I didn’t find evidence of a Facebook page or Twitter account for the Woodsville Free Public Library in New Hampshire–and that’s the last of a scan that began with Aaron Cutler Memorial Library on Tuesday. (Aaron Cutler does have a Facebook account with 125 likes, the most recent update on the day I checked, the fifth most recent within the last quarter but not the last month, and clear community engagement. But no Twitter account.)
Since I was looking at New Hampshire public libraries this week–following a major weather situation–I was reminded once again that most public libraries, even (or especially) the smallest, really do serve as centers of their communities.
Now on to Ohio–just one more library/library agency than New Hampshire, but roughly nine times as many people, so I’m guessing the patterns will be different once more.
When, in the first part of the manuscript (devoted to the initial 25 states), I discuss possible regional bias, I noted that–at the time–the Northeast wasn’t very well represented (including New England). Now that I’ve added Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and will definitely add Rhode Island and Vermont (and probably Pennsylvania), that won’t be true for the larger set of results.
Hmm. I also turned around the fifth revision of The Librarian’s Guide to Micropublishing (to take into account proofreader’s notes and another round of copyediting). So I guess it hasn’t been a wasted week. (By the way, the people in Information Today, Inc.’s book division are not only a pleasure to work with but excellent at what they do. The fifth revision of the book is significantly better than the first submitted version, as I anticipated it would be.)
As for C&I…still no writing, still no urgency. I should do the second part of the Relevance and Reward series of posts..maybe soon.
Update Sunday, November 6, 2011: Partway through Ohio, I’m realizing that I really would like it to be the case that nearly all PLs have FB pages and Twitter accounts–it’s faster for me (than attempting to be satisfied that they don’t), and it’s a lot more fun to look at how PLs use social networks than whether they use them.
(The first 16 Ohio PLs–alphabetically–all have Facebook accounts. The string runs out there, although I continue to see a healthy percentage. Even there, only half of those 16 have obvious working links to their Facebook pages on their homepages.)
And I’ve gone far enough to see that, while Multnomah has the most Likes of any public library in the first 25 states surveyed, it’s definitely not the most of any PL in the nation (nor, as far as I know, does it claim that distinction). Columbus Metropolitan has more than half again as many Likes. But then I checked a library that won’t be in the expanded survey–New York just doesn’t have the downloadable spreadsheet of library names and LSAs–and there it is: NYPL’s primary Facebook page has more than 42,000 Likes. Is that the highest? If not, I’m sure someone will let me know what library has even more.