Policy & Design vs. Work-Life Balance: A Duel (Lauren Mesley - Blog Post #6)

 Having an employee social media policy is very important for library reputation and brand consistency. And for those who manage and create content for social media, it’s also important for work/life balance. “Librarian” is one of those careers that easily becomes part of a person’s personality outside of work. It may be in part because of all the stereotypes, but I also think that folks who are passionate about their work love to talk about it outside of business hours. I think we can reasonably assume that most librarians have some passion for the field (they’re certainly not in it for the money). Therefore we might see some activity on their personal social media accounts related to libraries; perhaps it’s library memes, advocacy campaigns, or just a funny story of something that happened at work that day. Librarians are still librarians when we leave the library! It’s in our blood. So having policies that make it clear when staff are and are not representing the library is definitely a good idea. 

Keeping personal life and work life separate can be particularly difficult for the staff that manage and create content on behalf of their library, though. As someone who did this, I can attest that I was getting work-account notifications on my personal phone when I was not on the clock. Apps like Meta Business Suite that help assist social media managers are not designed for a work-life balance. On Facebook, for example, I had to connect my personal account to the NYPL account so that on the back end of things, social media managers could see who posted what on behalf of NYPL. This was terrible for work-life balance! I am still getting notifications from the NYPL account and I haven’t worked for them in over two years. This is not for lack of communicating to NYPL that my personal account is still linked to their account. It seems that their social media team doesn’t know how to remove me from the Meta Business Suite. I will apparently be an admin on their Facebook account in perpetuity. And all I can think about the situation is that it’s a good thing I left NYPL on good terms and I’m not a person who would abuse my admin privileges now that I don’t work there anymore. Imagine if I wasn't!

Comments

  1. Zoe ManaloOctober 11, 2025 at 11:09 AM

    You make a great point about how librarianship often blends into personal identity, which makes clear social media policies so important. They help protect both the library’s reputation and staff boundaries. Your experience with Meta Business Suite really highlights the downside of linking personal accounts to institutional page, it's a big work-life balance issue. Libraries definitely need better systems and clearer policies to prevent situations like that!

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  2. AnonymousOctober 13, 2025 at 10:43 AM

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