Week 6: Facebook - playing nicely with others

Yep, Facebook page created... Added 1 colleague... Became a fan of Manukau Libraries Facebook page... Commented on "What I am reading Right this minute"... Commented on "What is the BEST book you ever read and WHY".

That was saved as a draft back in May..... One month + a few days later.....

I searched for public libraries on Facebook and noticed that they are mostly North American, maybe it's got something to do with how they are under more funding pressure than we are??
Anyway, had a look at two of those (one a US library and the other Canadian), and it looks like the content on their Facebook pages are pretty much similar to what we have on our library website/Facebook pages - locations and opening hours, promotion of events, event photos, features in the media and discussion boards. (Although one even had a "Chat with a Librarian" button.)

I have had patrons asking about Facebook, wanting to know:

1. about the charges to access Facebook on our Learn.net computer.
2. why they are not able to log-in (either because they have insufficient funds or had tried to log-in too many times with the incorrect details).
3. how to chat on Facebook.

But no questions related to Manukau Libraries on Facebook...

I guess Facebook for us as a public library, would be a promotional tool as well as one that allow us to interact with library patrons outside the restriction of library locations and hours.
For Library patrons, Facebook would enable them to interact with Library staff (again with less restriction - location and time-wise), and also a source of information (eg: library happenings, who's reading what, what's a good read etc).

As for promoting our Facebook page to customers. Umm... I guess I would, if the patron seem to be interested in this sort of thing, or actually want to be connected to people with similar reading interests. Although I do think that people who are on Facebook already and who are interested in being part of the library network would already have found us on Facebook.

Other than having to go onto Learn.net computers, Facebook was easy to use. I guess it helped that I had set up my Facebook prior to starting Web 2.0 learning.
Having said that, I don't actually go onto Facebook much, I tend to rely on email notices that it send me. I mostly use Facebook for keeping in touch with family and friends overseas, and I would continue to do that.
Facebook would be a great tool for meeting people and meeting like-minded people if you share your likes and dislikes. But I like my privacy and therefore still prefer to share and communicate in old-fashioned ways...


A recent article on Facebook in Time magazine
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1990582,00.html

No Facebook

No Facebook on staff PCs...so will have to get onto Learn.net (hah!) or do this at home :(
Oh well...

Week 5: Music files and mp3s

It was fairly easy to navigate the sites I visited, so I guess the customers should be okay with this too - especially the on-to it teens. Amazon.com is more mainstream pop, Jamedo is more alternative and mp3raid.com is probably the site I like most so far (still yet to look at alll of them - that will have to wait for when I could make more time!)

Week 4: Books and social networking

Goodreads is similar to LibraryThings, but with some extra functions - e.g. exploring quotes, and book swaps (only in the US though..)

I think Goodreads would be useful for customers who likes keeping lists of what they have read and have not read. I've come across several who are intereted in looking at their Reading History in MyInfo, and a few who wanted to recommend a book b ut couldn't remember what the title or author of the book was... Although I would probably only recommend this to those who are already confident with using MyLibrary.

For both library staff and customers, Goodreads would be a very useful sorce of recommendations and readers' advisory - one of the booklists on there was "Best books for reluctant readers", and also some funny ones like "The series got worse and worse" etc. Goodreads would be yet anbother place for library staff and customer to interact and talk about books, like Twitter.