VPL? Is that you?

The Vancouver Public Library has a pretty bunk online presence. A search on Facebook retrieves only a “VPL Facebookers” page for staff to communicate with each other. VPL has a page on Myspace, but it has not been updated since last September, which is odd in itself considering the strike. The page provides a link to the VPL website, but I’m not totally convinced the profile wasn’t started without the library’s permission. Because anyone can create a profile representing any business or organization, Myspace library pages can be questionable if they do not link directly to an official homepage that links back to them.

The same goes for the Mount Pleasant Branch profile on the VPL profile’s friend list. Perhaps “pay equity doesn’t exist here” is not an official mission statement of the branch. Just sayin’.

A Google search for the word “Myspace” on the library’s website returns three results, none of which announce the library’s presence on the social networking site. Board members for VPL are unlikely to become aware of their unofficial Myspace presence any time soon. One of the search results from Google is a transcript of some board minutes from 2006 (scroll down to #10), where Myspace is referred to as a “chat service.” Yikes.

The VPL profile and Mount Pleasant Branch profile have 114 and 229 friends, respectively. Their friends are mostly Vancouver citizens and other libraries. It’s pretty bad publicity for VPL, not only because of the statements on the Mount Pleasant Branch profile, but because of the lack of maintenance on the VPL profile. If the Vancouver Public Library had an official Myspace profile, they could provide a more credible portal from Myspace to the VPL homepage.

Or, maybe they are changing their mission statement and these pages are real. Who knows? I’m guessing VPL doesn’t.

We are hip with the social pages.

Bruton Memorial Library’s TeenSpace Myspace Profile was created with good intentions, I’m sure. Heck, the page is even linked to from the library’s homepage! However, it looks like Selena Coller, BML’s Librarian for Computer and Teen Services, tried a little too hard to fit in to the overly media-loaded profile design sported by Myspace’s teen users.

There are three PhotoBucket slideshows playing simultaneously within inches of each other, and if that wasn’t enough to make you shield your eyes from the screen, Coller also added graphics from an online quiz called The Super Villain Personality Test. It is neither a relevant quiz, nor is it cool enough to give the profile credibility with teens. The slideshows are horrendously misguided attempts at coolness as well: a slideshow showing graphic novels at the library is not something anyone would watch for entertainment, and it’s too slow to keep anyone’s attention for longer than a couple seconds.

Design aside, the page is hardly functional. There is nothing to link the users to the library’s homepage, nor is there a catalog search function. The profile has a calendar of events, which is useful to teens, but nothing else on the page seems to be aimed at that age group. The blog is written from Coller’s perspective as a librarian trying to reach out to teens: she writes about visiting schools and trying to find movies she can legally play in the library.

Coller’s “Who I’d like to meet” section lists teens first, and then librarians, library-related organizations, and authors and publishers of young adult literature. The so-called “TeenSpace,” however, seems to be a bit of a misnomer. Even the TeenSpace’s “Top Friends” section is full of profiles that teens would find boring. YALSA, the Young Adult Library Services Association, is in the number one position, and it is another boring profile that pretends to have a youth focus.

Pages like these are the worst kind. They are like a room decorated with pop culture posters but filled with dissertations on the strange cultural habits of wild teenagers. They are patronizing, boring, and they shouldn’t exist.