Social Webworking

Facebook launched during my junior year of college while I was off traipsing around the English countryside, studying abroad. My friends kept sending me emails asking me to "Join Facebook! Join Facebook!" and I kept responding, "Ummm...I am visiting Tintern Abbey. I am not interested in this Facebook of which you speak."

When I started an M.Ed. program, though, I had to study the "new literacy behaviors" of teens for an Enlish Methods class, and I ended up setting up a Facebook account to examine the site as a "new literacy tool." (Nerdtastic, I know.) I've kept up with it since then, and now that I'm out of college, it's actually a good way to keep tabs on people who are all over the place.

Just as a heads up, Facebook may or may not be a little nefarious. They hold onto your information FOREVER and claim the right to use it however they feel, even if you delete your account. Smarmy.

I'm also trying to love and use Shelfari to keep up with all the reading I'm doing, but I haven't been doing a stellar job of keeping it up to date. I think it'll be a great resource to have when I move into the reference world and am trying to recall a particular title or when I need to pull up books on a certain subject (yay tags!). It would also be neat to have a collaborative Shelfari page where, say, Children's staff could compile recommended books with reviews. It would be like What To Read 2.0. Patrons could friend our Shelfari page and then keep up with reviews and recommended books added by library staff.

Deborah and Karam pointed me in the direction of yet another social networking site when I started knitting, and it's been a teriffic resource for knitting patterns and tips. I'm mostly amazed by how comprehensive it is. When I wanted to make some Coraline gloves ravelry linked me to this free pattern. Ravelry also offered pictures of completed projects from other members who have used the pattern. It provides a log of comments about pattern pitfalls and work arounds that users have found. There are suggestions for alternative yarns to use for the project. The site is just incredibly well designed and user friendly, and it has a huge, very active member base, so there is a ton of information there. I know we have a lot of knitters in our patron base, and I'd love to spread the word about Ravely to those who aren't familiar with it. Maybe through a Wiki of knitting resources? Through a podcast? Through an HCPL Facebook page? Yikes.