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Another Book Is Added to Our Collections: Facebook

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To paraphrase the old Elvis Presley album, 200 million Facebook fans can’t be wrong.  If you’re reading this, chances are that you might be among them.  So now you can show your de facto national library a little love the easy way—by becoming a fan of our new official Facebook page!

We’ve started with a pretty basic set of tabs and features, such as a wall for Library and fans alike, but we will continue to “build out,” so to speak.  We have at least a couple of hopefully clever ideas up our sleeve to help build communities around things that support the Library’s missions, but we’re always open to suggestions.

If you’re keeping score at home, in addition to Facebook, we’re also active on Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and iTunes U.

You might be surprised how much work and thought go into these new ventures.  If a person wants to connect with their friends or share a video or photo, they fill out a few text fields, submit an email address, and that’s it.

Government, on the other hand, is a whole different ball of wax.  There are special rules that apply to .gov sites that don’t pertain to others.  There are terms-of-service issues that might work as-is for individuals, but not necessarily for Uncle Sam.  There are many other considerations that are probably self-evident.  And of course, we’re assiduous protectors of copyright—and probably the Library of Congress moreso than others.  (The U.S. Copyright Office is three floors above me as I write this.)

There is a dedicated cadre of people here who decided that, conceptually, these are spaces into which we want to move, and they have set about finding ways to get us there.  If nothing else, the Library has content that people want, and we want to do our best bring it to them—not necessarily sit back and wait for them to find it.  I’m proud to work at a place that “gets it.”

On that note, let the friending begin!

(h/t to Chris Carlson for my crowdsourced headline)

Comments (8)

  1. Matt, congrats on joining FB. Have you been able to put together any data quantitative or qualitative about how these tools are helping the Library retain its core user base? Are more people visiting the Web site? More of the same people coming back? More people becoming aware of and then attending events? Have the tools been a success? You should write a blog post about it.

  2. Matt:
    do you know if CRS is joining the web 2.0 evoulution

  3. Congratulations on joining Facebook and the various other forms of social media. I work for a State agency and it is a major struggle to get there. I think we are going to make it, but I wish I knew the argumants you made to get there!

  4. But when people start telling me how to change the world over a G-major chord, that’s when I generally leave the room. ,

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