Do Social Networking Sites Care About Libraries?

July 30th, 2006

A very wise colleague once told me (a few years ago) that search engines don’t care about librarians, and I agree with this statement to this day. Google only started to care about librarians when they figured out that if they want to scan all of our books, they had to actually talk to us. Take a look at when the librarian newsletter appeared. Or when they started exhibiting at ALA. Coincidence? C’mon. Here’s another example.

Where is Yahoo during this whole DOPA thing? Have they released a statement decrying yet more horrible proposals from our government? I haven’t seen one. And it’s not just Yahoo. The big pockets who own MySpace haven’t said anything either (big surprise there - look who owns it).

So, do the big pockets, the ones who can really make a difference in the fight against DOPA, the ones with the connections and the money, care about librarians? I would doubt it.

They create lots of neat tools for us to use and show off to our users. But maybe they don’t care that their products won’t be used in schools and libraries anymore (if libraries don’t want federal funding, that is).

Or, maybe they know something we don’t know. All I know is, why are we spending so much time decrying a proposed law that the companies that own the tools seem to be ignoring?

Comments are closed.