How Wired is Your ALA Student Chapter?

ALA Student Chapters were surveyed this past March to determine how they use social networking tools to connect with members and disseminate information. The results are now available in a PDF.

Print

We surveyed the ALA Student Chapters this past March to determine how they use social networking tools, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Tumblr, to connect with members and disseminate information. The results are now available in a PDF.

Of the 56 active ALA Student Chapters surveyed, with a response rate near 50 percent, we found that Chapters use a variety of tools. However, Student Chapters reported uncertainty about whether their members are actually looking for them online. They wondered whether LIS students really want to add yet another blog to their Google Reader or get yet another Facebook message about an event they can’t attend, for example.

Ideally, ALA Student Chapters’ presence online should reduce the information onslaught that LIS students face. Chapters serve as filters for the news and opportunities issuing constantly from ALA and its state and regional Chapters, curating it, and using websites, blogs, and social media to pass along only what is most relevant to their members.

Online activities also help Student Chapters reach students in distance education programs, or those with full-time jobs. If students cannot participate directly in their Chapter’s activities, they could be encouraged to follow live tweets from an event, view photos on Flickr, and listen to podcasts, for example.

We look forward to your comments and suggestions about how wired your Student Chapter is—or should be!

Please comment below or send correspondence to authors at Don Wood.

—Survey conducted and this article written by Brita Zitin, Chapter Coordinator at Simmons GSLIS, and Don Wood, Program Officer, Chapter Relations Office