Continuing in my continuing education, here is another post about the self discovery program.
This assignment involved scoping out a social media news site, selected from a list provided, joining said social media site, participating in the social part of the media, and then of course writing about it in my blog.
I choose FARK.com for no other reason than I thought the name of the site was fun.
The idea behind the site is that users submit news stories and the moderators of the site pick the humorous and weird notable stories of the day. On FARK's main page they divide the stories into categories; sports, business, geek (my favorite), entertainment, politics, and video segments.
The compiled lists of news stories come from all over the internet. At the time I checked out the Geek category the top two stories were both about Star Trek, thanks to the new movie, and one was from Slate.com, the other from InfoWorld.com. Both were fun reads, and had plenty of energetic comments from fans on FARK.com.
How would this site be useful for a library?
The first thing that comes to mind is simple when a patron comes in and asks "Do you know anything about ______" (fill in the blank with current event or pop-culture reference of choice). Directing them to a site like FARK.com gives them the opportunity to search for and scan multiple news stories, from multiple points of view on anything that interest them.
Of course you can also just use it for your personal enjoyment. I had fun scrolling through the various categories, picking out interesting news stories to read, I also enjoyed reading the comments from other users and seeing the various reactions and opinions.
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