Weekly Readings: Social Networking
I must admit, like others of you out there, that I started the readings this week with some scepticism. With some caveats, though, I have been won over. When (not if!) I get a job in an academic library, I will give social networking tools (particularly Facebook which is the one used most by undergraduates) a try. I’m already on Facebook, so I’ll have to figure out (as I mentioned in a comment on Amena’s blog post) whether to just use that profile or create an entirely new one for me as an academic librarian, but I do feel that there is potential here.
The Big Caveat
There are some caveats to using social networking tools in an academic library and the main one, I think, is to be very careful about the potential perception that students might have that you are “invading their space”. At the OLA Superconference last week I went to a talk about Reference at Guelph-Humber and how they tried roving reference in the Learning Commons. They did not get a good response at all. In fact, one librarian said that when she was sitting at a table with students, one of their friends came up and said, “What is SHE doing here?” I don’t think it would feel any different to students if we forced ourselves (with the best of intentions, of course) on them in another space they feel is their own: Facebook. In Crossing Boundaries, Anne Hewitt and Andrea Forte found that one third of the students they surveyed did not believe faculty should have a presence on Facebook. Now you might argue that librarians are different from faculty (they are not involved in evaluating coursework, only in helping), but I think we should be aware of this concern and it should shape how we plan to use these tools.
Popularity
A number of articles pointed out how popular Facebook and other social networking sites are. We have to know that that is where our students (as academic librarians) are spending a great deal of their time. As an article in Educause, quoted in Reaching Students with Facebook: Data & Best Practices stated, this technology has captivated our students and because of that, exploration of what they enjoy about it will allow us to incorporate such captivating material in our approaches to them. Of course, here, too, is a caveat – it’s can’t be lame and done, as Amanda said, without authenticity.
Promotion
Promotion is going to be the key, if we want to avoid students feeling that we are invading their space. Librarians at Penn State promoted their Facebook presence during subject-specific library instruction sessions: “the librarian explicitly stated that he often provided reference and research assistance via Facebook.” By simply using Facebook as another way that students can contact you (albeit one on which they spend a lot of time and with which they are very comfortable) students can remain in control. In this article (Reaching Students with Facebook: Data & Best Practices) the authors specifically said that they did not recommend friending students on Facebook: instead “let them decide when and where they need you.”
It’s What You Do With It
The last word goes to Meredith Farkas from her Libraries in Social Networking Software: “I do not think that there is anything inherently ‘cool’ or useful about having a profile on these sites. Just like any social software tool, it’s what you do with it that matters. And many libraries aren’t really doing anything with their profiles.” This could be the motto of this class. All these tools have huge possibility for utility, but we should be very wary of using them just because they are the new, shiny thing.