Building on Laurie’s post about the new Facebook pages for businesses, libraries, and other places, my post discusses the JSTOR search application that can be embedded onto a profile. (Login to Facebook to view or use the application.)

If you’re a Facebook follower, fan, or junkie, you may have already seen this app, featured on fellow librarians’ pages. The JSTOR search application lets you place a JSTOR search box on your institution’s Facebook profile. It’s as simple as that. I easily walked through the steps to add it to The Valley Library profile and to my personal page. Now any users from our institution who visit The Valley Library page can jump into a JSTOR search and be authenticated to our subscription.

I think this is cool because it helps us take the library and embed it outside of the library — virtual or physical. Even though our users may not want us clogging or polluting Facebook and other social networking spaces, I’m curious to see if they will take advantage of this placement. How often do peoples’ behavior and what they say they do match? Minimally, I think the search box may raise JSTOR’s profile and that seems like a good thing. Wouldn’t using JSTOR over the general web be preferable?

We’ll see how many people decide to mix research, personal, and fun activities. I think it’s worth putting out there because it took literally less than a minute to do so. Whatever searches are done will be worth that time.

I’m curious who will be next to create a Facebook app for searching. Who would you like to see?