on You Tube includes videos made by other organizations and ASU students (see the Silent Dance video)
• · Conversation-The Twitter feed is definitely a two way conversation between staff and students
  
• · Community-The videos on You Tube invite students to be a part of the library community with their friendly tone
  
• · Content Creation- All of the sources I viewed (You Tube, Twitter, Library Blog and Flickr) contained content that could be helpful to students, staff and other libraries.
  

In conclusion, ASU library has embraced web 2.0 technologies in an effort to communicate with and received communications from students and staff. In this respect I find their efforts to be a success.

Welcome Home

This video from T-Mobile UK has been making the rounds in the blogosphere:



It is so clever on so many levels. It all at once tugs at our collective heartstrings with the experience we have all had (coming home), plugs in some very talented singers with songs we all know and creates this space that makes us all stop and wish we would have been there too.

But the really clever thing about this ad (and lets not forget it IS an ad) is the use of social media. What do many people do these days when they see something interesting happening? They whip out their phones to capture the moment. They ring a friend to tell them about it. They add it to Facebook, Flickr, and yes, Youtube. And this ad engages those people. Look at how many watches this ad has had. (Over 5 million at the writing of this post) Then you can also follow the whole campaign on Facebook or Twitter. The whole campaign is interconnected and very popular.

But what can libraries learn from this? We obviously don't have the budgets to pull of something like this but I keep thinking about how interconnected this campaign is and how it allows the public (fans?) to participate, share and discuss the brand. Two things to note on their Facebook page; how many fans they have and how often they post on their own wall. If you think about it, those 32,000+ fans get an reminder of the T-Mobile brand at least once a day.

I keep thinking about how the whole idea is very simple, basically people want to be a part an exciting experience and then share it with their friends. And in 2010, the way many of us share is with a mobile device connected to our online social network. T-Mobile has really tapped into their market with this campaign.

(sorry, this post isn't really part of my normal OLJ task list for class, but I kept thinking about the video since I saw it and how they used social media in really exciting ways so I wanted to reflect on it)

-AB