Week 4 - Social Networking

Well, like the bad-guy police captain chasing Harrison Ford in Witness said upon being told the Amish don't have phones , "Thank you, sheriff....it's been a real education."

The closest I've come to social networking has been accounts at Care2 and Classmates.com (the free version;I'm too cheap to pony up for the "gold" club ). Although I've heard tons about FaceBook and MySpace, I haven't looked into them. I realize that many of our patrons (teens and adults) are using these and other social sites daily at our library, and I have to admit, I'm just not comfortable with them. I am constantly amazed at the amount of personal information and exposure available on these public sites. In the previous semester, I commented on another person's blog regarding his link to an article about people who post on blogs and social sites and the amount of personal information they share, information that is cached forever in cyberspace. They don't realize that potential employers are looking at these sites. In their painful quest to be accepted by someone - anyone! - out there, they seem blithely unaware that they are breaching their own privacy and opening themselves up to potential predators, too. Okay, I'm taking a deep, cleansing breath now...

I read Meredith Farkas' article about social networking with great interest. I do understand her reasoning that we should be out there where the people we want to serve are. But I don't agree that we need a presence in the social networking sites to do it. Don't we look like the silly adult who tries to talk and look hip to his teen kid's friends, and failing miserably, looks pretty cheesy (Marilyn's term) in the process? I feel like libraries are acting like McD's trying to be ALL THINGS to ALL PEOPLE, even those we'll club over the head to attract. Or like a big bad Yellow Pages - where else should we put that ad to get the most bang for the buck? Are teens really going to surf FaceBook or MySpace and look for us there, or stumble upon us and smack their foreheads, moaning, "I coulda gone to the LIBRARY today!" Instead of spending the last three hours finishing that research project - oh that's right, if the library has IM, they can ask the ref librarian on duty to get all the materials together for them! Ooops, my cynicism is showing again...

I did look at the Flickr slideshow of FaceBook pages and they semed pretty ordinary looking. Why even bother to have them there is the thought that comes to mind. I'm just curious if they generate a lot of hits - if yes, then that's great, it's working for them, and I'm just full of it. If anyone reading these posts works at a library with a successful FaceBook, MySpace, or similar entry that's drawing in kids and is working out well, I'd really love to hear about it. I'm open to learning how this is working in real life.

That said, I did take a look at several of the sites listed. The first one I looked at was the Charlotte-Mecklenberg's "The Loft@ImaginOn" - at first I wasn't sure where I had landed. I had difficulty reading the purple text on black background - guess that's cool these days. I did see that there are a number of posts from kids, so they must be using it. I moved to the LaCrosse Library's site with the black text on dark green background. Again, I had trouble deciphering and navigating it. Now, Arapahoe Library's site got my attention with its neat music! And it got the attention of my almost 12 yo son who's home sick today. He sauntered in, peered over my shoulder, and asked what I was looking at. I explained, and added that I couldn't read the text on the buttons (dark blue text on black buttons), and he said I could get around it by highlighting the text I wanted to read if, "they were stupid enough to use those colors", what My genius said when I showed him the previous two sites I looked at. Seems like the black background is popular - Goth? I use black in quilts to make other colors pop - just need enough contrast to read, thank you.

I think these sites had some neat looking features for teens - comment "walls", IM capability, upcoming events and books of interest to teens, etc. I think this is all great info on a library website, but I'm just not sold on it being listed at MySpace and FaceBook. I would be really curious to know if these sites generate lots of hits and comments from users, and if the librarians who manage them are in contact with their users. Please understand: I want kids to feel like we take their questions and requests seriously, that we want to offer services and programs they'll like and attend. I'm just afraid it's another "cool techy tool" that will stretch and break the already stretched-too-thin staff time and resources and not be worth it. And we'll look like we're on the "Bleedin' and Cheesin' Edge" of the technology to do it. If I had to vote this moment, I would not want my library to do a FaceBook or MySpace entry.

As for the article outlining 12 ways to use FaceBook professionally, I think people might be better off spending their time DOING THEIR JOBS than trying to figure out angles to make themselves look better online. I don't think these social networks are appropriate places for professional contacts, although heaven knows networking (online and in person)seems to be the way many people get jobs.Just MHO.

Hubby and I monitor our son's computer use at home and have warned him of the various dangers out there on Wild West Frontier of the Internet. We've explained that posting personal stuff online can be dangerous and that once it's posted, you can't take it back. I think there may be a whole carpe diem generation out there who may regret their entries in another 10 years or so, but then again, I may still be full of it.

Week 10 - Wrap-up and Reflection

I've finally made it to the end - whew! When I faltered and fell behind in the middle of the semester, I was afraid I might not catch up, but I did! And I've learned some interesting things along the way.


The video clip Information R/evolution was very thought-provoking. When I was 12 in 1970, I made my career choice to be a Reference Librarian and followed the educational and career paths to make it happen. When I finally entered grad school in 1985 at the age of 26, how the library world had changed! My first class in Information Theory and its discussions of Noam Chomsky and random chaos theory made my head reel, and I was left wondering if I had made a career blunder. I survived this and other classes, slogged through Dialog database searching, and wrote all my papers on a little Mac borrowed from my husband's office (my electric typewriter was too noisy at 2 am in thin-walled apartments!) After working as a Reference Librarian for 9 years, I left to give birth literally as the Internet arrived in our library. I was a stay at home mom for the next 10 years, but we did have Internet access at home due to my husband's job as a computer analyst and programmer. (He's the techie in the family, and I will tell you that osmosis didn't work - none of his technical savvy has rubbed off on me at all.) When I re-entered reference work about a year and a half ago, I was amazed at how computers had infiltrated libraries, both as patron access stations and as critical reference tools. Now I wouldn't work without one. That video clip amazed me, I guess, because it reminded me of the path I took to get where I am today - from print books on the dusty shelves to sleek flat-screened computers. Okay, enough reminiscing...


One other side note - I read and found David Lee King's article very pertinent, but this portion disturbed me:
"You are asking them to participate: opening up the possibility to comment is a form of invitation to participate. It allows actual interaction with real, live people. it also sets up a type of digital town hall meeting where someone’s expressed opinion can be heard, discussed, debated, and distilled by others within earshot (ie., other readers)"
Now, I will admit that I am old as dirt, and that I am "connected but harrassed" as noted by that little quiz we took the first week. And I do feel that connecting with patrons by inviting them to interact using wikis, surveys, etc. and responding to them with respect is a great thing. But understand that this kind of "actual interaction" is done using the internet, not "real, live people". The anonymity of an email or the chatroom digital town hall should not be confused with talking with and looking into the eyes of a warm-blooded person. That's why it's called virtual reality. While you may be chatting in real-time with someone, you are not necessarily interacting/reacting to them the same way you would if you were talking face to face. The reason I'm making this distinction is because I have set limits on the amount of daily computer time my 11 yo son has so that he has the time and inclination to interact with real people in the real world he lives in. He needs to know that there is real life to experience and treasure, not just the virtual worlds inside the box sitting on the desk. Okay, I'm climbing off my soapbox now...

The various tools we learned about during this semester have many library applications, and I know many of these have been listed on other blogs. Suffice it to say I've learned about a variety of things I hadn't even heard of when I signed up for this course!
I think my favorite has been the blog. I've felt a sense of accomplishment as I've added features to it as a result of the various assigments we were given. I also like having the blogline account with the various rss feeds I've subscribed to. It's a handy one-stop source I can check for the things that interest me. The Flickr assigment was probably my most confusing, but I did triumph when I linked my Vulkin Kat pic! Of course, now I need to do it again so I can remember how...maybe this will be the push I need to start using my husband's digital camera and downloading pics to share! Hmm....) The LibraryThing and del.icio.us (I really hate typing that name!) assigments were also quite useful - both are things I will be using in my personal life. I'll have to see about the wikis, although I have a feeling we will be using them at work now!

I liked the way the assignments were structured. While I did appreciate some of the step-by-step directions, I can understand the reluctance to spoon feed us too much. It really is a good idea to use the tutorials and help sections of most sites, to just learn by playing with them. The little extras at the end of each week were fun, though I didn't always have time to do them all. I hope to go back and do some more of the fun things when I make more time - please don't delete any of the assignment pages from the semester 1 so we can refer back if we need to. The extra time you gave us to catch up assignments was crucial for me to finish, so I hope you'll do that during the 2nd semester, too.

If you had asked me a month ago if I was going to sign up for semester 2, I'd have said probably not. But the funny thing is, I've finally gained some confidence and interest in some of these new (to me) sites and tools, and now I'd like to learn some more! So, I've sent an email to Jean to sign me up for the 2nd part.

Finally, I'd like to thank all the people who acted as facilitators for us during the semester. I've really appreciated your comments, suggestions, and encouragement. You've made the assignments interesting, relevant, and fairly short. Plus, you've managed to nudge an old stick in the mud into reaching out of my comfort zone to learn some technical things that I could even share with my savvy son and husband, and that's a very good thing! And to my fellow students/bloggers - thanks for sharing your comments with me, too. I appreciated you taking the time to read my ramblings. I hope to explore some other student blogs between the semesters.