The participants on Five Weeks to a Social Library have started blogging. The introductions have been fun to read, and many people have made posts beyond their initial “hi, how are you?” test post.

I was particularly interested in what Alisia Wygant had to say today in her post Work Social Life. She agrees with some bloggers that social sites like Facebook could be fertile places for connecting with users. The problem is that she was already a Facebook user, “but it seems to me that my network of friends from college and my network of friends from work are very distinct and should be.”

This is a good addition to what people have written about the pleasures and perils of putting yourself out there and liminal librarianship. I wrote a bit about it in response to Michal Stephens’ post in Unintended consequences.

Social software is designed to increase its value to you as you create a network of contacts and friends, and establish a reputation for yourself. So if you have already invested time and effort in establishing yourself on, say, Facebook, you might not be so thrilled about expanding your professional persona into what had been a purely personal space. Your Facebook friends might think it odd if you take down all your funny pictures and quotes and their profanity-laced comments on your wall.

With blogs, it is easy enough to have more than one, and keep the siliness on LiveJournal or Vox or whatever, but a site like Facebook seems like it might be more problematic to maintain multiple personalities (though danah boyd sez that the kids seem to almost prefer to start over from time to time).

Wygant says the point became moot when she canceled her Facebook account because of the “lack of conversation that they caused in my social group.” (Anti-social software? There’s a whole ‘nother post right there!) And she ends with a great line: “would I be forced to live an online double identity–ducking into virtual telephone booths and putting on my uniform?”

Well, yeah, you might. But on the web, it seems a lot easier to tell that you are the same person when you put on those glasses, Clark, so don’t expect that alter ego to shield you too much. You can try and be Ernest in town and Jack in the country, but we all know that, in the long run, such things often cause more problems than they solve.