#FollowALibrary was started Oct 1, 2009. It was started by this guy, (also @dpgreen) an Australian librarian.  It was promoted by David Lee King in 2010. It’s run each year since then. It has an account linked to it: @followalibrary, which references Mr Green but is based in Amsterdam.The goal of #followalibrary day is to encourage citizens to follow their library, or other libraries who are active on Twitter and producing great content. 

Background and #LibraryFollow

On #SocialMediaDay 2016, a group of libraries started using #LibraryFollow to share out libraries they enjoyed following and encourage others to follow. They gave library mentions to multiple libraries in tweets which resulted in greater exposure for all, and other libraries joined in. Follows were still coming in up to three days after the event. Currently some libraries are using #LibraryFollow when they are followed by another library account.

This year, use the already in place hashtag #followalibrary to encourage others to follow a library whose content they enjoy or find meaningful. October 1st has been the day in the past for #followalibrary, so there might be others using it too. We will be using Sept 30th, as Oct 1st  is a  Saturday this year, library social media day.

So, FOPL libraries and all the rest – adopt this Twitter hashtag and increase your followers!

 

Footnote: Coincidentally I’m told that ALA was also founded on Sept. 30th