Strange Comment

The only social networking I actively keep up with are this blog and my Shelfari shelf where I can share what I read with my friends... mostly just my mom and a grad school friend, as well as keep a neat (but out-of-control) wish list of books I want to eventually read.

Anyway, anyone can write notes to me, though few do, and I just received this one...

"Hello, I just wanted to say hi, because I really hope that I be a librarian as a side job for college. Take care, and I hope you have a beautiful life.. The Mysterious Z"

First of all, the grammar is a bit strange, but I cannot hold that against someone without being a hypocrite (I probably know how to write better than I usually do here). Then there is an issue of being a librarian "as a side job for college." This emphasizes the ignorance of the general population of what a librarian is. A librarian is someone with a master's degree in library science and most have a professional career as a librarian (a career being very different from a job). Anyone who works in a library who does not have this is a "library assistant" or "library technician." I am not belittling these people, I am running to our library technicians on a regular basis for them to explain things to me. Many of them have bachelor's degrees, and at other libraries some of them have graduate degrees.

I'm not much into leaving notes on other people's pages unless they have said something particularly insightful or relevant to me personally. I'm not a true social networker, to put it briefly. It was probably very nice of him to leave me this note, and not very nice of me to tear him apart.

MySpace Song

I have done a bit of work in the past two years on social networking. The first program I did was the dangers of social networking in regards to the law and getting a job. Two weeks ago I did a program on using social networking technologies in a positive way to help you get a job (though only one person showed up voluntarily, but that's another issue). Today in the ALA Direct weekly newsletter, there was a link to this YouTube video for a song about MySpace that is really great... reminding people of the dangers of leaving it up for your children to find! Expand the "About this video" part to read the lyrics.