Social Networking is fascinating, and the different feel of the various sites always interests me. http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/16/study-ages-of-social-network-users/ talks about the ages of people using different social networking sites, whilst http://royal.pingdom.com/2009/11/27/study-males-vs-females-in-social-networks/ talks about the male vs female ratios. I must admit, the sheer number of social networking sites is rather overwhelming! I hadn't even heard of some of them...
Anyway. How can Facebook be used by libraries?
I run the Oriental Institute Library fan page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Oxford-United-Kingdom/Oriental-Institute-Library/137472003754
In theory it's a great extra way to get in touch with readers, to keep them informed about on-going projects, and so on. In pratice, the big issue is getting enough readers signed up to your Facebook page. If you don't get enough then there's really no point, it's like giving a lecture to an empty room. So I think Facebook can be great, but it needs lots and lots of advertising.
Still, my Mum regularly reads the blog posts there to catch up on how my job's going- so maybe it is useful after all. Even if only for her.
Also, I've joined Linked In. Even if I'm over 17 years younger than the average age for it... http://uk.linkedin.com/in/jamesnfishwick is my profile, with lots of copy-and-pasting from my CV! Excitingly, I put my employer down as "Bodleian Libraries" and was the first person to do so-although I then realised Laura had said she worked at "Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford" so I changed to that instead. Doubt I'll ever visit Linked In again.
The big problem with Social Networking, in my view, is information overload. With Facebook, LiveJournal and now LinkedIn all clamouring for my attention on a daily basis, I generally find it easier to just ignore them all!
I guess Facebook gets a Meh, and LinkedIn gets a Nay?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Interesting post! And I like the layout of your blog. Thanks for the heads up about the preferred form of name for our noble employer - I must change that on my LinkedIn profile (again). And thanks for the tip about pasting in stuff from a CV. If I can find mine, I might try that too.
ReplyDelete