American Libraries

ALA Presidential Candidate Kenton Oliver responds to Carolyn Wood's question on how ALA can harness the power of social media for library advocacy.

Question: Carolyn Wood: Can you share your strategies for harnessing the power of social media to promote library advocacy? Thanks.

Response Transcript:
Kent Oliver: Hi, my name is Kent Oliver. And Im a candidate for ALA president this year. And Im responding to Carolyn Woods YouTube question: What are your strategies for harnessing the power of social media to promote library advocacy?

You know, Carolyn, by its very definition, advocacy requires that we push our message and agenda in the most effective way to influence those to whom we are targeting that message. And I think ALA has been fairly responsive to that.

As weve gone forward, weve continued to use different media such as Facebook to begin pushing our message out. I do think we need to progress in this area along with our membership, as they feel comfortable. And to give you an example of that, with an association membership of over 65,000, we only had four YouTube questions submitted for this. So, I think we need to promote this wherever possible.

I will give a good example of how we have used it in the past. As you know, Ive been very involved with intellectual freedom, having chaired for the last four years. And in our discussion on privacy last year and our program with Cory Doctorow, we Twittered that program. We also had live blogs going. So, ALA does have capacity to use this type of media, and use it effectively.

When Im president, I will make sure that we use is where it is most effective, and where we can reach the most people with our message. Thank you.