Library Facebook?[my caption]
Image by _Max-B (Massimo Barbieri) from Flickr, under Creative Commons
I've never 'done' Facebook.
There's a surprise ... ;o)
But everyone else 'does' Facebook, from the Barack Obama to the Cambridge Corn Exchange. Should I, therefore, and should my library?
Me? No, I see no need for me to do this. I run my life quite well without it, and I'm not anxious to acquire lots of 'friends' through a social network like Facebook. I don't have lots of photos to share, or lots of relatives with pages.
What about my library? My concerns are that it takes time to create a profile, and even more time to keep it interesting and active. If it stagnates, those people who do sign up will rapidly lose interest. If you have plenty to report, perhaps a Facebook page is a good idea, though, as with Twitter, there is so much information being spread about out there, and both Twitter and Facebook are primarily for social interaction (at the moment, at least) that I can see the less trendy, professional pages being ignored. I don't see many people wanting to belong to the friends of their College library. I mean, How sad is that? None of the libraries I've looked at have huge numbers of 'friends'.
A website gives more opportunity to make a statement than a Facebook page, as far as I can see - there is a certain sameness to the appearance of all of the library Facebook pages that I've looked at, and none of them are particularly attractive, which I suspect is the fault (limitation) of Facebook, rather than the lack of input from the institutions. The "walls" are particularly hard to read, I find, especially when they aren't weeded.
There's a surprise ... ;o)
But everyone else 'does' Facebook, from the Barack Obama to the Cambridge Corn Exchange. Should I, therefore, and should my library?
Me? No, I see no need for me to do this. I run my life quite well without it, and I'm not anxious to acquire lots of 'friends' through a social network like Facebook. I don't have lots of photos to share, or lots of relatives with pages.
What about my library? My concerns are that it takes time to create a profile, and even more time to keep it interesting and active. If it stagnates, those people who do sign up will rapidly lose interest. If you have plenty to report, perhaps a Facebook page is a good idea, though, as with Twitter, there is so much information being spread about out there, and both Twitter and Facebook are primarily for social interaction (at the moment, at least) that I can see the less trendy, professional pages being ignored. I don't see many people wanting to belong to the friends of their College library. I mean, How sad is that? None of the libraries I've looked at have huge numbers of 'friends'.
A website gives more opportunity to make a statement than a Facebook page, as far as I can see - there is a certain sameness to the appearance of all of the library Facebook pages that I've looked at, and none of them are particularly attractive, which I suspect is the fault (limitation) of Facebook, rather than the lack of input from the institutions. The "walls" are particularly hard to read, I find, especially when they aren't weeded.
"If we build it, they will come!" The problem is, they won't. I am not a big fan of Facebook, personally. I definitely prefer to exchange messages with people directly, not via Facebook. But even after being asked, more than once, quite a few of my friends still prefer to communicate via Facebook... and we are talking middle-aged people here. As for students in their late teens and 20+, good luck convincing them that coming to your website is much better than doing what they (and everybody else in their social circle) are doing, including in relation to information-seeking and -sharing patterns.
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