Taking the plunge

Well, I finally did it. I bit the proverbial bullet and joined a social networking site: Facebook. My little sister is on it (she's in college) - and, as it turns out so are several of my friends, though some of my closest friends have MySpace accounts - and she's going to be studying abroad this semester on the other side of the world, so I thought this might be a good way to keep in touch.

Since Facebook placed 1st in the 2007 Web 2.0 Awards, I thought blogging about my joining would be a good way to complete Thing #19 :-)

I'm still a little overwhelmed, to be honest. On the whole, I prize my privacy and much of what goes on here (as with a blog, I suppose) is about sharing information about yourself, so it's a challenge trying to find a balance of participation without total "exposure." I like the fact that you can set your profile so that only your "friends" can view your information, and that you can write messages to individuals without having to tell everyone by writing on the "wall."

In thinking about Facebook and the library setting, I decided to take a look at some recent scholarly publishing on the topic (see my brief reading list below). Initially, I found Mack (et al)'s recommendation to create personal profiles as opposed to institutional profiles surprising, but they explained that this is a Facebook regulation. (Landis also suggests creating a Facebook group for students to join.) It poses an interesting question about continuity, however. Students and library staff come and go, but the library (hopefully!) is more persistent. How can the library establish its sense of continuity? Should it even concern itself with that?

Ah! I "spoke" too soon, Rapple points out that Facebook no longer requires profiles to belong only to individuals. (And, now I see there are many libraries out there!)

Anyway, sounds like this tool has potential for reaching undergraduates especially. Perhaps the undergrads who get hip to the help librarians can provide will become graduates who come visit us at the desk!


Landis, C. Connecting to Users with Facebook. Georgia Library Quarterly v. 43 no. 4 (Winter 2007) p. 6

Mack, D., et al. Reaching Students with Facebook: Data and Best Practices.
Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship v. 8 no. 2 (Summer 2007)
p. 4

Rapple, C. Social networking. Serials v. 20 no. 3 (November 2007) p.240-241

web apps

Well, that was a little adventure! I tried out 2 of the Zoho office web apps (see the preceding post below). As with anything else, I think they would take some getting used to, but it's pretty neat to be able to publish and share documents so easily. I'd think twice before using these things for group projects in school, though. Maybe I'm just a scaredy-cat ;-) You can keep track of versions and changes, after all...

I did have some trouble when I tried to enter ISBNs in the spreadsheet. It left off the leading zeros.

Trying out Zoho Writer

Will Shortz makes my head hurt with his puzzles.
New web apps make me feel old fashioned.

Here is a little table.	Isn't it cute?
Look, Mom, no hand-coding HTML!	The last cell was empty, but now it's not.

And here's a Zoho spreadsheet!

A "wiki wiki" wiki post

I think wikis are a great way to gather and share information, though they are certainly not for every occasion. I noticed at least one wiki which the founder had abandoned in favor of a blog in order to have more control and escape the avalanche of spam.

Wikis can work well as tools for generating collective pathfinders on one or more topics (though there is of course the question of authority), and I could see them working for planning large events involving people in geographically diverse locations (ALA meetings being a case in point). My family recently threw a small surprise birthday party for my mom. Had the party and the family been bigger than it was, I think a wiki would have been immensely helpful for communicating about invitations, decorations, etc.

I'm not sure how I feel about wikis in a library setting, however. Perhaps they could be useful for sharing information and experiences among library staff. Using them as a collaborative tool between library staff and library users might be too unpredictable and volatile to be successful. Could you create one for the purpose of "cultural exchange" between patrons and librarians? I don't know. Might be beneficial for obtaining user feedback, but as with any such feedback generating device, how could you ensure that people would use it and that the feedback you got was representative of the whole user population?