Facebook and Academic Libraries

I thought that Connell's study, entitled "Academic Libraries, Facebook, and MySpace, and Student Outreach: A Survey of Student Opinion," was a bit outdated. It was based upon a premise that is now no longer an issue: The best way to reach students with library info via Facebook is through status updates, but you can only do so if the library is friends with the student. This is, of course, no longer a problem because "fans" of a library page can receive status updates without the need to fear for their privacy by friending the library. I found the results of their survey of students to be expected. Many students like to keep their social spheres separate. This is one of the reasons why I think Google+ is going to be very popular. With this SNS, libraries will be able to send information to patrons without friend them (having them add the library to their circle). If patrons want to receive the information, they can choose to put the library in a special group that will not be able to see any private information about the user. This is similar to the idea of Facebook Pages, but more intuitive to use and it will be easier for libraries to encourage users to follow the library's updates.

Hendrix, et al. conducted a similar study, but focused on librarians, instead of students. I was shocked at how few academic health science libraries actually have a Facebook front, but I was very interested in some of the creative ways that these 12.5% did use their pages. I had not heard of librarian created applications that can be used to incorporate services into a library page, such as chat reference, catalog searching, and online multimedia access. I would think that libraries with these types of tools on their pages provide a lot more value to their users than those who just use Facebook for marketing events. I also thought that some of the ways that these libraries gained access to the students were pretty creative. I really liked the idea that one library had of looking through open group discussions about the college/university and answering questions that arose. This gave the library a positive image without the "creepy" side effect of actually seeking out students to friend!