Friday, November 07, 2008

Facebook in libraries? Can it ever succeed?

I recently discussed David Lee King's article looking into facebook in libraries. Well a few other bloggers have been discussing this article (1 & 2).

I then went back to the original article and looked at the comments Kings comments had got and at the relevant libraries that had been using it (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6).

In looking at this I noted that the highest of these facebooks pages was 349 and lowest 25. My question is, will facebook ever be able to replace the online catalogue? I mean, with figures these (fairly) low, how would we get are patrons to go to this site and make people comment on our services?

My idea for facebook libraries is to offer something free that the catalogue does not. I think search skills video's on youtube or something along those lines. Without people visiting the facebook page its just a dead link in my opinion. We have to offer more for less in these days of credit crunch.

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