October 4, 2007, Thing 4

Some of my friends encouraged me to have Facebook and MySpace accounts some time ago, but I never really used them. I have heard about Linkedln, but it never applied to me eider. I was surprised today when I checked Eons. Even it was originally designed for older people, I found many interesting discussions their on various topics of my interests. I am an active user of another social networking group in Russian language called Odnoklassniki.ru. The idea is similar to Clssmates.com. It is a relatively new site, but it is growing every day technologically and user wise. It is a great tool to found classmates, college mates, former colleagues, and even people you new in the Summer Camp many years ago. Like in many other networking sites, you can create profile, upload pictures, search for people, check who is online in the same time with you, etc. Anyway, it is a great addictive site, not even mentioning the emotional component- I have been able to found people I have lost 20 something years ago.
Back to the library world, I registered in both LibraryThing and GoodReads today. I liked both of them, but I spend some time researching GoodReads, and I found many interesting features like “Choose a friend you want to connect with”, “Shelve” system, where I found some Health/Medical books reviewed by users. I liked the “group” component of the site, and when I put “Russian” as a search term, I found two groups: “Russian Readers Club” and “White Nights”, where Russian readers and lovers of Russian literature can share their thoughts about Russian literature as well as about foreign one. I have read many interesting posts, and many positive thoughts about the libraries and their future. I am pretty sure our library could benefit by offering some of these features. It is the matter of time and proper usage.