Social networking sites are starting to play a very important role in helping academic libraries reach students with the services they offer. According to the Oxford English Dictionary Online (2012), they define social networking as the “use or establishment of social networks or connections; (now esp.) the use of websites which enable users to interact with one another, find and connect people with common interests, etc. (freq. attrib.)”. Popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Four Square are popular among college students and play a very important part in their lives. These sites are a good way for academic libraries to reach their audience at no cost to them. Libraries can use this approach to reach their students, faculty, and staff to encourage library usage. They can also use them to engage users by embedding them in classes, collaborating with student organizations, and using them on the library website.
Facebook is one of the most, if not the most, used social networking site out there. Facebook was launched in February 2004 as a local networking application at Harvard University and rapidly expanded to other colleges in the United States (Wan, 2011). When Facebook first started, all you had to have was a verified university or college email address. This was something that made it different from the then popular social networking site Myspace. In September 2006, registration opened for anyone with a valid email address (Wan, 2011).
There are multiple reasons why an academic library would want to have a Facebook account. Greeting students on their own turf is exactly the direction staff at Washington University’s John M. Olin Library decided to take when they hired Web Services Librarian Joy Weese Moll to communicate and answer questions through a variety of new technologies including Facebook (Charnigo and Barnett-Ellis, 2007). Brian Mathews, information services librarian at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia also created a Facebook profile in order to “interact with the students in their natural environment (Charnigo and Barnett-Ellis, 2007). Facebook has become one of the main communication tools for students. Academic libraries can create a fan page where people that like the page can be updated on library hours, services, events and provide feedback to library staff on issues. I created a fan page for The James Earl Carter Library on the campus of Georgia Southwestern State University. We use it mostly to let students, faculty, staff and alumni know when we are open, closed, when we are having a special event and to post pictures of those events or changes that are made to the Library. When academic libraries set up Facebook accounts it is good to have a formal policy in place.
Click here to see James Earl Carter Library’s Facebook page!
Charnigo, L., & Barnett-Ellis, P. (2007). Checking out facebook.com: The impact of a digital trend on academic libraries. Information Technology and Libraries, 26(1), 23-34.
Oxford English Dictionary Online. (2012). Social networking. Retrieved from http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/183739?redirectedFrom=social%20networking#eid1393 54807.
Wan, G. (2011) How academic libraries reach users on Facebook. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 18(4), 307-318.
