In September 2007, I started to plan Steacie Science & Engineering Library’s official Facebook group. As a Facebook user who still considered himself fairly young, this sounded like great fun; as a library staff member, however, I found the experience to be more challenging.

I began by surveying other academic libraries’ Facebook groups to discover what made them successful.  Most of the academic library groups featured library photos and contact information, and were administered by librarians eager to interact with students. The librarians posted public messages, invited students to contribute suggestions and comments, made general announcements about events at their libraries, and initiated discussion topics. But little else happened: most of these groups seemed, despite their membership numbers, to be actively populated largely only by their creators. This was not surprising, as groups on Facebook are not typically used for active discussion; joining groups is a way of fleshing out your virtual identity. For my part, I am a member of the group “I Love Audrey Hepburn!”, but I never post to it, or even visit it; it just sits there in my list of groups to say I enjoy her movies. Many other librarians who had launched Facebook groups had received little feedback from students, which made perfect sense to me, since I used Facebook to connect with friends, not to do actual academic work.  After all, the main Facebook page refers to it as a “social utility”. I went to Facebook recreationally, to take a break from work, and got the impression that most other users did the same.

I concluded that a library’s presence on Facebook seemed to be valuable more as a public relations device.  Having a Facebook presence demonstrates that we are “going where our students are”, that we care about keeping current and being relevant to students. This led me to wonder:  if we must go where our students are, then where do we draw the line? Why are we not in World of Warcraft?  Or, for that matter, the local pub? There are no right answers here; the best we can do is think about these issues, try things, and see what happens.

A Facebook presence makes libraries more visible and convenient for students to access; and not just more convenient, but more comfortable.  Sending an anonymous instant message to a reference librarian and visiting a library's website are both less threatening than walking up to the Reference desk in person.  Being on Facebook takes this a step further, because instead of students stepping into our (virtual) space, we are stepping into theirs, putting librarians and students on a more equal footing with each other than in any other environment, which I believe is a good thing.

Our launch was postponed until January 2008, by which time Facebook had launched Facebook pages, which are like profiles for non-individuals. We decided that a page would be more appropriate than a group, so we created a page, instead. Steacie now has 41 “fans”, which is fairly good, being our early days. You can be one, too: search for “Steacie” on Facebook and you will find us at the top of the list.

-- Ricardo Laskaris, Steacie Reference Assistant