According to Boyd “librarians are overwhelmingly aware of Facebook and are against proposed U.S. legislation that would ban minors from accessing SNSs at libraries” (Boyd & Ellison, 2007, para. 53). So it seems that librarians wouldn’t ban SNS use in libraries, but if it was banned, considering the class division between Facebook and MySpace, it would be unfair to ban one and not the other.
Should librarians decide to create and manage a SNS account for their library, they should find out which SNS is popular among the teens in the area. It would be wisest to make accounts on both MySpace and Facebook (or any other popular SNS) so as to avoid excluding hegemonic teens, subaltern teens, or any other kinds of teens.
Should a library maintain a MySpace and Facebook account, librarians should not judge MySpace teen users as bad or Facebook teen users as good. They are all teens and hopefully patrons, valued equally despite their SNS of preference.
Since teens mostly continue preexisting social relationships on SNS, librarians should heavily advertise their library’s SNS accounts in the library toward the teens who already use the library. The library’s best bet for contacts is through those teens. Then as other teens “surf” their friends’ friend lists, non-patron teens may (and hopefully will) explore the library’s page as well.
SNS are places for interactions, reflections and creativity. These are exactly the types of things librarians should want to see in libraries.
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