January 7, 2008
Searching Library Collections in Facebook
A new application lets Facebook users start their library research in the popular social-networking system. The plug-in provides an interface in Facebook for searching the popular Worldcat database, operated by the nonprofit OCLC. The group’s Web site says the index includes more than a billion items in more than 10,000 libraries.
So far the application does not seem to be listed in Facebook’s official directory. But a quick search of Facebook’s other applications shows that more than a dozen other academic libraries have created their own search tools for the social-networking platform. The University of Notre Dame has one, for instance, as does Elmhurst College, Pace University, and Ryerson University. JSTOR, the popular, nonprofit digital archive of scholarly publications, also offers a Facebook application.
One thing I discovered when I invited Wired Campus readers to join my Facebook friend group is that librarians are some of the most enthusiastic nonstudent users of social networks. But can Facebook, known as a place for socializing, become part of the research process as well? —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Monday January 7, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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Jeff/
Thanks!
I have profiled a number of library-related Facebook applications in my Friends blog devoted to documenting social networks for “Engaged Library Services”.
Friends is located at
[ http://onlinesocialnetworks.blogspot.com/ ]
I have also created a group named FacebookAppsForLibraries in FB at
[ http://iastate.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2469777131 ]
This group currently has more than 2,100 members!
BTW: There are several additional open, library-related groups in FB that I and other have created. Search and You Should Find [:-)
/Gerry
— Gerry McKiernan Jan 7, 01:56 PM #
Jeff,
Thanks for the coverage of libraries in social networks, there’s a lot of exciting work where these two fields meet.
Plymouth State University is developing Scriblio, a social library system based on WordPress specifically to address needs like this. Our first focus was to improve the usability of our library systems, then the findability of libraries and library resources in search engines like Google, and finally to make libraries remixable so that we can connect to other systems like Facebook.
More information about Scriblio:
http://about.scriblio.net/about/
Try for yourself at our library:
http://library.plymouth.edu/
Or stumble into us in a Google search:
http://www.google.com/search?q=joe+monninger
Casey
— Casey Bisson Jan 7, 05:02 PM #
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for mentioning Elmhurst College in your post. You left the article with the question as to whether social networks, such as facebook, could become a part of the research process. I’m curious as to what your leaning is on this. Do you think it is futile for libraries and their research services to create a presence on such sites? How do envision it all playing out?
Thanks!
Kyle Jones
Elmhurst College A.C. Buehler Library
— Kyle Jones Jan 10, 09:15 AM #
We (University of Michigan Library) recently did a survey of our library users and asked the question “If you could contact a librarian via Facebook or MySpace for help with your research, would you? If not, why?”
The responses were very interesting. In a nutshell, about a quarter said yes or maybe… The rest either said they don’t need to contact Librarians, don’t use social networking sites, prefer other contact methods (in-person, phone, email, IM), and 14% said No – because Facebook is social and supposed to be a distraction from work. Link to survey here:
User’s Lib
-suz
— Suzanne Chapman Jan 12, 09:49 AM #