LIS 9763

My first experience with Facebook was a few years ago. It was about 6 months prior to facebook being open to business and high school registrants, and then later to public registration. When I started using it, only my post-secondary education peers were able to access and create profiles. In the short time between then and now, Facebook has exploded into more than a gossip-, homework-, and image-sharing tool. It's become a resource for unofficial background checks, family reunions, and, yes, library reference.

I have a hard time reconciling what my personal feelings about Facebook are (that it should merely be a social utility), versus the potential it has to be a professional tool for the library world. There are two avenues of consideration when it comes to social software and libraries: 1) the banning or allowing of access on library computers; and 2) the participation of "the library" within the tools.

Facebook (and similar websites) on Library Computers

I come from the school of thought where it's not a library's responsibility to censor the content users access via the computers. I think Facebook is so pervasive in today's culture that to prohibit patrons from accessing it would be doing them a disservice, and continuing to cause a gap between the information "haves" and the "have-nots", for lack of a better term. Facebook, Myspace, and any other social software tool should be freely accessible via public library computers.

With that out of the way...

Libraries (and Librarians!) Within Facebook (and Myspace... and Livejournal...)

Just recently (as in, the last couple of days?) Facebook has revamped the way a "Page" looks versus a Profile. Previously there was a very clear dinstinction between the two.  A Page was a promotional tool, and didn't allow much room for communication, making it in my opinion ineffective as a library tool. With the new changes, the Pages are given walls to post on. This allows for more flexibility in communication. We discussed in the chat about a librarian who uses her wall to answer reference questions; this change allows for something along those lines to occur, with all members of library staff participating and the onus not being placed solely on one individual. I think that is pretty exciting.

I've noticed with a couple of the Case Studies an infrequency in updating, and I think this calls back to the concerns Farkas made about Library participation on social networks being done poorly. There's little activity on the library-created http://www.myowncafe.org/. And this might have been too ambitious an arena to jump into, considering how many social networking and software sites exist.

In essence, the participation by libraries can't be half-baked, which is unfortunately how so many tools, not just social software, are treated. Accounts are made, publicized, and then forgotten. And while there is certainly a concern about stale content, I think another concern is the disrespect of social space. People, especially youth, take facebook and myspace very seriously, and to infiltrate that space and not take it AS seriously as it's users is hugely problematic.

(hope you enjoyed the comma splices and parentheses abuse!)