Tumblr is a social networking blogging site that allows you to share posts with your friends and followers. Tumblr gives you the option to post multimedia like photos, links, audio, video, and more. Founded back in 2007 by David Karp, Tumblr now has over 54 millon blogs.
For those of you familiar with Twitter, Tumblr is somewhat similar, providing you with an option to microblog and express yourself or your library. It provides you with an easy way to share information in small chunks. When you think about creating a blog post on blogger or wordpress, you develop longer, more detailed entries. With Tumblr, you can create a short entry by posting text, photos, quotes, videos, chat, audio, or a link.
Getting started: sign up for an account at https://www.tumblr.com/login . Once you have your login established, it’s time to give a description and name it!
Customization: First choose a theme. You can pick from a list of over 50 different themes. Once your theme is chosen, you can customize your colors, text, and appearance to match your libraries look or feel. You can also add a link to your twitter and facebook accounts, as well as your google analytics account.
Multiple Blogs: Creating multiple blogs within one account is a great option they provide. If you have your libraries main blog and you want to add one for your youth-services program, you can add one just for that specific group. It’s a nice way to showcase everything your library has to offer.
Multiple Users: You can invite colleagues or guests to contribute to your blog. Once you are logged into your site, click on Members on the right-hand side and submit their email address. Your colleague or guest blogger will receive an email with instructions on how to join your blog. If they aren’t a TUMBLR user, they will also get a link to register. Your colleagues or guests will be able to post once they have logged in. If you want them to have access to the blog’s settings, you will need to make them an admin.
Connecting: A nice aspect of Tumbler is the ability to follow friends or people. The folks you follow will appear on your dashboard. Now you have the option to read posts or blogs before posting your own updates.
Sharing: There is an option to reblog a post onto your blog. Example: You just read this great post on another tumblr blog about creating summer reading programs in libraries. You can reblog that that post to your tumblr account and share with all your followers. This is similar to “retweeting” in Twitter.
Exploring: Looking to see what categories are of interest to you or your library? Check out tags, where you can explore popular tags by categories, or search for your own. Once you find tags that interest you, you then have the option to “track” them. Therefore, the next time you sign into your account, you can check out who tagged “libraries” to their post. This is a neat way to hunt for postings of interest.
Mobile: Get Tumblr for your device! Apps are available for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry.
Check TBLC out on TUMBLR!
