Finally Facebook!

Because Facebook was the only social media site (SMS) that I was familiar with prior to entering this class, I was initially disappointed that this particular site was not on the agenda until week 10. Well, my perspective has changed. The SMSs we have visited each week and others that have been presented as a result of suggestions from classmates and my own “surfing” (is that the right word?) have been a real education. I am excited to expand my knowledge of Facebook, but now understand that this is not the only venue available. In fact, it is mind-boggling how many options are actually out there! This is a whole new world for me and I find myself jumping from one SMS to another to try them out. Unfortunately, or should I say - fortunately J, I work a full-time job and have a family-life, in addition to classwork and a few hours of sleep at night. So, the amount of time available to investigate these sites is limited.

Well – back to Facebook. The articles this week were informative and thought-provoking. I started by reading the 2006 article, The Terrible Twos. While not necessarily about Facebook, the information about Web 2.0, as well as the AJAX and API technologies, was interesting. There are also references in this article to several sites that I plan to research further. 

The next article I read was the 2008 article, Use of Facebook in academic health sciences libraries.  I took Health Sciences Librarianship a couple semesters ago at UMass Medical Center. While the focus of the course was on the medical databases, the librarians strive to increase their outreach to the medical students and physicians. There was no mention of Facebook during this course, nor do I recall a Facebook icon on the Lamar Souter Library website… just looked – Twitter is there, but no Facebook. This article indicates that “the 2 most-cited reasons why academic health sciences libraries did not have a presence on Facebook were the lack of time to set up and maintain a Facebook page (36%) and the belief that Facebook demonstrated little or no utility in an academic setting (28%).” The reason Lamar Souter does not have a Facebook page, is most likely a combination of these 2 reasons. Even the Twitter posts by some of the medical school librarians was limited.

The articles we read this week indicate that those libraries currently using Facebook, public and academic, are using them mainly from a marketing standpoint. At this point, little outreach is being done. The Connell article, as well as the two Fernandez articles, stress the importance of waiting for the library patrons to set the boundaries.  As historical mentors for privacy, librarians can take a leadership role in the privacy issues surrounding  social media.  Also, in their role as “translators of knowledge” (Fernandez, 2010, p. 15), librarians should strive to understand and impact how information is obtained going forward. Fernandez (2010) makes several statements that sum up the importance of the library’s role in social media  – “the nature of information is changing” (p. 15) – “the information contained within a SNS (social networking site) is caught between worlds.” (p. 14) – “the very essence of information science is to study the flow of information.” (p. 16)

I’ve been doing a little work with the Facebook page at the public library in the town where I work. While I am only one of several administrators who post, I have been struggling a bit with what is appropriate to post and what isn’t.  This week’s articles helped to focus some of my concerns, but obviously there is a lot to learn about Facebook, the recent changes to the site and the role that Facebook will have as a networking and information-transfer tool for libraries.