Yes its true. Facebook. Facebook is one of my favorite things and not just for checking up on what my out-of-town friends did last weekend. I use it for professional stuff a LOT!
I follow a lot of professional organizations and websites on Facebook. I listed the top six of the library ones in my post 6 Facebook Pages Every Librarian Should Follow:
- American Library Association – You don’t need to be a dues paying member of ALA to benefit from the stories and information relevant to all libraries they post on Facebook.
- Webjuction – Webjunction regularly hosts free webinars and conferences like the one coming up this week, Serving the 21st Century Patron, they also share links to other free webinars and resources.
- Your state and local library association – again you don’t have to pay dues to benefit from the information shared on Facebook and you can do a little online networking too.
- Library Journal – in addition to their stories (many of which you can read online for free) they also post links to interesting stories around the web.
- Library Renewal – This is a new project worth keeping an eye on. Libraries need a new electronic content access and distribution infrastructure! www.libraryrenewal.org Research, advocacy and partnerships that get library users the electronic content they want, when they want it, how they want it…via libraries.
- Learning Round Table of the American Library Association
I also follow:
PCWorld, TechSpot, CrunchGear,TechRepublic, Gizmodo, Engadget, Computers in Libraries, ReadWriteWeb, TED, Pew Internet & American Life Project, Information Today, Mashable, Wired, TechCrunch, FCC.gov Live, Common Sense Media, BROADBAND for AMERICA, Mortenson Center for International Library Programs, PLA, School Library Journal, American Libraries Magazine, Gateway to 21st Century Skills,Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 21st Century Information Fluency, New Media Literacy, Digital Literacy Project, National Center for Family Literacy, News Literacy, Women in Technology, The New Media Consortium, Geek the Library, LLAMA, LITA, LJ/SLJ Ebook Summit, Reclaim Privacy, Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, Lifehacker, The Eloquent Woman, Transliteracy, Libraryman, 23 Things Kansas, T is for Training, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Federal Communications Commission, ALA OITP, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Girl Effect, UNICEF, International Center for Research on Women, United Nations Foundation, She’s the First, ForbesWoman, I Want Her Job, Microsoft Citizenship, TechSoup, Media That Matters, Mango Languages, OverDrive for Libraries, ALA Committee on the Status of Women in Librarianship, Make Use Of, EDUCAUSE, The Case Foundation, YALSA, ALSC, CILIP, Carterette Webinar Series, IOCT, The Aspen Institute.
Plus even more local pages and other general stuff I am interested in like This American Life. So how on earth do I manage all that plus my friends? Lists!
Lists
First I’m a huge fan of lists. List NOT groups. Lists allows you to create, well a list, of people or pages but it doesn’t pull them into it, notify them or involve the other person or organization in anyway. It allows you to remove them at will, unlike groups. I advise you to stay clear of groups.
I create lists for things like local, library news and general news. When you are looking at your home page on Facebook you can see them on the drop down menu under “most recent”. Click on it will show you only the people and pages on that list. So if you’re only looking for library news, that’s all you’ll see.
If you aren’t familiar with Lists, you create lists by going to your friends page and clicking on the create list button. You can add people or pages by browsing or searching.
Postpost.com
Love, love, love this service. I blogged about it awhile back, but I use it almost every day.
PostPost is a news aggregator for the social generation, and collates the articles, videos, and photos your friends have found interesting enough to post.
Basically it shows you at a glance, in a nice newspaper type style, the links your friends, and the pages you like, have shared on Facebook. Great way to see news without status updates.
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Stay tuned for Tips & Tricks Four!
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I’ve never really warmed up to The Facebooks – Twitter is my PLN builder -feels less stressy….but this excellent article makes me want to try again! Thanks oh awesome, Bobbi!
~Gwyneth
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LOL hope you can get it to work for you. It’s a great resource for news and information if you can just cut out all that clutter of status updates from your friends 🙂
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You shared some great ideas for using Facebook professionally, thanks! I personally haven’t tried making lists, but I will now. Also, thanks for following the Gateway to 21st Century Skills and mentioning us in your blog. We LOVE librarians and teachers, and our free digital library is a very valuable tool.
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