Librarians & Facebook

November 19th, 2005

I’ve spent the past few days talking to colleagues at 2 separate events in Massachusetts on the benefits of online communities and how librarians can get active in them. Imagine my excitement when Emily Alling explained to the group at NEASIST that her library had become a member of the Facebook community at the University of Massachusetts. She writes about it on her blog.:

“What if ISEL (our library, Integrated Sciences & Engineering Library) was on Facebook?” I asked. “So people who work here or study here or just like us could be our friends.”

“Oh, yeah!” E. enthused. “We could start a group! Here, I’ll start a group right now.” And she did: I Heart UMass Science Library.”

I have read alot about Facebook and how it has taken over as a major networking tool in colleges around the country. Having libraries and librarians involved in these communities are very important (be where your users are). I see this as an online version of the “friends of the library” groups.

I also poked around Emily’s blog a bit tonight and saw that she used PBwiki for a Blogs/RSS presentation. She blogs:

“I used PBWiki, which I liked so much I sprang for the no-ads version, for my presentation. Even though this was a solo effort, I chose to use a wiki because it allowed me to put my presentation online easily without pressuring me into agonizing about design factors (as I would have if I’d made a straight HTML site); it allows people to view the presentation without needing to have PowerPoint or the PowerPoint Viewer; and creating a wiki is, as the word implies, quick work indeed.”

I love it. I think we need some sort of “anti-PowerPoint” icon to add to these types of presentations.

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