The End of an Era; What Libraries Can Learn from Taylor Swift

It’s like 2 am in the morning as I write this. I’ve stayed up way too late to watch a grainy live stream of the very final ever Eras Tour show. It’s hard saying goodbye to my emotional support pop star and this online community. I’ve never been prouder to be a Taylor Swift fan than I have in these past 2 years. I’ve never been prouder to get to share this amazing experience with my two daughters. And I’ve never been more grateful. I’m not going to lie dear reader, I cried and my tears did indeed ricochet.

At the same time that Taylor Swift was ascending to the summit of the Eras Tour, women have lost their bodily autonomy and the maternal mortality rate has skyrocketed. Men have started replying, “your body, MY choice” to women in online social spaces. And members of the Republican party are threatening to take away a woman’s right to vote. At the same time, young men are being indoctrinated into what is often referred to as incel culture in online spaces thanks in large part to toxic algorithms.

In comparison, Taylor Swift fans made and exchanged friendship bracelets. They met in libraries and bars to host book clubs and dance parties and to share their love of a woman who taught them about resilience, perseverance, hard work, and positivity. Taylor Swift boosted economies while giving lavish bonuses to truck drivers with hand written notes and donating to local food banks. She created inclusive spaces where girls and women of all ages felt inspired, empowered, and grateful. And she gave back and tried to make the world a more positive place, on tour stop at a time.

So I find myself asking, what can we learn as libraries from Taylor Swift?

Community

Over and over again in online communities the thing I kept hearing is that the Swiftie fandom provided a sense of community for her fans. It felt inclusive, inviting, and POSITIVE. Yes, it was a safe space, which some people weirdly say with derision as if people don’t want safety and affirmation and peace, but more than that . . . it felt like community. Strangers shared bracelets and traded them freely. People made fan art and supported each other as small businesses. They made new friends; they found like minded people who shared a common interest and the felt affirmed. If libraries can learn any one thing from Taylor Swift, it is that people crave community and we are uniquely in the position to provide that. But we must be inclusive, safe, and ultimately a positive place that people feel safe to return to again and again.

Tradition

The Swiftie fandom is full of traditions and rituals. There are the friendship bracelets that I have already mentioned. But there are also chants, important dates to celebrate, and a wide variety of shared moments that bond fans together, and to Taylor herself. When Fearless comes on, we throw up our heart hands and our hearts fill with joy. We feel connected and powerful and important. Rituals and traditions are powerful things, and we can and should look for ways to incorporate them into our libraries. Annual events, contests, sayings, etc.; Find what your libraries niche is and what your community needs and start engaging your patrons in meaningful ways.

Marketing

Taylor Swift is a marketing genius, or she hires marketing geniuses to help her be a marketing genius. But every last detail is planned. Each era has a color scheme, the schemes are repeated over and over again until they become a defining and recognizable graphic. Each era has a symbol, such as the snake for Reputation. It’s repeated. It’s consistent. It’s recognizable. And it has power because you immediately know what is happening, who is being referred to, and it invokes a powerful response (yes, sometimes even negative ones for non-fans). That consistency and power though, it’s so important. Those small business of fan art I mentioned above, they exist in part because Taylor creates such powerful images and quotes that people want to incorporate them into their lives. If our marketing isn’t doing the same, then we are failing. Our message is important, but it must also be consistent, recognizable, and evocative.

Community Engagement

Taylor doesn’t just give a message, she gets the fandom involved. She drops clues. She plays games. She leaves hints and trails and fans love getting involved and guessing. It’s participatory in fun, engaging, and exciting ways. Fans spent months . . . months and months and months . . . second guessing every thing she wore, said, and did and clowned for the announcement of Reputation TV. We watched grainy live stream after grainy live stream in fear of missing the announcement. Clowning in itself became a fun means of community involvement for many fans. And when she showed up in a city, the city itself got involved. There were scavenger hunts, photo booth opportunities, murals and more. Libraries should find fun ways to get the community involved, keep them guessing and engaged and entertained. Are you going to have a big community read? Don’t just announce it, have a scavenger hunt or puzzle to make the announcement. Draw it out, make it fun.

Community Led Champions

When it was all said and done, it was actually the fandom itself – her community – that raised Taylor Swift’s numbers and profile for her. Fans started livestreaming each show online so that more fans could watch. A game called Mastermind and an app called Swift Alert was created by fans to solidify that sense of community that she herself was already building. What the fans did behind the scenes was like nothing I had ever seen before. We’ve all heard that people will often not share positive experiences but will go and tell like 7 people about a negative experience they had. Something different happened here and the community came together and said you know what, we love this community and we are going to do our own things to make it even better. They became invested in the community, they made it their own, and then the became its champions. We need to build a community that our users want to champion and we need to let go of some of the control and let them indeed champion us.

I’m not going to lie, I am going to miss The Eras Tour. I’m going to miss those grainy live streams. I’m going to miss midnight texts from friends about surprise songs. I’m going to miss friendship bracelets and guessing games and everything that came from this amazing time in my life. But I’m also going to learn from it and be a better librarian. Taylor Swift has a lot to teach us all about being fearless, being resilient, and being an empowered young woman in a time where many men don’t want that for us at all. She also has a lot to teach us about building community, marketing, and just being a good person (or in our case resource) that people can feel good championing.

Thank you Taylor for everything you have been teaching me personally and professionally. Here’s to the next era.

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