Building Communities

Social Networking for Academic Libraries

Denise Garofalo

• Publisher: Chandos Publishing
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781843347354
• eBook ISBN: 9781780634012
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Computer Science General
• Index: Computer Science

Social media is here to stay. A robust social media campaign can provide academic libraries with a means to showcase library resources, highlight content and events, and attract students to sample what the library has to offer. Building Communities is a handbook to implement social media technologies for academic libraries. It is a guide to planning and implementing a successful social media campaign and evaluating its impact. This title covers: the beginning of social networking in the academic context; how to implement use of social media technologies; and evaluating their use. The final section considers the future and asks: 'What's next?' - Provides information on how to plan, integrate, and assess the use of social media in academic libraries - Gives examples on the best social media technologies to implement in academic libraries - Discusses the skills and knowledge required in the academic library to launch a successful social media campaign

1

The whats and whys of social networking for academic libraries

Abstract:

A brief overview with an explanation of what social media are and why they are important, including the role of social media on campus as an adjunct to digital teaching strategies and also as a means for student engagement. Their twentieth-century origins. A presence in social media facilitates the academic library in participating in academic culture, as well as increasing its visibility. Considering the different types of community on campus keys in to the various ways in which participation in social media can benefit a library. This means innovation in difficult times, and can enhance relationships with and among students and improve students’ learning skills. The role of the contemporary academic library. Outreach to distance-learning students.

Key words

social media networking

academic libraries

student engagement

information literacy

innovation

technology

life skills

branding

information commons

marketing

Background

The technological and social changes of the twenty-first century have expanded the roles of social media and social networking and highlighted the ubiquity of these technologies. The term ‘social media’ denotes ‘websites and applications which enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking’ (OED Online, 2012). This is a democratizing technology, affording anybody the capacity to create content and disseminate information; a kind of global ‘word of mouth’ for the twenty-first century. The facility for anyone and everyone to create and distribute information to a broad audience, and then interact with that audience, allows the rapid development of extensive communities of people with common interests, where like-minded individuals can associate, engage, and build relationships through purposeful conversations and connections. Social networking sites are small virtual villages, and they also alter the traditional relationships between individuals and organizations or between individuals and institutions. Both facets of those relationships center on communicating – providing content and responding to messages, creating and building virtual personalities – resulting in dialog between the individuals and the institution or organization. The prevalence and popularity of social networking sites are changing the dynamics of social interactions as they change the traditional face-to-face inperson interactions and expand the numbers of different outlets through which individuals, institutions, and organizations can communicate. As Neal Rodriguez (2012, para. 2) commented, social networking sites ‘…are community building tools’.

‘Social networking’ – the use or establishment of social networks or connections or the use of websites which enable users to interact with one another (OED Online, 2012) – and ‘social media’ are among the buzzwords of current technology for all types of businesses and organizations. Getting connected and staying that way are important aspects of outreach, brand-building, and networking for people and groups alike. However, using technology to connect with others is not new in the twenty-first century. The 1970s saw the birth of email and online BBS (bulletin board systems), newsgroups were first formed in the 1980s, and online communities such as Tripod and GeoCities sprang up in the 1990s, followed by blogs, chat, and online course management software. Wikipedia debuted in 2001, followed closely by iTunes, Friendster, MySpace and LinkedIn. Facebook and podcasting came into being in 2004, and Twitter in 2006 (McManus, 2011; Cherim, 2006).

During these years libraries kept pace and utilized these and other technical innovations, such as the incorporation of streaming media, downloadable audio, and ebooks into their collections. Social networking is just one more technological tool libraries are integrating into their service model. Through the use of social networking, libraries can connect with users and others, building a virtual community of people who have similar interests (the library) and interact through discussions and postings. Social networking is the twenty-first-century mode of communication. Libraries can use social networking to communicate with library users and extend services, for example, by providing news about library events, information about new materials, research tips, and much more.

Building a community on social media is much more than just waiting for comments from users. ‘By definition, a community is a collection of people … who interact together in the same environment’ (Bacon, 2009, p. 4). A community goes beyond comments or ‘shares’ or an active fan base, although comments can be an indicator of community on a social media network. When user comments include reactions to another’s comment, with direct engagement through the comments, the result is side conversations and possibly the emergence of new topics and revelations, indicating that a common purpose or mission exists among the participants – in other words, a community exists, and social connectedness is established.

Social connectedness can be defined as the experience of belonging to a social relationship or network (Lee and Robbins, 1995) and a social networking community is such a network. Community-building via social networking results in a sense of belonging and connectedness. Community members connect with one another, building support for themselves from among these connections. When an academic library participates in social media for community-building efforts, the community members look out for each other and for the library. The community allows for opportunities for connection and growth, as community members participate and share in this active, engaging, and fluid experience.

To those that participate in such online communities, these spaces are real, and they augment, intensify, and connect to all aspects of their lives. Social networking sites deliver channels for members to connect, exchange information, invite others to events, and share media. In this way participants acquire a forum for presentation and extension of themselves and their ideas and concerns and a place to explore their identities, share their insights, and interact with others. Students may be confident in their ability to gather information via the Internet so that they can find resources, locate answers, and substantiate their answers, but also recognize that their confidence does not mean that they constitute an information-literate student body.

Consideration needs to be given to the different types of relationship existing on campus (student-based, faculty-based, service-based, staff-based and variations thereof), along with the acknowledgement that these different relationships are increasingly facilitated through social media technologies. There is a perception in academia that the use of and participation in social media networking sites takes time away from more intellectual pursuits and dissipates the necessary boundaries between instructor and student; perceptions can be difficult to overcome (McBride, 2010). As Manlow et al. (2010, p. 50) state, ‘While there are those who oppose web-based teaching, and who are suspicious of or slow to adopt new technologies, more and more faculty and administrators will recognize that advances in technology enable universities to transform the learning environment in a positive direction in line with progressive pedagogies’. Through successful community-building, members of the academic community may come to perceive that social media provide a means to engage with students and promote transparency within this growing twenty-first-century culture of informality, and can lead to campus-wide engagement through networking sites.

These sites are used not only for social networking and entertainment but also for access to information, for learning, and for carrying out professional duties. Perhaps the reluctance of academic libraries to begin to participate in social networking is due to the explicitly non-educational intention of a technology that includes ‘social’ in its name. But there are benefits to the library in building a community and establishing connections. Libraries may find that ‘it might be possible to leverage it [social media technology] as an instructional tool’ (Graham, 2007, p. 6). There is potential in social networking to allow the library to provide expertise in the research process, instruction in the use of resources, and information on the content available through the library. Social media technology furnishes the academic library with another tool for connecting to the community, whether the community members prefer contact in person, by phone, email, IM, chat, text messaging, or through the social networking community.

Social networking technology is a means to be where our community is, and to interact with the community and others with whom that community interacts. Younger people believe that email is dead, and use texting, IM, and Facebook to stay in touch. Libraries need to recognize that in order to remain relevant to a user base an adjustment in communication modes is essential. Facebook is a widely used social networking service that is very popular with people of all ages. Businesses and other organizations alike utilize Facebook in community-building efforts, using it as a means to extend and promote their services within their community. Academic libraries can use social media networking to notify their communities about news, events, resources, and library services.

A community built around the academic library can assist students and faculty seeking assistance in their research and information-gathering activities but who may be reluctant or unable to visit the physical library building in person. For instance, students using distance education may be unable to make the visit because of location constraints. There are also those, primarily students, who want information and need assistance with research, but do not wish to visit the library building. The library can reach those students through social media networking, demonstrating integration via the preferred means of interaction for these community members.

Role on campus

Innovation is never easy. Academic libraries can become entrenched in their standard means of providing services, notifying the campus of available materials, or of reaching out to their core community of students, faculty, and staff. And as Steven Bell (Associate University Librarian for Research and Instructional Services at Temple University, Philadelphia, PA) stated at the ACRL/NEC (Association of College and Research Libraries, New England Chapter) Annual Conference at the College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, MA, 18 May, 2012), ‘entrenched cultures do not support changes, innovation, and discovery.’ Integrating social media technologies into academic libraries is innovative, and without a doubt it will change the way academic libraries relate to their communities. More importantly, though, in order to continue to be relevant in today’s world of higher education, libraries need to connect to people on campus. Social networking provides a method to reach out to people, to make connections and build communities.

These are challenging times for higher education, and institutions will ‘have difficulty surviving in this new environment made harsher with [sic] the recent economic crisis’ (Manlow et al., 2010, p. 48). The global situation is a factor, but local conditions are the most likely determinants for any challenges faced, and it is essential to understand the academic environment in which the library functions, as well as the basic functions of the library, when considering an implementation of an innovative service. The basic functions of the academic library – providing the content of collections, a mechanism of access to the collection content, various services to support the community, and personnel to provide and maintain access, services and collections – are directly related to the academic environment (the college or university) in which the library exists. The changing face of higher education directly impacts the academic library and its services, such as:

demographic changes and societal shifts, resulting in a culturally diverse student body as well as a shift to more undergraduates who are older than the traditional 18–22-year-olds

changes to the curriculum

technological changes, including those impacting the media used in the classroom and to support research

financial support

student recruitment and retention

physical space limitations.

Changing social, political, and economic situations are impacting all facets of higher education, including the academic library. Societal shifts have already impacted the ability of young people to participate in the traditional offerings of higher education. As a result, owing to the need to work, working schedules, and the need for new skills, the make-up of the student body has shifted to include more undergraduates, along with an increase in evening and weekend classes and the further implementation of distance learning (Altbach et al., 2011).

What is the academic library of today? Briefly, it is an institution that offers a supplement and complement to the college’s or university’s curric...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• About the author
• Chapter 1: The whats and whys of social networking for academic libraries
• Chapter 2: How to approach the implementation of social media technologies
• Chapter 3: Case studies of academic libraries and social media networking
• Chapter 4: First steps
• Chapter 5: Make the connection: posting on social media
• Chapter 6: Evaluating the impact of social media in academic libraries
• Chapter 7: Closing thoughts
• Appendix 1: Survey questions
• Appendix 2: Case study questions
• Appendix 3: Tools and resources
• Glossary
• References
• Bibliography
• Index