Textbook enigmatic

Like many people, I've been on Facebook for several years now and use it a lot.   I love the way it enables me to keep in contact with so many different people so easily - I have a lot of friends living elsewhere around the world and Facebook means that when friends move away it's much easier to keep in touch.   I'm also in touch a lot more with extended family than I ever used to be through it - even my Nan is on there and she loves keeping up-to-date with all her grandchildren and nieces and nephews (and great-nieces and nephews!) through it.   I particularly like that it enables you to see a lot of the more mundane things - the kind of things that you might not bother to explicitly write about it in an email or tell someone over the phone - and so you feel closer to people as a result.   The flipside of this of course is that there's an awful lot of people who you end up knowing far more about than you might necessarily want them to, by virtue of being friends with them - and of course the definition of a friend on Facebook is not necessarily the same as a friend in the real world!   Facebook comes in for a lot of criticism, at times, sometimes fairly, sometimes not, but in many ways its problems and benefits really reflect its users - it all depends on how people use the site.   One of the most important things I think for anyone on there is to remember that you control your information - it's the usual rule for the internet multiplied.   Don't put things on Facebook that you aren't comfortable with having people see, and make sure that you adjust your privacy settings.   I'm always quite cautious about what is publicly available, and have set all my privacy settings to friends-only so that only people I approve can see things.   I also take care of the problem of the 'friend' who's really only an acquaintance (or the old school friends getting back in touch out of curiosity) by using the lists feature and customising what different categories of friends can and can't see.   Facebook is a fantastic tool, but like everything, it should be used with thought and care!

Libraries and Facebook

Facebook was the first web 2.0 tool I tried out for the VHL, and at the time I set us up, the page function had yet to be introduced.   I therefore made a group for the library, thinking how great it would be to be able to get readers to communicate with us through the site, and with each other too and discuss library things.   A few people joined, but nothing ever came of it.   This was my first lesson in how the participatory ideal of web 2.0 just doesn't necessarily work in practice - expecting users to contribute just leads to disappointment when they don't!   However, soon after that Facebook introduced the pages feature, and so I moved the VHL over to that (although the group does still exist, just unused).   I think the pages feature has had the effect of changing people's expectations of what is on Facebook and what it's for.   It was quite a big concern a few years ago that organisations going onto Facebook were somehow intruding on a personal space, and I think that was pretty valid with the original set-up of the site.   However pages have created a space for the corporate within the site - there used to be a link right on the homepage saying 'create a page for your business or organisation' (or something along those lines - it's not there any more!).   And as more organisations have set up pages I think people have stopped viewing them as an intrusion onto a personal space and have started expecting, almost, that they'll be there.   I think there's an increasing expectation that everyone and everything is on Facebook now, and if nothing else I think this is why it is important for libraries to be there too.

Looking around at library Facebook pages, the most common approach is to basically replicate what's on your website or elsewhere, and this is really all that I've done with the VHL page.   I view it as another place to push out our news and updates (our blog feed imports directly to the page) and to have our basic information listed - contact details, opening hours etc.   I know that people who sign up to be fans get our news through the site, in the same way as anyone subscribing to our blog feed or following us on Twitter does.   We also have a SOLO search box on there - as adapted by Jen at the EFL (the code is on the web 2.0 wiki if anyone wants to use it for their library page), which again is just giving people another place to access the library.   It's therefore low-maintenance and an easy way to expand your web 'reach' without too much effort.   Looking around at other library pages, this approach seems quite common, and I think it's perfectly fine!    There are some really impressive Facebook pages around for libraries, with a lot of extras - Manchester Library & Information Service is a particularly great example, but for all the customisation they've put in, they still seem to be using it in much the same way as we are ours.