Monday 29 March 2010

Libraries and Facebook

Having looked at the Facebook pages of various Oxford libraries, it seems to me to be used in the main by colleges and smaller libraries such as the Language Teaching Centre. I was very surprised to see Facebook there at all - I only knew about individuals' pages before, and thought it quite strange when an American friend told me last year that she'd set up a Facebook page for her university department (telling me sadly it still 'had no friends'. I can see advantages to using this medium to communicate with readers: speed/ease of posting, no paper, wide dissemination without the need for multiple notices. This would be very useful for e.g.time-limited messages about workmen, noise, closures (cf snow crisis), new books etc. But I don't see this is any advantage over a blog - unless it's that students are so regularly on Facebook that they check the library page at the same time.
Also, the sections for pictures, RSS feeds and links are a good idea - many things accessible from one place.

What about the more interactive dimension? This is what I don't take to. While it could be useful for staff to ask for specific information, all this 'fan' business and 'so and so likes/d this' seems juvenile and inappropriate in the context. Maybe I'm just an old square (as anyone using this term indubitably is!!)

1 comment:

  1. Of course, you can always publish a blog feed to a facebook page - this is what we do at the VHL, so we publish the news in both places at once and people can read it where they prefer!

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