starting point - to build NRHDB community

This month, I've made some changes to the Naval Reactors History Database, hoping to build a foundation for linking with the small community of users who have committed time to creating Wikipedia entries and other info in social network spaces:

• An NRHDB Twitter account, in which I post database-related info; Twitter users can indicate interest in the database by following this user

• An embedded Twitter widget that displays the current NRHDB Twitter post
• A Like button and the addition of microdata for the NRHDB site, consistent with Facebook's Open Graph Protocol
• A link to Wikipedia's list of United States naval reactors (from the Wikipedia icon)
• Links from Wikipedia entries to the Naval Reactors History Database, where there is significant database coverage to justify the link (example at URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S1W_reactor, see "External Links" section); Ann Lally described this content linking method in a 2007 D-Lib Magazine article

It will take some time for these changes to have an impact. The Facebook development work really opens up a lot of options for communication - as Eric Hellman of Gluejar pointed out in his ALA Annual presentation, the Like button is the most popular Semantic Web application. Its use establishes a number of methods for me to communicate with other Facebook users who have interest in the NRHDB, including messages and even ads.