 How many of your libraries are on Instagram? Many, many. And how many of your libraries participate in this hashtag bookface Friday? That's good to see. I was kind of upset when Albert and Oscar were asked, which platforms would you recommend for a library? And none of them said Instagram. And I was about to jump up here and say, you guys need to be on Instagram because the community of libraries on Instagram is already very strong. So for a library starting off, Instagram is a great platform for starting a social media account and joining an online community. Today I'll be talking about the history of our account and how we started, history behind the bookface Friday hashtag, some tips on shooting some good bookfaces and definitely some examples, and what libraries can learn from the popularity of this hashtag going forward. So our first post was on April 30th, 2012. I didn't post this image. It's just it is one, the library card's cut off. We don't have any hashtags. It's kind of blurry, but it's OK. We can only go up from here. I think an important thing starting any kind of social media account is having a clear goal, set goal. And our set goal when we first started this account was simply to increase our presence on social media. So that just made it easy for us to put content up, easy for us to have a direction, figure out what to post. With that being said, it was tough finding a way, finding what kind of content would get likes, what kind of content would garner followers, what kind of content would it be possible for us to actually make? So when our account first started, it was a team of three people running the account. And we all kind of posted on our own time, posted different things. But after a while, we started to get used to what worked and what didn't, and then we fine tuned our approach. Today, we have 717 posts, 5,632 followers, and we follow 638 other Instagram accounts. An important thing I think for an Instagram account is having a clear vision, a clear description of your account. And ours reads books, places, people, and things, the stuff we love. Another important aspect of your bio is a link. And on this, we have a link to a survey I created to help me prepare for this presentation. And I will be alluding to some of the results throughout this presentation. And there's a book face. We do a lot of video and one of our summer props from a Harry Potter event that we had over the summer. So when I got asked to do a presentation on Bookface Friday, I was very excited because it was one of the hashtag campaigns that we participate in that I love doing. It's very fun to do. It was started by the New York Public Library in August of 2014. They simply asked Instagram users to post book faces. And the New York Public Library would then repost their favorite images from that day. This was the first repost. And it was very exciting for us at Berlin Game to be selected by NYPL and be reposted on their account because they have like 125,000 followers. And those followers saw our image, saw our name. It was very exciting. This is our library line out in front of the library wisdom. And that is my thumb. You'll be seeing a lot of my thumb in this presentation. So what is a book face? It's simply holding up a book to somebody's face, lining up the image with somebody's facial features, so then the resulting image results in a seamless selfie, so to speak. Here we have kind of what it takes for us to shoot one of our book faces. In that first image there, we have three library staff members posing behind a book. Second one, there's nobody even involved in it. It's simply just a book and a plate. And the third image actually took three of us to get that image done. The next slide will reveal the results. So it's very cool, in my opinion, because what these images do, it kind of personifies the characters that are on the book covers. I believe it was Oscar who kept on saying, we judge books by their covers all the time. Now we even have these images that we could judge these books by. So it allows people to kind of personify the characters that are featured in the books. Actually, this concept didn't even start with books. They started with record sleeves and vinyl covers. Carl Morris is a DJ in Wales. And in 2007 he and his buddies took these images with record covers and actually started a trend on Facebook. An interesting point is the sleeve face hashtag has about 11,000 close to 12,000 posts. Bookface Friday posts are at 21k, or yeah, about 21k. So it's a lot more. But the trend of sleeve face actually happened in 2007 where Instagram wasn't just as popular. So it was Facebook. So the numbers may not be really reflective of how many images they are of the sleeve face. And it was just a screenshot that happened to be up there. Going into some helpful tips on Bookface, use Instagram filters. Instagram itself is a very powerful photo editing tool. So you have filters that will help your images, help your book faces seem more seamless. Black and white filters often do the trick. After you take a good shot, don't be afraid to use Photoshop. Don't be afraid to use any other types of photo editing software to make your images pop a little more, make them a little more unique. In this case, I use Photoshop to color the eyes of Al Yellow. It's called selective coloring. And also utilize the burst function on your phone because it is tough to get the right shot. And if you're able to take multiple shots in one instant, chances are you're going to get one that works out really well. So typically when I shoot a Bookface, it is me holding up a book, phone in one hand, book in the other. It limits your range on what kind of image you could take. This image, I actually had six coworkers help me pull this off, including myself. So I had two people holding a book and then the three subjects. But having them help me out totally gave me a range of perspective that I would not have otherwise gotten if it was just me shooting it. And having three people in a single Bookface pushed the limit. It was said many times earlier today at Futures that libraries have some of the most creative staff, and I fully believe in that. And seeing where the hashtag has gone so far, it's amazing to see all the entries currently and change it up. You don't always need a face to do a Bookface. You could use a slew. This slew is actually right behind the Redwood Shores branch library. You could use a hallway. You could use the sky. These were some of my most favorite ones. You could use the tree outside the library. You could use an ice cream cone or go out to the beach. With Halloween quickly approaching, I did want to bring up this Bookface. Two years ago, during Halloween, we had a theme of Berlin Game of Thrones. We actually built a throne out of books, and we put it out in the lobby saying, hey, take a picture on the throne of books, tag us. Use the hashtag Berlin Game of Thrones. And this is a good way to let your patrons know that you have an Instagram account, that you have a throne of books. It's a great way to show new book releases. This actually, the Napoleon book that was featured in this Bookface, wasn't even out due out until the next day or something. So we used it as a way to promote a new book that's added to our collection. And of course, it highlights library staff. When we put out the survey, one of the questions that I asked people was, what is your experience running an Instagram account? What made it worthwhile for you? I believe it was a response from the Foster City library who said connecting with the authors was pretty awesome. So it prompted me to provide some examples from our library where we did make a connection with some authors. One, Lisa C. We had Lisa C as one of our keynote speakers for our foundation's annual brunch. And I knew that Lisa C had a couple of books that I could possibly bookface with. And I was very nervous when I was introduced to her to bring her this idea of, Lisa, do you know what a bookface is? And surprisingly, she was aware of the concept. She knew exactly what it was. And she's like, I'd be happy to do one. And in fact, we managed to do one. And she reposted this image on her Facebook with the caption of oftentimes I get asked whether I'm really Asian. Now I have this picture to show them, to tell them that I am. And that was pretty awesome to see that reposted on her own Facebook page. Megan Schultz saw this bookface, which pretty much has two pairs of feet there. And she commented in saying how it was so awesome and how what is this bookface phenomenon. So while we had one author know about it, we had another author who finally stumbled upon this image and found out about this trend. And finally, we have Jackie Collins' title Confessions of a Wild Child. And the late Jackie Collins did like this image. And seeing that like was very awesome for us, especially starting off the account. But as with any social media account, whether it's Facebook, whether it's Pinterest, whether it's Twitter, there's always going to be challenges. And one of the questions I asked in the survey was what are your biggest challenges with running these bookface Friday images? And some of the top answers were finding the books, taking time to create content, and getting buy-in from staff. While I'm up here representing the library, I would not be up here if it wasn't for all my coworkers. So this shows about 22 of our coworkers who managed to pose for whether it be five minutes, whether it was 10 minutes, whether it was one minute. But they were willing to take some time out of their busy days and help me shoot these images. So we start these accounts with the idea of, is anyone going to see this? We put all this effort into these social media outlets. We put somebody in charge of our Facebook account. But is it worth it, like our people watching? And these next couple of slides, I think are important because people are watching, whether it's our constituents that live in our cities locally or a library somewhere else in America or in the world. So back in January 2015, our Instagram account was voted the best book-related Instagram account, along with some other great libraries as well. And on May 3, 2015, our library account was featured in a New York Times article alongside some other libraries as well. South San Francisco was mentioned too. There you go, Nisa. And the article focused on the rise of libraries utilizing social media to reach their communities and also that the reach is much larger than expected. And just last year, our library was awarded with a PR Excellence Award from ALA in the category of electronic materials promoting collections. And our entry was titled, Showcasing Books Through Book Faces. So again, while I'm up here representing our library, I would not be here if it wasn't for my awesome coworkers and our awesome staff. And I think for any library right now who's considering social media, considering Instagram, considering YouTube channels, considering whatever avenue it may be, don't try to take it on yourself. Utilize your coworkers. Utilize the team that you have. And success will follow.