Number 21: Social Networking Part 2

23 Things asks:

• Are you a member of any online communities?
• Are any of these social networks appealing to you?
• What did you find that was interesting and that you might use later?

As far as the communities that this Thing mentioned, I am a member of last.fm. I don't use it very often, though. I do tweet, but have very few friends signed up to see my tweets. I am a political news junkie, so in the past I have been a member of and contributor to specialized political blogs. Netflix has a social networking component now, where you can have "friends" who can see your queue and share movie recommendations, so I have a few friends on there.

I looked at the list of social networking sites on wikipedia, and wow! I had no idea there were that many. I really liked the food ones, I had never even heard of those before. I am always looking for new recipes so I might use those in the future.

As with all these other web 2.0 things, I think they're only good in moderation. I just don't have the time to go signing up for every niche social networking site that might interest me.

Number 20: Social Networking

This Thing is a bit redundant for me. I created my Myspace account back in 2004 and I started my Facebook account in 2005. I rarely log in to my Myspace account anymore, as most of my friends have stopped using it in favor of Facebook. I am on Facebook nearly 24/7. I'm probably a Facebook addict. (The first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one, haha!) Facebook is my primary mode of interaction with most of my friends, especially the ones I do not talk to/see on a regular basis. It has been a very helpful way of keeping up with my friends who are scattered all over the country and the globe. On the other side of that coin, though, is the fact that because of Facebook, I already know what most of my friends from high school are up to these days.... So the fun of my 10 year reunion next year has been a little deflated.

I am an advocate of libraries having a presence on these social networks, especially presences that are controlled by the libraries themselves. In this day and age, if your "brand" isn't out there setting the image for itself on the internet, your users (who will include both fans and critics) will be out there setting your image for you. The library system I work for is very reluctant to have an official presence on Facebook. This really rubs me the wrong way. We have a digital librarian. Why can't it be part of her job to create and maintain a Facebook account for us? Other library systems in the state have pages. This whole insistence that "social networking = child pornographers = bad" is just outdated and silly. You are probably much more likely to run into a real child pornograper actually IN the library rather than on the internet. And if he wants information about kiddie events, it's just as easy for him to get that information from the newspaper or flyers than it is on the internet.

Number 11: Tagging

23 Things asks:

• Can you see the potential of this tool for research assistance? Or just as an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere?
• How can your library or media center take advantage of tagging and del.icio.us?

I do not like http://delicious.com/. It just seems like a big fat mess to me. I understand tagging, and why it's beneficial for things like this here blog (and you'll see that I've been tagging all of my entries), but this? It's like a really unorganized search engine. If I'm looking to browse a particular category or topic on the web, I'll go to Google and search for it that way. Looking up individual tags on this website isn't nearly as thorough. I suppose that it could be useful as a way to store your own personal bookmarks. But couldn't you also just save them in your email? Or something? Boo.

I don't know why I dislike it this much. It just doesn't sit well with me for some reason. Maybe it's the design of the site itself. It's bland. And ugly to look at.

I also have mixed thoughts on user-generated tagging in libraries. I think it has the potential to get messy.

Number 7: Communication Tools

23 Things asks:

• Describe how your library uses email. Has it improved productivity?
• Share your thoughts on online reference using some of the other Web 2.0 communication tools.
• Are you an active user of text messaging, IM, or other communication tools?

I was already familiar with most of the communication tools explained in this Thing. At the public library, I do not think that email has improved productivity. Every day I get anywhere from five to ten email messages, and 99% of them do not apply to me. Because we are such a large organization, blanket messages are often sent out to big groups of us. It is helpful for me as a part-time employee because I can stay on top of things from a distance, but most of the time it is information overload. I used to be really good about deleting read messages and filing away ones I wanted to keep into various folders... Then I just let it get out of control and I think my inbox has around 1200 read messages in it.

The public library just started offering a "text a librarian" reference tool. However, it's not done in house. It's a service we purchased, so some "librarians for hire" somewhere (who knows where) are the ones answering our customers' requests. A fellow librarian who didn't realize this was an outside service sent a few joking text messages to the number, thinking it was our own virtual librarian receiving them... Needless to say he was quite embarrassed when the outside librarians on the other end revealed the truth to him. I don't like the idea that this is an external service that we purchased. I realize that our library is not really equipped to have someone available 24/7 to answer texts, but it seems like there would have to be a middle ground.

Personally, I am a texting fool. I didn't use to text message at all. But in the past three years or so it's become one of the main ways that I communicate with my friends. I've also used various IM services since the mid-1990s, first on AIM and now primarily through GChat.