Instagram and Vine

School librarians have so much technology at their fingertips that can be helpful in promoting the school library. Students today from elementary through high school enjoy incorporating social media into their daily lives. As librarians we need to find a way to connect with our students and I think technology is a great place to start. Instagram and Vine has grown so much in popularity so it would be wise as librarians to tap into these resources.

First let us take a look at Instagram. Instagram is so easy to use. In order to sign up all you need is to provide an email account and create a user name and password. Signing up takes no more than about two minutes. I love Instagram because it allows users to post photos and about 15 second videos. So really you are getting the best of both worlds. Once a user selects the picture they want to post they are given the ability to edit their picture by selecting different filters, adding shadows, adjusting the brightness, cropping the picture, etc. The possibilities are endless! Users can tag people or even add hashtags to their posts. When posting videos users are also given editing abilities.

Librarians can use Instagram in many creative ways. Librarians can promote library activities such as contests, author visits, new books or library arrivals. Librarians can highlight library services and library hours. Top school wide readers or top reading classrooms can be featured on the library's Instagram account. The best part is that by using Instagram students will be able to connect with the school library in a fun way and parents can also find out what is going on at the library by simply following the library on Instagram.
Librarians
New Library Books Ready

Vine I was a little more hesitant to use because I had never used it before. I downloaded the app and I decided to ask my students for help. I figured if anyone knew how to use the app it would be them. I created my account by simply adding an email address and password and I asked the kids for help. All I had to say was, "Who is a Vine expert?" All my students' hands shot up in the air! I gathered a few to show me what to do and a few to volunteer to be in the video so I could do a few test runs. My students were so excited that they were helping their teacher with her homework. It took me no more than five minutes to figure out what to do. I love Vine now and I cannot believe I had not used it before. Users must keep in mind that the videos can only be six seconds long and will play in a continuous loop.

Librarians can effectively use Vine for the school library. Librarians can use it as a quick way to highlight the arrival of new library books. Librarians can promote upcoming library activities like the book fair. If the library has held a contest a Vine video would be a perfect way to reveal the winner of the contest.School librarians can then share or embed the videos to the library's social media accounts. The only drawback that I had with Vine was that I was not able to embed the videos directly to my blog I was only given the option to embed and share the videos directly to Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr so I had to share a link to the videos instead. Maybe as I become more familiar with the program I can figure out how to solve this issue, but for the time being I was not able to figure it out.
Accelerated Reader Vine
New Library Books Vine

Overall I loved both Instagram and Vine and will be using them as part of the school library program. I will probably use Instagram more because the length of the videos can be a bit longer, but will also incorporate Vine for those students who prefer to watch Vine videos.