Social networking...personally and professionally

I must say that I’ve been using social networking tools in my private life for a few years now. In high school, I was online AOL all the time chatting to friends or using the discussion forums to practice my German. In college, I was constantly on AIM; I think I used it more than any of my phones. Currently I use a number of social networking tools in my personal life. I am addicted to Facebook, as it helps me to stay in touch with family and friends from high school, college, grad schools, etc. I use Flickr to keep in touch visually with my family in Pennsylvania and Twitter to share my random thoughts with friends and family. I also use Yelp all the time to get reviews on everything from restaurants to yoga studios. Etsy, although not purely a social networking site, is another addiction of mine. It introduces me to new crafts and unique handmade objects that I normally would never have seen.

I have had a much harder time finding a use for social networking sites in my professional life however. I am on Linked In, but I haven’t really taken advantage of that tool yet. I do join ALA-related Facebook groups to get information and news, and I also read some professional blogs. Some of the reference librarians at my Library are currently attempting implement a staff planning wiki. We hope to pilot this wiki with our blog planning, so I don’t have any feedback to report on staff planning wikis yet. The same reference librarians have also created a delicious account. The reference librarians collect links that they have found useful and post them on delicious to share with the rest of the staff. This is also a very new project, so I don’t have too much feedback yet. I have toyed with the idea of creating a Facebook page for our library, but I have not really seen a successful library Facebook page yet. (Although I would love to hear of others’ experiences with this tool!) I am hoping that by reading some of my classmates’ posts that I will get more ideas for the implementation of social networking tools in libraries. Has anyone used Second Life professionally? I have heard of some libraries/librarians doing this, and I am really curious to hear how they did it/how it was received.

Thanks for reading!