20. Social Networking

MYSPACE: I visited several library sites for teens,and at times felt overwhelmed by the music, colors, patterns, and movement on the screen. I know this is appealing to young adults, and feel this is a great way to attract them to the library. Public libraries can use them to appeal to teens and preteens. In an academic library, the patrons range in age from teens, young adults, and older, so I feel that the library would need to appeal to a broader audience. What may be appealing to young adults may overwhelm patrons who are less experienced in Library 2.0 technology. I found many positive uses on MySpace Library sites such as book lists, databases, chats with librarians, blogs or comments, schedules for library, videos of library highlights, podcasts, friend spaces, descriptions and history of the library, and more. I think it would be fun to set up a MySpace site for our library. I will ask one of our librarians about doing this for the Fall semester. Usually the answer is no, but I will ask anyway. I got a negative reply for my idea of using Library Thing when adding new books to our popular reading collection. One of our librarians said he was told there was a charge when you added beyond a certain number of books, which he did not want to pay. It can be difficult to bring about change.