Thing 13 - The F.. word

Nnnng. I just can't bring myself to join and use Facebook. Yes it would be a tool for communicating with friends and family. But I fear Facebook, because of perceived (actual?) disadvantages: making myself available to those I'm not that keen to meet or 'meet' again, having my pokes rejected by others who feel the same way about me, having pitifully few 'friends', etc. Perhaps I'll get over it in time.

So I'm not qualified to offer anything other than a biased and ignorant opinion about libraries on Facebook. So here it is. If I try to imagine reliving my student days during the Internet Age, I think I'd feel irritated or even patronised by a library asserting its presence on my social network. The library isn't my friend or even my 'friend'. But maybe that's just me.

Despite my luddite reservations I don't see the harm in setting up and maintaining a Facebook Group or Fan Page to raise the profile of library services to those who are already on the network and who Get It, so I'd delegate this task to someone who is and who does. But only if they can convince me that they have the resources (i.e. enough time) to keep it fresh. A stale Group would be worse than no Group for the library's image.