Case study of the use of social media facilities provided by the Dublin Business School Library by students of the Dublin Business School
Authors
Johnston, Helen
Issue Date
2013
Degree
MSc Information and Library Management
Publisher
Dublin Business School
Rights holder
Rights
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Abstract
There has been a lot of research done on Web 2.0 technologies and social media facilities in academic libraries. Social media like Facebook, Twitter, blogs and instant messaging (IM) offer a lot of scope for librarians to communicate and interact with students reaching a wider population of students, disseminating information in a variety of ways, and getting feedback from students. A survey of 99 students at the Dublin Business School measured whether students use the different social media facilities provided by their academic library. It also asked, if they do not use the social media facilities provided by the library why they don’t and whether they think it is important that the library provides these facilities. Many of the respondents had not used the social media facilities provided by the library. The research showed that about half of students did not know that the library provided social media facilities such as Facebook, Twitter, or Blogs, and approximately another third were not interested in the facilities. Although the IM feature was the most popular with over half of students having used the facility at least once, almost a quarter of students did not know the library provided the service. The study also showed that even though many students had not been aware or were not interested in using the social media facilities provided by the library, more than half of students thought that the library should have a Facebook and Twitter account, and a large majority thought having the IM service was important. The results of the study indicate that if the DBS library is to benefit from the potential of social media facilities it must look into different ways to promote the awareness and advantages of these facilities into the consciousness of the student population. Author keywords: Library, social media, social media facilities, social media services, academic library, DBS Library