Everyday I'm Tumblin': Strengthening Your Library's Community Through Tumblr

Your patrons should come first

Participate in the Community Yourself

Know Your Content

Know Your Community

How can your library get the most out of Tumblr?

If your blog will be for a specific department, get to know your regular patrons and their interests

Your content should directly cater to your patrons' interests. Once you've got a following, you can think about expanding to the internet at large. These will probably intersect.

There's something on Tumblr for everyone, pick a topic you like and find some bloggers you enjoy! Work with friends you already know & start a joint blog.

If your library houses a special archive or collection, get it online! There are layouts made specifically for photo sharing that will make your pieces stand out.

http://lookslikelibraryscience.com/

What do all of these have in common?

• Links to other social networking sites
• Tags
• Visually dominating - less text
• Some have share buttons for other networks

Library specific blogs:

Archive Specific

http://nwkarchivist.tumblr.com/

http://nypl.tumblr.com/

http://tumblr.libraryjournal.com/

http://life.tumblr.com/

For more inspiration: tags!

Where do I start?

Blogs About Librarians

http://theyuniversity.tumblr.com/

Related (though not library-specific) blogs

http://bookshelfporn.com/

http://librarianwardrobe.com/

http://ilovecharts.tumblr.com/

• http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/long-reads

Questions?

• http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/tech

• http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/lit

• http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/libraries

• http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/librarians

Everyday I'm Tumblin': Strengthening Your Library's Community Through Tumblr

Amanda Brennan | Know Your Meme

Tumblr is a micro-blogging platform that allows users to share content with each other via reblogging.

So, what's Tumblr?

The blogs a person follows are collected on the dashboard where users can interact by liking, replying (when applicable) or reblogging the post.

Creating a post is easy: the WYSIWYG editor makes it accessible for all types of users.

Although there's no commenting system, users can enable the option to receive questions from other (or anonymous!) users.

Tumblr is also mobile: with apps for Blackberry, Android and iOS, blogging on the go is another option.

Tumblr also provides every user with an 800 number and unique email address so posts can be made from a variety of places.

1-866-584-6757

Another way to connect to the community is through tagging.

Tumblr has a variety of curated tags, edited by community members who are dedicated to finding the site's best content.

Hi! I like the internet!

I work at Know Your Meme, where we document internet phenomena.

Since 2010, search for Tumblr has been steadily increasing and should eclipse search for "blog" by October.

Tumblr turned 6 yesterday. It has more than 24.4 billion posts and 58.2 million blogs. 70.3 million posts are made per day.

Richard Dawkins defines a meme as "an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."

Online, these can be found as images, videos, hashtags or audio.

These sites usually consist of 4chan, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, message boards and humor blogs.

Much of the spread comes from hubsites, places people go because they know they will find content they enjoy there.

While most sites simply curate memetic content, we research it: where it began, how it spread and the way it changes over time.