MySpace Musings

After viewing our teen page and that of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, I searched for other public library MySpace pages and got an 5540 hits! I then wanted to see what Illinois libraries have a MySpace presence, so I limited my search accordingly. This time I got 2660 hits and looked at pages for Glenview, Thomas Ford, Pontiac, Indian Trails and St. Charles. My overall impression is of very colorful pages packed with information including photos, drawings, blogs, podcasts and video clips. I see this benefitting libraries in several ways:

1. It's another PR tool to get information out to the public.
   
2. Since MySpace is so popular (according to Wikipedia [MySpace article]"...claiming 106 million accounts on September 8, 2006,[7] the site reportedly attracts new registrations at a rate of 230,000 per day" [7. ^ "MySpace music deal poses multiple threats", The Register, 2006-09-08. Retrieved on 2006-09-08.]), this is a good way to reach the MySpace population who may not see the information is other sources.
   
3. The Interactivity/Web 2.0 technology of MySpace allows others to communicate with us.

Anyone watching or reading the news knows that there can be safety issues with the Internet. However, realistically, there can be safety issues with anything and everything, from driving a car, to walking through a parking lot, to cooking dinner, to changing a light bulb! The key to any and all concerns about safety is education! The ILA site addresses Internet safety with the information on the page and with the bookmarks. We address Internet safety with handouts and discussion in the parent and child computer classes "Introduction to Computers" and "Introduction to the Internet", through other presentations, and in an "Internet Safety" section of links on our Parents page @ http://www.stdl.org/parents.asp#internetsafety.