Communal Gatherings without Gathering

In Appalachia, there has been a long standing tradition of communal gatherings. Neighbors and friends coming together to help one another. There were quilting bees, bean stringings, corn shuckings, apple and pumpkin peelings, barn raisings, and on and on. All of these gatherings had the purpose of helping your neighbor with the expectation that this "gifting" of labor would be returned when the next big chore was yours. There also are gatherings just for a good time--to connect with people, to share in music and dance, and swapping stories. In Appalachia, you do not have to travel far to find musicians gathering at some community store, someone's barn, or yes, even a Walmart parking lot. I wonder if these traditions have gone digital with all the social networking applications like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. I have many Facebook friends who are folklorists that share links to rare musical performances and then use the comments to provide background information on the performer or the event, putting the performance into context. This, I believe, is a good example of how these applications can be used for more than trivia.

I also wonder if we are losing something in it all. Over lunch, a friend shared a comment from one of her own friends that "if people spent as much time growing food as they do on their farms in FarmVille [a Facebook related application] that we could end world hunger." I wonder about these things too. Are these digital communities bringing together people scattered throughout the globe--making the world smaller--or are they drawing us away from our communities that surround us in a local place. When you have spent your life studying the importance of region and geographic place, you wonder about these things.

This week, the assignment was to explore social networks. I have been a user of Facebook and LinkedIn for some time. I am also part of a Society of Tennessee Archivists group on Ning. I have to admit that I have used Facebook much more (including FarmVille) than I have LinkedIn or the Tennessee Archivist site on Ning. Those two applications, I used for professional work reasons, and during my work day, I often forget to check in on them. They are good for networking with colleagues but do not offer the large audience that a general application like Facebook would provide for outreach.

Now Facebook has become more a part of my routine. I have worked with the Academic Technology Support people at East Tennessee State University to help build photo albums on the ETSU Facebook page from historical photographs from the University Archives. This addition was well received by the "fans" of the ETSU site. I believe that this exercise did give the Archives more visibility and it is a good way to advertise new collections or events.

On a personal level, I have enjoyed being able to stay in touch with past students, past friends from high school, and some of my archival colleagues on Facebook. Yet, I realize that it does pull me away from the world that is grounded in a place on solid ground and into another world that is located in a cloud, so to speak. I have come to the conclusion that I need to "sell the farm" in FarmVille and spend more time canning pink tipped green beans.

I guess that my final thoughts on social networks is this. They offer a lot of possibilities for an archives. It is a wonderful way to connect with the people that need the information that your archives holds. It is also a good tool for sharing information about your collection to an audience that would never darken the door of your reading room. I am a great believer in escaping the confines of the reading room, and I believe that these networks could be a very useful key in accomplishing that goal. It is like unlocking the gates to the castle to let people in and ideas out. I am not sure that some of us in the profession are quite ready for it, but I don't think that we will be able to avoid the process. I want to add one caution: too much of anything can be bad for you.