I think the decision as to whether a library has a presence on MySpace or Facebook or not has much to do with the population the library serves. The library where I work is almost totally a graduate level library. Right now, I don’t believe our students are MySpace or Facebook fanatics, so I haven’t tried to reach them using these social networking tools. In other library situations, it might be worth having a library page – as an additional way, in a world where we try to reach users anyway we can, to reach yet one more user. In Facebook, by having the ability to add applications, a student might turn his/her page into a sort of gateway to library resources. Ask-a-librarian would be a good application to make available.
I’ve been in LinkedIn for quite some time and still have not really figured out what, if anything, to do with it. I can see where it might be useful for MLA to use it for job advertisements and I personally might use it if I were looking for a job. I like that it is meant for professionals.
From what I’ve seen this week, I’m not convinced that these tools are going to become great avenues for libraries to pursue to reach users. I need more evidence.
