FACE!

After insulting someone in junior high, if you thought the insult was particularly salient, you could say to the person receiving the insult that they had been "faced." You could simply say, "face" or go further and say, "you've been faced." Frequently, when you made such a comment you would bring your hand to your face and peer out through your fingers. Really, all good "burns" should have a hand gesture to go with it. My friend in Pittsburgh, who is a few years older than me, has indicated that this way of dismissing peers was prevalent in Eastern Pennsylvania during his time in middle school. Yet, I asked my roommate and his friend, who grew up locally about this phenomenon and neither had heard of it. They are younger by eight years. So, this slang and gesture went out of style within that time. Now, where am I going with this. Amazingly, without the Internet, culture made it from Eastern Pennsylvania to the Willamette Valley among junior high school students, or more likely it went the other direction. (Everyone knows the West Coast rules, everyone except Biggie and look at his fate.) Anyway, now with social networking sites, culture has the ability to transfer much more quickly. Too, it allows for groups of like-minded people to connect no matter their geography. Now, I've used Myspace and I've used Facebook, and it does keep people connected. They allow for people to gather around certain areas of interest and serve as a single portal for web activity. If you look at the YAAB myspace site, or the Vacouver Teen site you can see we have a lot of interest. We can push all kinds of information to these patrons and reach them in greater numbers than ever. Rather than telling the teen that comes to the library about a great book, you could have them be a part of a teen group or part of a mystery readers group. You could be making recommendations and conducting Readers Advisory to more people each day than you have come to your library. It has the advantage of being personalize as well. There is tons of opportunity here.