Social media and library marketing: is Facebook being used effectively in promoting library resources and services of main university libraries in Sri Lanka?

Abstract

Social media has revolutionized means and modes of communication and has created a new information culture: As such social media has to be integrated in promoting library services and resources of the university libraries. An attempt to explore the usage of social media by university libraries was undertaken. The objectives of the study were to explore usage of social networking tools, with special reference to Facebook in University libraries. Other objectives were to investigate the academic librarians' attitudes towards the usefulness of Facebook as a social media networking tool, and to explore the problems related to using Facebook as a library promotional tool. This study had used both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Data collection was mainly from a questionnaire, and subsequently by observation of library Facebook sites. All 19 national university libraries were taken as the study population. Two libraries had already created Facebook fan pages, while another site had not been officially accepted. The two officially accepted Facebook pages were observed under the following criteria: date of establishment, number of fans, information shared, services offered, and the activities promoted. All librarians considered Facebook to be either important (66.7) or very important (33.3%) in promoting library resources and services. This study depicts that university librarian s attitudes were positive in using FB for the promotion of library resources and services. Those university librarians strongly believe that social media including the FB is an important tool for marketing of library products and services. They have realized thatit is very useful when they want to commlfnicate with their library clientele in order to cater to their information needs. This observation is in line with Graham, Faise & Hartman (2009) too.