Well aren’t you informative!

The San Mateo County Library has one of the best profiles on Myspace. It appears to be updated regularly, so all the information stays relevant. And there is a lot of information!

The page is less flashy than some library Myspace pages with a teen focus, and it is a bit text heavy, but it is incredibly informative. They link the Myspace page from the teen section of the SMCL website, as well as a hard-to-find features page. The Myspace profile links back to the library’s fancy homepage.

The profile also links to an incredible amount of resources that the library’s patrons might be interested in, including information on Myspace safety. I found the Myspace profile easier to navigate than the fancy homepage, and I could do just as much (if not more) on it! A lot of library profiles on Myspace kept their “Interests” section sparse, but SMCL used the Interests template to list some of the materials they offer at the library. They listed some examples of popular music, films, TV shows, and books their patrons could borrow from the library “for free!” Each Interests subheading included a link where patrons could request items to be added to the catalogue.

This Myspace profile is a great example of how libraries can use social networking templates that are familiar to younger patrons to create alternative access to the library’s official website. The SMCL Myspace profile is like a guide to the library’s website, with links organized into sections that are intuitive to patrons who are social network butterflies but who may not otherwise have the patience for fancy Flash-based websites that have to be carefully navigated.

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.

Hennepin County Library rocks!

Hennepin County Library’s Myspace profile has 1228 friends. It has also scored the #1 friend position on the Library Myspace Study Myspace page, and it’s not hard to tell why: HCL’s Myspace page is colorful, easy to navigate, and just generally hip! The profile has music embedded into it (right now it is “Can’t Hardly Wait” by The Replacements) and the profile’s display photo is a moving gif of people posing around the library and/or with Elvis!

As well as being appropriately fashionable for Myspace-savvy patrons, HCL’s profile is downright useful! They have a search box for the Hennepin County Library catalog that can be searched from the HCL profile or from the users’ own profiles. All they have to do is cut and paste a ready-made HTML code for the search box into their profile, which most Myspace users will be familiar with. Afterall, Myspace has a layout that allows its users to customize with HTML tags. The HCL catalogue search box can be added to a profile even more easily than a profile can be “Pimped,” as the kids are saying these days.

The library not only has a page on Myspace, it also has a fanpage on Facebook, with 241 fans! The catalog search was transformed into an application on Facebook, so that users there can also add it to their profiles!

Hennepin County Library’s official homepage has links to their Myspace and Facebook pages, but they are hard to find even if you know they exist. They seem to be hidden under “TeenLinks” and then “At Your Library.” The library would probably benefit from better advertising on their main page. Myspace and Facebook users who are past their teens would probably not think to check the “Teens” section for HCL news that was relevant to them.

Overall, Hennepin County Library has done a great job of integrating itself into popular online communities. 1228 Myspace users can’t be wrong!