Music promoters, child molesters, and now this. Rupert Murdoch’s social networking colonization, MySpace, is starting to be infiltrated by yet another band of predators. They tend to be around ninety years old, and most of them claim to be female. That ‘friend’ your sullen teen is busily adding to her MySpace collection may be none other than… a library?
Now this is a little embarrassing. Like the PG-13 cheap laugh, when the spunky granny grabs the mic and roks da house. Or like Helen Gurley Brown. Hey, Westmont Public Library is with it! Who I’d like to meet: You :) Westmont Public Library’s Interests: Books, Graphic Novels, Magazines, Music, Movies, Video Games. Status: Single. Zodiac sign: Capricorn. (Why are many of these MyFriendly libraries Capricorns? As in Tropic of? Isn’t that a Graphic Novel?) MyFriendly libraries tend to have other libraries in their friendspace. So with one click, here were are at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library. Interests: General — helping people. instant messaging. RESEARCH yo! Books — the ones inside me. You go, Tom Ford! And Brooklyn College Library is in the house–or, as ‘she’ puts it, BC Library — Here on Your Space!
And check out that sassy 100-year-old, the Tonganoxie PL:
As an Xer happily removed from the MySpace generation (though my friends in bands almost dutifully keep pages there), I don’t really understand the appeal. The pages are ugly and ungainly; text can be impossible to pick out against garish image backgrounds, tinny sound files unspool the moment a page opens — it’s all reminiscent of wayback web hideousness, which all too often isn’t so wayback. Still, for better or worse, this is space that teens of all ages build . I guess it’s easy to share music, real-time flirtation, self-branding, endless LOLs. Mostly MySpace seems like high school online — full of chatter, hormones, and the pursuit of popularity. “It’s an unphysical way of hanging out.” Sure kid, great, but someday you’ll want better unphysical spaces. Tonight, at least, MySpace times out constantly. Hey Fox, buy some servers!
As they say, the kids love it; 46 million members just can’t be wrong, can they? Isn’t this democracy? And aren’t libraries at the core of democracy? At least these libraries are trying–but in MySpace they have little to offer, aside from a campy Hello! Nothing to build here, nothing to interact with or collect. To be fair: some libraries link to ‘blog’ entries, like, say, the one posted by Angela at the New Castle-Henry County Public Library listing teen movies, pizza taste-offs, and – spa night? Hmmm… Or the Tanganoxie Public Library’s list of their New Music CD Collection (topped off by Kelly Clarkson! Breakaway! LOL!!) But it’s very unidirectional. Information emanates from the ancient single female Capricorns to all you undifferentiated kids. The full extent of the idea is to show up In Your Extended Network.
This is piggybacking, really, on the idea of social software–just showing up when you should be interacting. Of course, just showing up to the party is a hoot when you’re 90. Links back to the OPAC, indexes of holdings, announcements of teen-centered activity: that’s fine, but how about the actual music? Can I bring library images or videos into MySpace? Can I build immediate links to cool passages of my favoriate favorite favorite books? Can I make a montage out of those awesome graphic novels? How can I collect anything other than a thumbnail picture of the library–a cute little building facade to add to my friends collection? When libraries stop billboarding and start actually transforming themselves into MySpaces–then we’ll have something.
Well, it’s a first step, and Rome wasn’t built in a day–even MySpace wasn’t built in a day, though it might seem otherwise. Here’s the 100 year old Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library: Who I’d like to meet: Anyone! Really! Well, put it like that, & you might be irresistible. A bit pathetic, but, whatever, popular. Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library has, at this writing, 163 friends.