The rapid growth of social software sites over the past several years has demonstrated their capacity to build new types of communities. Libraries have the opportunity to participate in these communities by establishing a presence on social software sites. Hopefully, by doing so, they'll find another venue for marketing their services, expanding their user base, and becoming part of already existing online communities. From a more pessimistic perspective, however, social software sites like MySpace appear to be primarily entertainment oriented. One could waste colossal amounts of time on these sites without engaging in any education oriented activity. I hope as libraries establish a greater presence on these sites that they will attempt to offer more educational activities. But with the increasingly hedonistic direction of our culture, I'm probably being naive.
Below is a link to the Hennepin County Library's MySpace site:
http://www.myspace.com/hennepincountylibrary
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