Facebook

I’ve been using facebook for about a month and have been adding to it slowly but surely.  I find it amazing that you can find just about anyone, my childhood friend found me and boy was that a blast from the past.  Using facebook to connect and network with old friends is great but what about libraries, how can they use social networks like facebook or MySpace make a difference or connect to their readers.  While searching the “network” feature I found about 7 libraries on facebook but unfortunately you need an appropriate email address to access the network, needless to say that the networks did not have a lot of users.  The London Public Library only had 60 members. It seems that the libraries were using facebook for work purposes and not for connecting purposes.

Both the OCLC and the Library of Congress have networks but again they are not accessible to the public.  I wonder if the average libraries, OCLC or LC open up to the public it would encourage average users to access the networks and instantly post comments and questions and the libraries can easily respond in kind on the “wall” or by sending private messages.  It seems to be a good way to connect to the users without them going to main websites and/or hunting down answers and they could link into the main websites.