Is there anyone out there?

Very interesting Things this week. Although I signed up to LinkedIn last year I have not really use it until the last few months when I have had a number of 'link' requests so have used it a bit more. This weeks Thing seems to be about LinkedIn v Facebook. I would agree with Reid Hoffman that Facebook is for home and LinkedIn for the office. I have accounts on both and have always taken the view that LinkedIn is my professional networking whilst Facebook is for keeping in contact with friends. My husband says that his company actively uses LinkedIn for recruitment, training etc.. .  I think LinkedIn is invaluable for becoming better known particularly if you have a business or a particular skill to promote.

Although I tend to think that Facebook is really a 'social' space I can see the value of promoting the library service or having a presence on it. Saying this I think that it is really important that the library Facebook page is not allowed to stagnate and should be updated at last twice a week to keep it fresh and interesting.  We intend to setup a Facebook page for our libraries for one term to see if this method of communicating information would be of benefit to our users.

I have not used LISNPN but can see it would be of great use if I were a new professional - I wish this had been in existence when I first qualified (some time ago now!). I must admit I did feel rather isolated and this site would have been brilliant.

I was interested to learn about the LATnetwork, I think that this could be really useful. I have thought for sometime now that library training should have some element of teaching experience incorporated. This is particularly useful for anyone working in education - librarianship has come a long way from stamping books.

I was not aware of Google+ but am not surprised that they want to introduce something like this - world dominance springs to mind. I think one of the problems is that there are now so many networking sites that soon we shall need a guide to where to start. I think that these sites will have to start to specialise in order to make their site stand out. It also gets confusing for a novice like me. Soon we shall spend all our time in front of a computer, the art of old fashioned face-to-face conversation might become a Thing of the past!