Libraries Invade Facebook
Using the new Facebook platform, several libraries have established a presence by creating applications. These applications are added by users and allow information to be displayed within Facebook’s website — even a user’s profile. Michigan, UIUC, and Ryerson U have all led the pack with the earliest of these academic applications.
While these new apps gesture toward the possible future of social networking sites and create a tacit relationship between academic institutions and individuals, I’m uncertain if that’s desirable for most users. A friend recently remarked that it seems to cross the “unspoken line between school and cool.” She may be onto something. For the average student, adding a library application on Facebook isn’t the least bit desirable considering these apps simply put a library catalog searchbar within the Facebook canvas - things you can already do on the library’s website. Adding an application that’s solely a utility for school seems to cross that unspoken line. Moreover, the function of “adding” something in Facebook, be that a friend, special-interest group or application is a representation of the user, and if a user doesn’t already have a relationship with the library and that’s all the application is, then there’s little reason for them to add that app.
The applications that ARE successful so far augment interactions between friends and preexisting relationships - whether that’s sharing information on movies that you’ve seen, turning your friends into zombies, or throwing sheep at them. Facebook’s model is based entirely upon openness and sharing. Sharing is “cool.” If libraries focus on a model of sharing with their apps, they could find much greater success in attracting casual users (you know, the ones who don’t usually hang out in the library).
In my ideal library application, I should be able to share a list of the books I’ve currently signed out of the library, or books that have helped with a research project. My friends could then see the items I shared, and potentially use that information to return to the library. In that process of sharing, the library (or creator of these apps) facilitates these interactions, and becomes a larger part of our lives. If we’re looking for new ways to promote libraries or academic projects, then innovative uses of Facebook applications may be a great nontraditional place to start.
Posted in Educational Computing, Facebook Platform, Libraries
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Richard July 9th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
“I should be able to share a list of the books I’ve currently signed out of the library”
A problem with Web 2.0 and the openness of Facebook is that it flies in the face of privacy protections that librarians have worked hard to establish. In an era when the FBI is very interested in what you might be reading, many library systems carefully designed to guard your privacy. Not everyone is comfortable with the openness of Facebook, and in some ways it remains to be seen whether it’s a good idea (ask those people who are being denied jobs because they posted pictures of themselves getting crunk).
For the moment we’ll have to go outside our libraries and use apps like LibraryThing or IRead in Facebook. One thing libraries can do, is make it easy for us to get metadata from their catalog to my app by introducing “digg this” like connections. (and oclc is doing some that in worldcat.org)
I’m not sure I’m ready to overturn these protections just to be “cool.” At the same time I am having fun being cool, and using available apps to share a select view of what I’m reading, surfing, and writing.
But I’m one of the “good” guys with nothing to hide, right?
I’d actually be interested in someone writing a brief summary of how concepts of privacy have changed historically and in the context of Web 2.0. I look at a city directory and think there’s lots of information that until recently would have been considered private. Of course in smaller communities privacy was very different, I’m guessing modern ideas of privacy emerge with the growth of larger urban centers…but I haven’t done the research.