My favorite account is a library in Ohio
This interview made me laugh *and* cry.
Library Social is the best corner of the internet. There’s Milwaukee Public Library’s Shakespearian way into trends, Los Angeles Public Library’s entertaining staff videos, and Columbus Metropolitan Library’s TV show spoofs. In an algorithm that can feel rather horrible at times, the various library accounts across the country (what I’m calling Library Social) are a wholesome reprieve.
Today’s interview is with Grayson Kelly, Digital Storyteller Specialist at Columbus Library. He’s a former radio DJ turned social media expert. You’re probably already familiar with his work—whether it be the viral giant bugs video, this Law & Order skit, or the wholesome “Whisper why you love the library” Reel. The Instagram account alone has racked up an impressive 15M views in the last year. When I asked him what about the culture of libraries might lend itself to a more experimental social presence, he told me: “It’s a space that values curiosity and storytelling.” You can feel it when watching the videos.
Grayson and I cover a lot of ground in this interview. We talk about why he doesn’t use CapCut (“I’m all thumbs”), what he loves about working in social media (“I appreciate that it demands creativity but doesn’t ask for perfection”), and why being an outsider has helped him in this role. Finally, we talk about how libraries encourage you to follow your dreams. His answer made me cry.
Rachel Karten: Hi Grayson! First, can you talk to me a bit about your current role and some of the roles that got you here?
Grayson Kelly: I run social media for Columbus Metropolitan Library, which covers 23 library locations around the city (only seven social pages though, thankfully).
Before this, I was a radio DJ at a powerhouse indie station called CD 92.9 FM (formerly CD 102.5, formerly CD101… Old Ohioans will know). Like a lot of small businesses, it was a place where people wore many hats. They said I could do a radio show if I agreed to do their social media, which was a fair trade.
The station folded in 2023, and miraculously, I found my way to the library.
My name tag says “Digital Storyteller Specialist”, which is very hard to explain to family and friends. I came around on it, though, because it reframes the work as less “hypercreative spokesperson” and more “journalistic translator”. There are so many stories in the library, not just the ones in the books, so the job is to select the most compelling ones and share them in the right spaces.
RK: How would you describe your social media philosophy?
GK: It’s a little controversial, but I think a lot of brands need to chill out a bit.
There’s so much pressure in brand marketing to keep up a constant stream of content, but that also means there’s a lot of fluff being posted. But like, no one’s refreshing the library’s Instagram grid and cursing us out because we haven’t posted a new book cover today. I’d rather freeze the calendar than post something that people won’t resonate with.
I want to build trust more than anything, so when people see our little orange icon in their feed, they’re more likely to stop and take a look.
RK: What does an average day look like for you?
GK: The only constant is checking the inbox first thing. As you can expect, the library gets a wide variety of DMs…some good, some bad. When the zanier messages come in, it just strengthens my respect for our frontline staff who have to hear some of this stuff face to face.
Be kind to your librarians, please!!!
Anyway, after the housekeeping, it’s always a different day. I work best when I can focus on one thing at a time, which might be writing a script, editing a batch of photos, or a full soup-to-nuts video project. I try to think of it as one Big Thing, even if it’s several tiny things. Like scheduling all the weekend posts, that’s one checkbox. Feels better somehow.
RK: The library's Reels are very funny. What does your writing and storyboarding process look like?
GK: Most of the time, it’s collaborative. We have a Teams chat called the Writer’s Room for staff to pitch ideas from all the different library branches. We develop the concepts, revise scripts, and then get to filming. They’re all volunteering to help with this, which I’m very grateful for.
The team is centralized, in a way it wasn’t before. Everyone used to be responsible for taking their idea from start to finish, but that meant a dozen different users, phone cameras, editing styles, and captions. The big picture was a little hard to see.
I took on the director/editor role for everything, and now everyone works within the roles they feel best at. Some people appear in the videos, others just sit back and edit some jokes. Then I travel to the branches to film everyone’s part—a lot of the TikToks are filmed on different days at different locations.
Our output has slowed down, but our follower count has more than doubled, so it seems to be working so far. Slow and steady.
RK: The editing is also superb. Are you doing that? What tools do you use to edit?
GK: I’m a Premiere Pro guy, which is a real shame. Not because I can’t afford the Adobe suite on my own (I can’t), but because I just know someone’s coming to take my job by using CapCut on their phone. I feel like James Murphy in “Losing My Edge” whenever I try to edit on mobile. I can’t figure it out. I’m all thumbs.
RK: I think it was this video that really kicked off a lot of the momentum on the account. Can you talk to me about how it came together?
GK: Oh man. What a lightning in a bottle moment. Hakim, he’s just the greatest. The video wouldn’t have scratched the surface if it were anyone else. He’s got such comedic timing. The way he says “giant bugs” twice? Please!
We try not to chase trends, in general. It’s really easy to try and round peg / square hole something, and when a brand gets it a little wrong, it’s something that everyone can catch from a mile away.
So, we’d been aware of the Chappell Roan trend for a while, but never found the right fit. Then we got the giant bugs and it was like a gift from the heavens. Then Hakim just happened to be around that day. It was one of those rare moments where everything aligned. I thought the video would do well, but wow, it exceeded everyone’s wildest dreams.
The Giant Bugs are coming back next month, by the way! I hope everyone’s booking their flights and hotels in advance.
RK: I'm curious if you can think back to when you first started. What were some of the opportunities you saw for the library on social? How did you implement them?
GK: Right away, for me, just having the time. My last job had that dual role, so I’d be standing up from my desk at 2 p.m., like, “oh god, I have to get to the radio booth! I’m late for my show!”. Now, I can finish whatever I was making, and I can try to do it right. I did so much stuff halfway at the radio station because I only had half the time, so that was a big relief coming in.
I also started as a bit of an outsider. I mean, I had a library card and I voted for the levy and all, but I wasn’t signed up for email alerts. I certainly didn’t know about the pure volume of stuff that libraries do.
So now, as I arrive, I’ve got all these questions. When I drop my book in the returns bin, where does it go? How do you know which books to buy? What do you mean I can “check out” minor league baseball tickets? A lot of these things are old hat to the ones who live it daily, but they’re also vignettes with a lot of potential.
My friend Jack from Planet Money put this really well, which stuck with me: “I’ve never taken an economics class. So I was largely an outsider, and I think that helped to inform it, because I was like: Wait, this is weird. And I just didn't see many people being like that: What the hell?”
The same is true for all of us, I reckon. We just have to allow ourselves to ask “what the hell?” a little more.
RK: You'll often share graphics that show where Columbus Library sits in terms of following of libraries. Why is building an engaged community online an important metric for a library?
GK: Follower growth is one of the clearest metrics in terms of anyone’s social media success. I’m always surprised to hear other social managers talk about being tested on everything, all the time—the weekly impressions, likes, comments, shares…
But I think that if our followers our growing, it means that people are interested in what we’re doing. It also means we’re not banking on filler content to hit an impressions quota at the expense of audience trust.
It also reflects the larger purpose of the library, in a way. Libraries exist to connect people to resources, but also to each other. Some of us see the library’s social platforms as the “24th location”. People connect online when they can’t in person, and as the platforms grow, our reach gets stronger, better at influencing people to get a library card and give it a try.
It's really easy to give it a try, by the way. You can get a library card online now! It’s the future.
RK: The past few years have given rise to this phenomenon of libraries being very good at social media. What about the culture of working at a library do you think might contribute to an engaging social media?
GK: It’s really funny. The way I see it, the Venn diagram between Library People and High School Theater People…it shares quite a large center. Really though, all kinds of creatives tend to flock here. It’s a space that values curiosity and storytelling.
It’s also very altruistic work, the kind that reaches out to our communities to make the world a little better, for everyone, both singularly and widely. There are a lot of generous people that work here. There are also a lot of very smart, very funny people who work here. When their passion crosses over into social, we’re all better for it.
RK: What do you love about working in social media?
GK: I appreciate that it demands creativity but doesn’t ask for perfection. It gives you a bit of leeway, because no one wants to see a brand posting a perfectly-polished 4K TV commercial. They want to see something that feels real. So, that’s the only thing we have to do—just make something compelling with what you’ve got, and figure out the rest on the fly.
RK: Finally, what do you love about libraries?
GK: I applied for this job while sitting in the Boston Public Library. I was thinking back to where my love for video really started, and then it hit me all at once. It was the library. Who else would let a gang of teenagers start their high school film club and make a movie in their building? They didn’t kick us out, for once in our lives. They encouraged our dreams!
It’s like that for so many people. Kids grow up here. People achieve those far-away dreams, and they get college degrees, and they start that small business they’ve always thought about opening. But people are at their lowest here, too.
We just wrapped a campaign to defend Ohio’s Public Library Fund, and thousands of people wrote postcards about what the library means to them.
One of them hit me like a ton of bricks. It said: “Don’t take the world away”.
In our libraries, we make a big point of greeting people when they walk in the door. If you’re at your highest peak, or your lowest valley, it’s the same greeting either way. You’re a person, you’re here, and you get a hello no matter what. I really admire that policy.
It’s a reverent space, a sanctuary in that way, and that’s true everywhere. No matter where you are, the library is one of the most important things around.
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Huge library lover and I loved this - what incredible work Grayson is doing! Immediate follow. And shoutout to San Francisco Public Library's IG account, highly recommend :)
Yep, this IS the best interview you've done. I love this so much, and I feel like as a novelist trying to manage social media essentially as an independent creator, Grayson's ideas and philosophy about this is SO helpful and refreshing.