Facebook à la Fulbright - Page 2

May

Perhaps the most rewarding use of Facebook over the past year was seeing its use by my third-year aspiring librarians after our class had officially ended. At our last class session, I took a photo of the students in the beginning of the hour.
At the end of the hour, we discussed what the future of libraries will be, and I showed them the photo I had just taken … of them. In countries where there are not a lot of resources, where there is not a culture of reading, and where the profession of librarian is relatively unknown, the library school students of today are what truly will drive the libraries of tomorrow. After they got over their surprise at the unveiling of their photo, they seemed to take the point.
When I posted that photo to Facebook, a conversation started. One student captioned the photo: "To get this photo, just conjugate ‘to library’ in the future tense." Another student followed by commenting: "We will library"; and so on. I was overjoyed to see their enthusiasm for the idea of taking responsibility for the future of libraries under some pretty harsh conditions, and taking that responsibility publicly, of their own volition. They are 100% up to the task, there’s no doubt about that.

Academic year in review

Using Facebook has been a great way for me to chronicle connections made during a rich Fulbright year in Morocco.
I wish it were a little easier to pull together all of my Morocco-related content on Facebook, but I have to acknowledge that searching around haphazardly in the annals of Facebook is rewarding in its own right. Besides, some of my 75 or so ESI student friends have continued to keep in touch over the summer, which is an enjoyable continuation of the 10-month Fulbright experience.