Socially tapping into the catalog!

by Ed Veal on Aug 2, 2012

So your library has a social media presence but now you want to drive patrons to your catalog as well. Koha 3.8 now has a simple solution, introducing the “SocialNetworks‚Äù System preference. This new preference allows you to turn on a feature that will allow your patrons and your staff members to link individual bibliographic records to their social media pages.

“What do I need to do to start using this new feature?‚Äù

Thanks for asking! There are a couple of things that need to be set first. You must have “OPACBaseURL‚Äù set, then you simply need to enable the “SocialNetworks‚Äù system preference. After those preferences are set then a new option will appear on the detail display screen that allows the linking of the records through FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Delicious, and adding “a like‚Äù on Google+, as well as allowing a link to the record to be emailed.

Don’t worry! This feature is not dependent upon your library having a social media page. This feature is here for those patrons and staff that are active in the social media realm. It simply allows those individuals to share their reading interests and link to your catalog.

“So how can we use this feature if we have a social media presence?‚Äù

The first and most obvious answer is to post links to staff favorites. But here is an example of something a bit less obvious. If your library has a LinkedIn account, you could post links to job related resources within your catalog.

As we have seen, this is a great new feature that is simple to enable and could generate great rewards. I would enjoy hearing your success stories in the social media realm.