Social Networking Impressions and Experiences

Social networking sites can be used by MLA to connect members who have common interests who have not known each other before. They can be used by MLA to recruit new members, especially of the younger generation who are accustomed to using sites like this. I don't know if our State Library would find Facebook or similar sites practical at this time because we serve
an adult population that may not be into this type of thing. Privacy would also be a concern to many of our users until they felt comfortable with this technology. A blog would definitely be useful and a wiki is also something to explore for our users. I am very impressed with the types of sharing that can be done through Linkedin, Facebook and MySpace. It would not have occurred to me to that you can do a PubMed search for example in Linkedin and share it with someone. That was an eye opener. All of these social networking sites can open a whole new world. How does one have time to use all of them? Perhaps as I get more accustomed to them, I will find ways to change how I communicate with my colleagues.