Comments on: A social networking site I can get behind

By: Jonathan Silberman

Jonathan Silberman — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 16:39:22 +0000

hmmm…
No librarians shouldn’t be on facebook or myspace institutionally, it seems vaguely lecherous.
I do think that, if they choose to be there for personal reasons, it might be nice to stumble upon a face of a librarian I knew every once in a while and see that they aren’t complete shut-in freaks and they have friends (other than cats) and a social life.

By: sidd

sidd — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 21:30:54 +0000

It all seems very obvious to me as to what Marye says about librarians on facebook or myspace for that matter, until she told me there is an ongoing debate about the whole deal. I do have an account on facebook the “social networking site” otherwise not known as place where i can find sources for my russian literature paper! Myspace seems even more high school like for me. So for a library and librarians to be on myspace or facebook would only arouse the keen suspicions of Chris Hansen and dateline NBC(haha)

By: ck40579

ck40579 — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 01:43:57 +0000

Well, you won’t find me on MyFace or SpaceBook because of the data mining activities that go on. That aside, you’re spot on in sussing the appropriate niche of all your social networking examples.

By: Mary

Mary — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 22:07:07 +0000

I agree with Cody I really do not want to see pictures of my students at a party on Saturday night etc. I remember when I was in undergrad and a Prof. showed up at one of our parties and I was like EWWW! like Offspring said so many years ago “ you gotta keep it separated”

I am not against social networking sites far from it I used Linkedin and Goodreads on a regular basis, but I am against what Matt so eloquently called “trend-slavery”.

I also agree that we need to clearly identify why are we using “a such and such technology” does it actually support and increase our learning outcomes or are we obsessed with seeming cool? Or pretending that we are in line with the market?

Like I said if you are already using Web 2.0 by all means network away…I think this blind love of technology comes from people who do not use it on a regular basis. Anyone who is engaged with it knows that as everything else it is a mixed bag.

Instead of chasing trends why don’t we figure out what we do different than Google instead of trying to compete straight up. Silly but that is a whole other bag of worms

And this idea that Librarians should be cool _ I became a librarian to embrace my inner nerd!

By: Matt Todd

Matt Todd — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 21:12:56 +0000

Disclaimer: I don’t do Facebook or MySpace, so I may not be qualified to answer, but I’m not sure I agree that students have a defined and set apart “space”, at least not one that we should think of as permanently “theirs”. That’s a bit like saying email is only for people born after 1980, or that the telephone should be reserved for flappers!

While it’s true that youth tend to embrace new technologies and social relationships first, does that mean the rest of us should ghettoise our youth and leave innovation to them? Social networking, whether through software or anything else, is innovative also.

Do Libraries belong on MySpace? That’s a different question, and one that opens new considerations. Why do libraries want to inject themsleves in these places (like the Libraries and indeed universities that are now populating “Second Life”)? Is it because we can’t turn down a techno-trend? Even the most cat-loving, cardigan-wearing, crochet-happy librarian has never met a tech-trend she didn’t like. That’s why we’re all saddled with cases and cases full of microfilm we don’t (or in our case, because our reader-printer is broken) can’t use. Librarians like to jump on a bandwagon and we tend to leap before we look.

Librarians live in a terror that we will become irrelevant, which drives our trend-slavery. I think it’s right to say that patrons do (and should) determine our services, I’m not sure that it’s right to “go to the patron” in every case, especially where technology is concerned. The academy in general has carried on a love affair with technology for the past 40 years. Especially within the last decade we increasingly see technology, Messiah-like, as a Saviour to our problems of space, budget, distance ed, and relevance. But at what point does the technological tail begin to wag the academic dog?

By: cody aune

cody aune — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:38:11 +0000

I totally agree!
Having your librarian show up as one of your “friends” might possibly have about ten minutes worth of kitsch appeal but after that it’s going to look odd. Wrong even.
This is a place for *real* friends, people who want to see pictures of you drunk and disorderly, not school or professional contacts. There are many ways to avoid looking pathetic and staying off of social networking sites is one of them.