Social Intelligence

I listen to the CBC radio regularly and it seems that everytime I am turn around they are telling me that if I want to learn more about a topic or person they are interviewing I should go to their Facebook or Twitter account. Or if you wish to respond to anything you can respond via either Facebook or Twitter. Today they spoke with a tech blogger about the latest Apple  product, an ipad which is somewhere between a laptop and an iphone for reading e-books, websites, and watching movies with touch screen functionality.

The readings for week 8 that I have been reading to get ideas for my groupwork project talk about the use of social networking sites as a way for professors and librarians to connect with students, however, it sounds like those who have been using this technology are already popular so this is just another way for their students to interact with them. I think that the most important thing to remember in using this sort of technology is that this is only one way to communicate with our audience. We need to remember that not every audience within the library population will be comfortable with attaining their information via a social software network. I must make sure that I have feedback from the audiences that I am trying to communicate with via social software so that I am communicating on the right network and am not infringing on their privacy. If Facebook or MySpace is your chosen method, like your blog, you must make a personal point of connection that they can choose to connect to or not. It seems that if you go with the institutional communication method or try to link directly with your patrons by friending them it can backfire. They have to get to know you on their terms.

I have spent a good bit of time online in the last little while setting up a virtual zoo on Facebook that a friend prompted me to create. I checked out the list of visitors I had had and this little virtual adventure is definitely bearing more fruit than the call I put out to seniors on this blog.  I must either link my latter post to senior friendly sites or comment on these sites with my blog as a connection. Does anyone else have a helpful suggestions for getting more traffic to this post?

I also sent a help request to Facebook to add Naramata to the list of possible locations so that I can enter my current location into my Facebook profile. A small thing, but something that I want to be able to do.

Maybe it is just my comfort level, but I still prefer to go to a library in person or to their website versus connecting with them via Facebook.  I like to leave my Facebook time for communicating with friends some of whom happen to be librarians and library students. I wonder whether I would use it more for building a professional network of colleagues all around the country and the globe that I can chat with to solve problems or swap ideas.

I use MySpace to check out new bands when there are concerts offered I can check out the band’s sound to help me decide whether I want to spend the money and time on going to a concert. I would talk to my young adult or an technically connected friends about whether they would find a facebook connection to their libraries anymore accessible or if they still prefer to do other things with their online time.

As to the whole internet dating thing that a number of friends have chosen to experiment with over the last few years, I do not know if I am in the right headspace to try it. I think there is too much opportunity for misrepresentation and outright fabrication in this realm, but maybe I am just not ready to do that sort of personal research and exploration yet!