"Painted faces fill the places I can't reach" (Kings of Leon; Song: Use Somebody; Album: Only by the night)

I currently have a profile on Facebook but don't use it in the avid way that some people do. I initially joined when I found out about a group called 'The SSL Appreciation Society' formed by readers a few years ago (most probably now defunct). They had amusing ideas on there such as a competition to see who could write the most stupidest comment in our reader comments book, which is probably why we had the suggestion for 'Bunk beds for power napping' (needless to say this never came to fruition).

I suppose I currently use Facebook more to have a nosey at other friends pages and see what they are getting up to, but myself, I don't seem to find the time to be constantly adding things to my wall, and prefer to contact friends directly via the messenging service within it. I have found it a great way of keeping in contact with friends that have moved abroad though, and it great for looking at photos that people have uploaded to their page, as they can just do it in one central place. I can understand why some people might be initially nervous of signing up, but with the security level settings you can really control what you want people to see and if you don't want someone to be your 'friend' then don't accept them. My Mum was on the receiving end of this when she asked to be my brothers friend, and he sent back a rejection message, in some circumstances it best that Mum's don't see all the wall comments and photos that you add!

So with my bit of knowledge about the ins and outs of Facebook I was really interested to look at the Libraries that had set up a Facebook Fan Page and what they had done with it. There were a lot more than I thought there would be, so it was interesting to look at the different styles that were used, some were quite formal and others were quite chatty and had fun information connected to libraries, as well as more formal information. I think it is a really good way of connecting to readers, there are so many different web 2.0 resources that people are using that the more you use, the more likely you are to reach readers, who can then subcribe to the resource they prefer. The popularity of this method was also proved by the number of fans for each page. Setting up the page looks to be quite straight forward, the layout is very clear with the tabs along the top; I particularly liked the 'Boxes' tab where you could put useful links to the library catalogues, e-resources etc. The important thing is that you get the information you need to across readers, what ever the means and by the looks of it this is another web 2.0 resource that seems to be work for this purpose. I definitely think it would be a good thing to explore in the future for our library.