As someone who dabbles in web design I will say right off the bat that I am probably biased in my opinions regarding social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. Facebook has by far the better presentation though it seems to lack any great tools for individualizing your presence.
MySpace has been considered web design on training wheels since its inception and they have done little to change that. The templates are garish. The layout though somewhat customizable is not very user friendly. Frankly most Myspace pages look amateur at best and probably send a negative impression of your institution at worst.
That said there are some that are not horrible. The Denver Public Library (which is nationally renowned for their embrace of all things techy) does a decent job with their MySpace page. While I do not want to go picking at other libraries there are a couple in the list that are awful.
The Facebook and MySpace pages do create another platform to get the library “out there,” wherever that is. Some of the pages linked to their catalogs which is good. Some had links to online reference systems – great. Others focused on news and events.
I think one of the most important things here is that you look before you leap. If you like the technology and think that it can be good for your library that is great. But you have to stick with it or get rid of it. I think the worst thing you can do is let the site get out of date so that your current events covers last years Summer Reading program. This can be said for all Web 2.0 initiatives. Decide if you need it. A lot appropriate resource to doing it, even when it is free it still needs dedicated resources. Finally stick with it and evaluate its usefulness.
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