Law Librarians Lovin’ the Facebook

I recently helped the Toronto Association of Law Libraries (TALL) set up a Facebook group. I’ve long suspected it: law librarians *love* Facebook. It is a place where we can talk to each other one-on-one, share photos about our personal lives, play word games, and join groups of interest. Almost immediately after creating the TALL group, we had over 30 people sign up by word of mouth. Official word about the group went out a few weeks ago, and we now have more than double that signed up.

Some of our thinking behind creating the group:

• members were asking for the group so they could join and show their affiliation in their Facebook profiles;
• it would be a good place to make information about TALL available to library & information science students, and hopefully attract them into law librarianship and the association;
• we created the group as an open group so that anyone could join, to encourage interest in the association;
• many members (especially those in law firms and Ontario government) have been blocked by their employers from accessing Facebook during work. Therefore, while hopefully discussions could take place in the group, we could not post essential information there unless also posted elsewhere for the membership.

Essentially, the Facebook group has become a place for communication supplementing (but not replacing) our existing communication vehicles including the listservs, the website, and the TALL Quarterly (our newsletter).