Facebook & MySpace: Socializing virtually...

I already have a Facebook account, which I check sporadically and use mainly to keep up with friends I no longer manage to snail mail regularly. I'm considering MySpace, if only to keep track of what my teenager's up to.

I think though, that here's where I draw my line in the sand, at least for now. Social networking with sites like LibraryThing, using Flickr & podcasting to create buzz; those are tools that I can use.

But Facebook & MySpace aren't anonymous and aren't intended to be, really.

They're also configured in a way that's less than professional - do I really want to allow my professional self to be "bought" & "sold" by other users?

Setting up more than one account per person is, I'm guessing, frowned upon. Or at very least, creates a slightly confusing navigational challenge for friends, patrons & co-workers....

So if you're going to maintain the accounts as YOU in your public persona as a librarian, that's fine - but better warn your family, because comments from your best friend or your mother might get a bit awkward....

• My Facebook account was created (not on work time 0r machine) for me to keep in touch with my friends and family.

• I don't plan to use it for work, as that sort of defeats the "social" purpose of the account.
  

Of course, Facebook seems a bit more relaxed about allowing "institutional" accounts than it used to be - and many libraries have a presence there all along.... But I think this is one of those semi-gray areas that I'm not going to pursue for my institution. My personal account is going to stay personal.

I can, however, see the potential benefits of using a network familiar to students/patrons to announce new resources, lectures, events, etc. There are certainly plenty of libraries out there - the ALA has a profile (I'm a friend!!) - that do exactly that. I'm just not sure I'm personally ready to take that plunge. Maybe when DWU gets around to setting up an account....

Out of curiosity, I decided to go looking for accounts documenting academic libraries experiences with Facebook or MySpace. It's a fairly mixed bag...

• Five Weeks to a Social Library (no longer updated, unfortunately) relates the trials & tribulations of social networking discusses a few pitfalls of a somewhat unsuccessful attempt to go where the students are.

• Meg Kribble at the All-Purpose BiblioBlawg discussed her take on social networking sites about a year ago. She goes farther to briefly describe a few other social sites such as Ning and Twitter, finding that all of them have their uses, but not all are equally useful.

There were others, and I'm sure by this point there's plenty of professional literature on the subject, too. For now though, I think I'll stick with Facebook being for me, not my library, and see what happens down the road.