Contrary to the assumption that people will use online social networking to project idealized versions of themselves, research shows that college students’ Facebook profiles project their actual personality rather than their idealized personality traits.

Add this to other common assumptions about Facebook that may not be true:

• Facebook is good for you (and your employer)
• Facebook and the strength of weak ties
• Facebook Fans are real fans
• Facebook harms kids’ brains? Really?

This post doesn’t really fit this blog’s focus on academic libraries, but I’m putting it here for 2 reasons:

1. I want to make sure I can find these recipes year after year, and searching for it online is certainly going to be easier than trying to find the piece of paper I stuck into one of my cookbooks
2. The turkey recipe came to me via an old high school friend on Facebook, thus demonstrating yet another value of social media

When I put out a call for brining recipes on Facebook, here is what my friend sent to me, word for word:

APPLE CIDER BRINE
From “The Thanksgiving Table” by Diane Morgan (Chronicle, 2001).
8C Apple Cider
2/3 C Kosher Salt
2/3 C Sugar
6 quarter sized slices unpeeled fresh ginger
2 bay leaves
6 whole cloves
1 tsp crushed black peppercorns
2 tsp crushed allspice berries

Combine in saucepan, heat over medium heat, stirring to dissolve salt and sugar, bring to boil. Boil 3 minutes remove from heat, add 4C cold water and let cool to room temperature.
I usually do this Tuesday, add brine back into the container the cider came in, refrigerate until Wednesday. Wednesday around noon I put my bird in a 5 gallon bucket (restaurants will give you their old 5G pickle buckets, or you can buy one from a hardware store. They last forever and are also useful for harvesting in the garden etc) and add enough water to cover, top off with a bunch of ice. I leave it covered in the garage for 24 hours before cooking. I don’t know what your weather is like, but you may want to skip the extra water and just cram the bucket with ice instead. Or if you have room put the whole thing in your fridge.
I remove the bird, dry and rub down with canola oil. Now this is essential ( I have cooked hundreds of turkeys, spent 14 years in the turkey business) many people fear stuffing b/c it is hard to get it to food safe temp in the bird’s cavity. True enough, but the worst part about stuffing is the fact that it acts as a sponge, wicking moisture away from the bird. Bad, bad, evil stuffing. Do not put dry stuffing in the bird. Alton Brown figured that you can reverse this and then some if you put wet stuffing in! It works, his suggestion, one I have been following for years:
Combine 1 quartered apple, 1 quartered onion, 1 cinnamon stick, 4 sprigs rosemary (or sub sage or whatever you have…) and 1C water in a covered microwave dish and nuke on high for 5 minutes. This will soften the heck out of everything and it will come out waterlogged and kind of mushy. Put this in the bird, it will give off moisture during the cooking process.
Put bird in 500 degree oven for 20-30 minutes to sauté skin (lower temp will allow the fat to melt away without achieving anything yummy, higher temp gets the fat boiling off, crisping the skin very nicely) remove, insert thermometer into breast meat, cover breast with double layer foil and put back into oven set at 350 and cook until thermometer says 161 degrees. Remove from oven, cover loosely with foil and allow to rest for at least 15 minutes before carving.

This was a remarkably easy recipe to follow, and the turkey was amazing. Everyone raved that it was the best turkey they ever had — moist, tender, delicious. I didn’t time things well, so had to leave the turkey in the oven after it was done so it wouldn’t be cold by the time everything else was done. So, I know it was overcooked, but this recipe is very forgiving.
I deviated from the recipe in 2 ways, one intentional, one not. I didn’t have whole cloves, so used ground cloves in the brine. I don’t think it had much effect, except that cloves don’t dissolve, so there was a sludgy mess of cloves at the bottom of the bucket when I took the turkey out. I also decided I wanted to baste the turkey while cooking (I don’t really know why, it just sounded like a good idea), so I poured some chicken broth in the bottom of the roasting pan and basted the bird 2-3 times during the roasting time.

My family has always made some version of sweet potato casserole with pecan topping every Thanksgiving, and it always gets rave reviews. This is the recipe I use:

SWEET POTATO CASSEROLE (adapted from Cooking with Class, 1982)
6-8 Yams, cooked and mashed (I prefer Yams to sweet potatoes because the color is better)
1 cup sugar (I’ve been decreasing this every year — used only 1/2 cup this year and it was still very sweet)
pinch of salt
2 tsps. vanilla
3 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 stick butter, melted
TOPPING
1/3 cup flour
1/3 stick butter, slightly softened
1 cup brown sugan
1 cup coarsely chopped pecans

Cook and mash the yams. Mix in all the rest of the ingredients (except topping) with mixer until smooth. Pour into greased casserole dish. Mix up topping ingredients and spoon on the yam mixture. I usually some whole pecans to the top as well. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.

We have had quite a bit of success with Our Library Facebook Page both in terms of number of Fans and amount of interaction.

Despite the promises of Web 2.0, it turns out that few people actually comment on Library blogs, and my sense is that most Library Facebook pages get very little interaction. So I have been pleasantly surprised that our Facebook page has been attracting a fair amount of interaction lately, and I have some thoughts on what is working.

Some numbers:

1. This past week (September 18-September 24; which is 1st week of school here), we have had 35 Interactions (27 Likes, 9 Comments, & 2 Wall Posts).
2. Our Post Quality for this past week was 3.8. Post Quality “is determined by the percentage of your fans that engage when you post content to your Page.”
3. We are averaging about 3.5 interactions per post for the past week, and close to 2 interactions per post for the past month.

Some observations and lessons learned:

1. Facebook Fans are real fans. The Fans of our page are truly fans of our library, and fans of libaries and books in general. Some of the most popular posts and status updates are positive quotes from patrons or general posts about how great libraries/librarians are or about the value of books and reading. One way I find positive (and sometimes negative) quotes about our library is through Twitter searches for “Stanford Library” or “Green Library”.
2. Timing matters. Even the most clever of posts will get little interaction from the kids if it is posted early in the morning. By the time students roll out of bed and check Facebook, your post has been pushed off the first page of their newsfeed by updates from their 300 other Friends and Pages. Edited to add: Maybe this one should be “Patience matters”, since that status is now getting some traction, many hours after it was posted.
3. Demography matters. Posts about college students and their childhood icons will attract attention from the students. Posts about the death of a 94 year old music legend will appeal to the older fans.
4. You can use your Facebook page to ask for feedback … and you might even get some. If you use Facebook to advertise new services, you can get immediate feedback.

Before anyone asks it, I’ll go ahead and answer the “So what?” question. I am not suggesting that the number of Fan interactions on Facebook is, on its own, any kind of measure of a library’s worth or success. I do think Facebook interactions can be one source of feedback from our patrons. I also think that when Fans “like” something on Facebook, they are often saying “thanks for sharing, that was interesting” or “I like this thing the library is doing, or this news about the library”. Facebook interaction is one way of knowing when we are providing services and information that our patrons like.

I also already answered the “Aren’t you worried about negative and/or inappropriate comments on your Facebook page?” in Fear of Flaming.

I get lots of questions from other libraries about Our Library Facebook page, and have happily described our experience to date.

I have been surprised by the number of folks who are very concerned about the fact that Fans of a Facebook page can post comments and Wall Posts. The concern is that Fans might post negative or offensive comments, and/or that Fans will get into flaming wars with each other over something about your library.

YMMV, but that has definitely NOT been our experience. It turns out that the folks who become Fans of our library on Facebook tend to actually be fans of our library. The comments and Wall Posts have been resoundingly positive.

The sad truth is that few library patrons comment on library blogs, and few Fans comment of Facebook pages. I’m pretty sure we have the most Fans of any US academic library (982 as of today), and on a good week we get 10-15 interactions (comments, likes, wall postings).

I am well aware that flaming happens on the internet, and even happens on some Facebook Fan pages; but my experience has been that it has not happened on our Facebook page, or on any of the other Library Facebook pages I am a Fan of. If anyone knows of a flaming incident, or inappropriate Fan comments on an academic library Facebook page, I would love to hear about it.

Bottom line, I hope libraries don’t use the seemingly minuscule risk of flaming wars as a reason to avoid Facebook, or other web-based ways of interacting with patrons. After all–aren’t libraries supposed to be all about providing spaces for the free exchange of ideas?