Social Networking
November 9, 2007
Today the Irreverent Archivist was talking about social networking (http://irreverentarchivist.blogspot.com/2007/11/is-this-21st-century.html) and I wanted to put in my 2 cents.
I’ve been experimenting with Facebook.com. It has proven to be a great way to relate to my student workers and colleagues here at the library and within the region. I admit we are using it to exchange pictures, book and movie recommendations and challege each other to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” trivia contests. But I believe it could easily be used to exchange information on a professional level as well. If you are interested in trying it out you can ask to me my friend (Linda Clark Benedict). I’d love to “meet” you.
The other tool I’m experimenting with is instant messaging. I’ve signed up with Meebo.com which will read messages from other applications. (Yahoo, AOL, Jabber…) You have to know people’s addresses to add them to your contacts. I’ve added a couple of archivists in my region, but often they forget to login. A couple of days ago I was IMing with an archivist who is 1.5 hrs drive from here, to try and troubleshoot a problem she was having with Archivists Toolkit. We didn’t fix the problem, but at least we defined it. 
