[Yulpub] Fwd: Facebook at Bennington's Crossett Library

[Emily Horning]

A library experiments with Facebook.  Has anyone thought about doing this 
here?

Emily

><http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/index.php/2006/05/22/facebook-at-benningtons-crossett-library/>Facebook
>at Bennington’s Crossett Library
>
>
>
><http://www.flickr.com/photos/librarianmer/151558931/>By Meredith Farkas
>on libraries
>
>Since posting about social networking software almost 2 weeks ago, I have
>been corresponding with Oceana Wilson of the
><http://www.bennington.edu/acad_library.asp>Crossett Library at Bennington
>College. They are the library that has been soliciting feedback from
>students on Facebook about what materials they’d like the library to
>order. Oceana and I are both curious about the policies libraries have
>developed regarding the use of MySpace and Facebook for marketing and
>outreach. Or if you don’t have policies, how do you handle sticky ethical
>issues that creep up? Oceana has done some really interesting outreach via
>Facebook which reminded me a great deal of what Brian Matthews did with
>his
><http://altref.blogspot.com/2006/03/intuitive-revelations-ubiquitous.html>Ubiquitous
>Reference Model.
>
>So I asked Oceana if I could reproduce an e-mail she sent me, both in an
>effort to get feedback and to show some of the potential policy issues
>that can come up when using these tools:
>
>I was thinking yesterday of the ethics of it all. I’m curious to know how
>others are handling it. I made 2 rules from the beginning (honestly not
>intensely thought out - mostly gut instinct) and it has worked so far.
>
>1. I never ‘invite’ students to connect to the library profile - I only
>accept invitations (not that it would necessarily be unethical to invite
>students - I’m just not entirely comfortable doing it)
>
>2. I don’t really read (and definitely don’t look at photo albums!) of the
>student in my ‘friends list’ with the exception of one thing - after I
>accept their invitation I look at their ‘favorite movies’ and ‘favorite
>books’ list and I check it against our catalog. Often I’ll find some great
>things we don’t have - so we order them and I send the student a quick
>email typically saying something like -hey - your book list is really
>interesting - the library didn’t have x, y, z but we’ve ordered them - let
>us know any time if you ever think of things you want us to have - thanks!
>The responses back have been positive and some have gone on to request
>more materials.
>
>I still haven’t really figured out rules about accepting invitations to
>groups. I did get one invitation to join a group that was formed to
>protest an administrative decision regarding housing. I ended up accepting
>based on the somewhat shaky logic of looking at it as a collection
>standpoint –library is neutral - it tries to represent both sides - I
>would accept an invitation as well from a group supporting the
>administrative decision. Oh god - the things they don’t teach you about in
>library school. I’ve decided to do it on a case by case basis -
>automatically ruling out illegal, unethical, or generally mean-spirited
>groups. Thankfully none of those cases have come up yet.
>
>How is your library handling issues like getting invitations to groups and
>inviting students? Have you received any inappropriate comments on your
>profile? Have you had to de-friend anyone? Whether or not these issues
>have come up, it’s important to know ahead of time how you would handle
>them so that you don’t make decisions arbitrarily.
>
><http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/index.php/2006/05/22/facebook-at-benningtons-crossett-library/#comments>Comments
>

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