From its founding Facebook has been a playground for students. Its decision to expand beyond the educational world is a gamble. A year from now will Facebook be as passe as Friendster? Students seem unhappy at the prospect of sharing their online space with others. Will they abandon that space and leave it to the interlopers and move on to a new space that an entrepreneurial opportunist creates to replicate the Facebook features students seem to value?

It is interesting that Facebook will structure new communities on geographic regions. Wasn't the Internet supposed to bring an end to geography? This has been a de facto feature of Facebook. It originally limited membership to students at its birthplace, Harvard. Most of those students were on or near the Cambridge campus. As it expanded to include other colleges, a similar implicit geographic limitation has been inherent. Is there an implicit questioning of the limits of online community, and implicit recognition that f2f community and physical proximity are at least as important?

This coming weekend the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison will celebrate its 100th birthday! The celebration will feature panel discussions on abiding topics such as intellectual freedom, publishing, and research libraries as well as the very contemporary such as blogging, and the lessons recent graduates can teach us. Speakers include distinguished UW SLIS alumni such as Nancy Kranich, Beacher Wiggins, and Sarah Pritchard. Former SLIS director and professor Charles Bunge, one of my mentors, will review the school's history and contributions.

I received my MALS from UW SLIS in December 1975. I wish I could be there for this weekend's festivities, but other obligations prevent that. There are few places more glorious in early fall than Madison! The program promises to stimulate participants' brains. And in good Wisconsin tradition, a beer tasting will stimulate their taste buds. It will be a grand celebration and I wish all who participate a rewarding and enjoyable time.