Hello,
Following on from the Second Life discussion I wondered what any
libraries were doing about interacting with Facebook. I suppose this is
predominantly of interest to the HE/FE sector but may be of use in other
sectors.
I am aware that some libraries have "official" facebook groups for
communicating with students (and staff) but there are a lot of very
unofficial groups on Facebook, some of which are set up to take a quite
hostile stance about an institution's library. Does anyone have any rule
about whether library staff should participate in discussions relating
to opening hours, service provision etc - or should we just let it go
and treat it like something overheard in the bar? I should point out
that possibly due to the nature of our students Birkbeck doesn't have a
large Facebook community so we are perhaps unusual, but this also
enables us to think about getting in whilst the ground is quite fresh.
If you work in an HE library and don't know about Facebook it might be
worth finding out - although you might not necessarily like what you
see! (The use of Anglo-Saxon along with "txt speak" does rather
proliferate - especially when people are cross).
I would be interested in hearing of any official uses of Facebook as
well as what people did about reacting to user comments both good and
bad, and will of course create a digest of any responses (unless
otherwise indicated) for later posting.
Regards,
Tim
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Tim Fletcher
Library Systems Manager
Birkbeck College
University of London
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HX
[log in to unmask]
Tel: 020 7631 6060
Fax: 020 7631 6066
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/lib/
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