Ok. Because I never cheat on anything and I certainly don't want to risk my one free day off due to not following instructions...I'm joining a new social network. After reading the buzz on the Child Lit discussion list all morning, I joined JacketFlap.
JacketFlap, which doesn't seem to have a wikipedia entry just yet, is a social networking site focusing on children's and YA literature. Its members include authors, agents, illustrators, publishers, librarians... I'm still working my way around it. I see that like a wiki, I could edit the biography of an author who has not entered a bio. Does that mean YOU can edit MY bio? Why would you want to?
Instead of using my own words to describe JacketFlap, I'm going to let their FAQs do that for me:
What can I do on JacketFlap?
JacketFlap is all about Children's books and the people and companies involved in making Children's books. If you are in the business or are a Children's book lover, you can find loads of information here on pretty much any Children's book that has ever been published. If you are looking to get published, you can research publishers in our database of children's book publishers. If you want to keep up-to-date on the lastest news, reviews, and people in the Children's book business, then you'll love our Children's Publishing blog reader, which includes up-to-date postings from 500+ industry blogs. If you're looking to connect with other people in the Children's publishing world, then try browsing through our People section. If you're looking to see other books that people are reading and discuss books, please try our Books section.
My thoughts:
Search: is funky. The terms don't come naturally to me...I guess "published people" and "book titles" are the ones that seem the least intuitive to me. And why does the search default to publishers? I'm pretty sure I read that a publisher is behind BookFlap...but I can't remember who and I'm too lazy to use my research skills to find out.
Blog reader: it's great to be able to sort blogs by their categories...librarians, reviews, industry, news, etc. But the actual blog reader screen is too cluttered for me. Of course, that is solved easily enough by clicking on "Read the rest of this post" and getting redirected to the original post.
Reviews: I was expecting a really big database of reviews...but not yet.
Um, and there's some way you can earn "points" that are redeemable for amazon or booksense gift certs. Strange, but, ok.
Publisher info: looks good. Kinda like a Children's Writer's Guide for FREE!
Will I use JacketFlap? (I actually just forgot the name and had to double check. I thought it was BookFlap. Not sure if that is a sign of my future use of it or not...) I'm going to give it a try. I think the news blogs will be worth reading and they have a newly published section.
On the Facebook front: I added a library application (it freaks me out all the applications facebook wants you to add) and i tried to play scrabulous with a friend, but apparently we both have to be logged on at the same time to play. :)
Other thoughts on social networking and work: *I thought it was interesting that when i did a fort vancouver regional library search on Facebook, of the 15 people listed, everyone's "location" was Portland. Interpret as you wish.*
Also, I'm vaguely uncomfortable with the mixing of work and social life on these sites. Facebook encourages people to link through their place of employment, but if I put it out there that I work at FVRL, can I really feel right about telling the world that I "partied my butt off" this weekend? Or post a revealing photo? Do I want to look for dates AND advertise where i work? Does it make me a cool librarian?
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