LIS 9763

When I think about Social Networking sites, the first thing that comes to my mind is the ubiquity of them. The Nielson Report has been mentioned in other blog posts this week, and I think it just goes to support the notion of their ubiquity.
    I would agree that there is a place for libraries in social networking sites. There are people going to the library, but there are also many people who do not go to the library. If the library can go and have a presence where people are interacting with each other, this may help to raise the library’s profile in their consciousness. It can also situate the library as a place or organization that fits with their way of being.
    I would like to discuss the case studies this week, and the aspects that I think are particularly effective. In comparing the two libraries with facebook pages, I would have to say that the Hennepin County Library does a much better job. The one thing I find interesting is that they really interact with facebook the way other users do. I was very interested to read the 25 things you may not know about the Hennepin County Library. This ’25 things’ activity was very popular on facebook a few weeks ago, with many users completing ’25 things’ entries about themselves. The fact that the library participated in this activity really situates the library as a part of the community, rather than just an information page. The second thing I really like is that the library can be integrated into the user’s facebook experience through their application where you can add the library’s catalogue to your facebook and search their books. This means that patrons do not have to go out to the library’s page to interact with the library’s holdings. They can go to a place that they already visit often, so the library is really elevated in the user’s consciousness. These features are in sharp contrast to the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. This library uses facebook more as an advertisement. The community that follows this library is smaller, but the more revealing feature is that the page is much less active.
    The myspace page of the Ann Arbour District Library is nice to look at, but there is not a lot of activity on it. It seems like the activity  and interaction is not really mutual. The moderator of this page does not post new content often, and as such there is not much for users to interact with.
    I find the My Own Café page to be a very interesting concept. There is a wide breadth of subject areas covered, so I think that adds to the appeal. This page also seems to make use of other web 2.0 technologies, and the content is very recent. I think overall there is a correlation between how active the moderators are in updating content with how active the community is. I also like that there are places for the users to interact with each other and discuss issues that are not related to the library. This creates a place where users can talk to each other, with the bonus of also providing library information. If I could make one critique of this site, it would be that when I first visited it, I thought some of the content was ads, just because of how it appeared on the page. I looked over it first, but then had to go back and see that it was actual content, not ads.
    Overall, I think there are really good examples of how social networking sites can be used to created very vibrant online library communities. It is also clear however, that simply creating an online social networking presence is not enough. If users do not see new updates coming through their facebook feeds, they are likely to forget about their library ‘friend’. There is still a large responsibility on the part of librarians to maintain their content and keep it up-to-date.