On MySpace and Libraries: Library 2.0 Activity #7

I often resent it when people consider libraries to be archaic remnants of the Luddite revolt. Libraries, to me, represent the ideal of knowledge for all. Libraries championed the machine-readable catalog clear back in 1967. But that was then. Like the publishing industry, with which libraries have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship for over a century, we have to find ways to reach out to consumers who have found numerous ways to communicate outside of the bibliographic world. Social networks like MySpace have made the telephone, CDs, DVDs and email seem antiquated in terms of their limited functionality and interactivity. While my stepdaughters have email accounts, they much prefer texting and chatting via MySpace or other IM utilities. Its the multimedia capabilities and expansiveness that intrigues them, I believe. They started using MySpace 4 years ago, and haven't looked back. My wife, rather than belittling it or issuing cautionary edicts, has her own site, and is probably keeps more current with what's happening with her kids and their circle of friends than she ever did before. With one daughter in the UK and the other about an hour's drive away, MySpace is an intimate way of staying in contact. It certainly has its negatives. I, like many, am concerned about pedophiles, stalkers, identity thieves, malicious hackers and other social deviants using MySpace to victimize others. One of our hard drives was ruined by viral infection, which we believe came via a "friend." While youth have always faced risks (remember the "Personals" ads?), sites like MySpace pose additional risks. Patrolling the floor, I don't catch as many people looking at porn sites as I used to. Singles dating and MySpace-type sites, although not pornographic, come across as tantalizingly risque enough to satisfy libidinal urges in public settings. I certainly wouldn't want my kids to meet up with most of the patrons I see frequenting them. It's sad to think that it wasn't so long ago that MySpace started out with just a young adult audience in mind. It wasn't that long before it was getting more hits than Google, and NewsCorp came wooing. Its framework is still set up for young singles, rather than institutions, which I find a bit artificial. While social networks generate a lot of traffic, I am not convinced that they produce that much revenue for their investors. Youngsters, I believe, find the "long tail" shopping experience satisfying enough, without the added baggage of purchased goods to weigh them down on their homeward journey. The intangible value of goodwill seems greater than that of exchanging gifts. Free downloads and samples, where there is almost infinite variety, also seem to do the trick. I worry about long-term preservation of digital content, but is all of it worth archiving? If I were younger, I would have a hard time forming long-term attachments to any particular digital content, since there will always be much, much more where that came from. I have the illusion of ownership in cyberspace; with so much plenitude, ephemerality seems more like a blessing than a curse. With so many bands online, for example, how does one rise above the heap and build a large following? How can one expect to still sell albums, when 30 second samplers seem too long to listen to? Staying power becomes an issue when there are so many sirens calling from so many different shores, luring surfers to delight or doom. In the final analysis, I like the concept of social networking. They bring together people of like interests from all over the world. In library school, we talked about social networking among scholars and scientists. Journal publications were a distant shadow of all the informal communication which preceded it. But scholars and scientists had to do a lot of letter writing, expensive conference calls and junketing to accomplish this. MySpace, Facebook and other networks bring folks together cheaply and instantaneously. They are the latest wave of the future. Libraries might as well follow the traffic, for now, or face futher stigmatization, however unfair, as being "irrelevant".