Don't: Bother With MySpace If You're Not Willing To Do A Good Job

MySpace: The hottest place for teens to hang out online. Therefore, if a public or academic library is trying to attract teens, it makes sense for them to go where the teens are, right? Many librarians have thought that way, and there are now a bunch of library MySpace pages. But do those MySpace pages really do any good? Do they really bring teens into libraries?

There was a somewhat lengthy discussion of this on Publib, a discussion list (for Public Librarians) I was monitoring for an assignment for my other class. Many of the posts were librarians asking "So, does anyone have a MySpace page? I'm thinking of doing one, do they do any good?" Most of the responses were somewhat lackluster, the consensus seemed to be "not really". But then I clicked on one of the librarian's MySpace links (one of the ones who said MySpace wan't much good) and well, it was kind of awful. I'm not going to link to it here (I'd feel kinda mean), but I will explain what I thought was wrong with it. It was just a picture of the library, with a horrific pink and flower background that hurt my eyes. There was not a lot of information, and no links to the library's website or catalog.

And then I found this awesome blog post. I'd highly recommend checking it out. The blogger, Meredith Farkas, basically sums up the usefulness of MySpace and social networking thusly:

"I have seen two ways that libraries have used MySpace and Facebook effectively. The first is to get feedback from students. The second is to create a library portal within MySpace and/or Facebook (or whatever social networking software inevitably will come next)."

Farkas mentions an academic library that used social networking to get students to request items they wanted the library to order. Which also seems like a great idea for a public library as well. It would be a place that patrons could be unafraid of leaving opinions and requests, and those would all be in one place for the librarians to look at next time they're placing an order for materials. It would also be a great way to get a look at trends, and could possibly be a way to determine programming.

There are a ton of links at the end of her post, and there is a section of "Libraries with good profiles". One of them is the Denver eVolver page, which contains a blog about teen programs and teen music and movie reviews. There is also a link to a book page where kids can write book reviews and make collection requests. There are also many links to the library website's teen section. The Hennepin County Library has a good page as well, which contains links to new DVDs and books, which is cool, because people are generally interested in what's new. Also, as much as book fans probably don't like to admit it, DVDs are a good way to bring people into the library (they're also a really good way to bring obnoxious people into the library, but that's another story...)

So in closing, of course MySpace is going to be useless if you don't take the effort to make it useful. If you're going to give it a shot in a library capacity, try to make the profile another extension of your webiste, and include links to things people might be interested in, like new books, movies, music, etc. Also, use it to give patrons a voice and a place to offer feedback.

But you know, even on the links listed above, most of the "comments" left at the page don't seem to be from library users. It looks like most of the comments left are from authors trying to push their books. So who knows? Maybe kids aren't interested in library MySpace pages. Until some library decides to release some kind of statistics like how many hits their MySpace profile gets, and whether hits on their regular webpages increased because of it, or if circulation of teen materials increased, it might just have to be one of those things you have to try and see.