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Marketing library services through Facebook groups

Z. David Xia
Kelly Business School, Indiana University, Fishers, Indiana, USA
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discover whether Facebook Groups are conducive for library marketing. Design/methodology/approach Facebook Groups at two major research universities in the USA, along with two global Groups, were analyzed for their activity and membership to examine their performance of effectively promoting library visibility. Findings It nds that the success of Facebook Groups can be controlled by the active organization of librarians and by using more general topics to keep discussions alive. It also nds that Facebook Groups should target not only students but also faculty and staff in support of their research and teaching. Research limitations/implications By effectively organizing Facebook Groups as useful social networking, libraries can extend their services to more users. The ndings of this paper provide insight into a new means of library marketing. Originality/value Previous studies on this topic did not analyze the actual activity of specic Facebook Groups. This research is one of the very few, if any, to go into individual groups and examine several important aspects of messages and members in these Groups. Keywords Libraries, Marketing, Academic libraries, Internet, Social networks, United States of America Paper type Research paper

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Received 8 January 2009 Accepted 2 May 2009

Introduction Marketing library services has always been a major interest of libraries. Through marketing strategies, a library can expect to improve its visibility and image, thus attracting more users to utilize its materials and services. The marketing efforts have had a long history, extending back to Samuel Greens 1876 speech at the ALA convention, calling for improved personal relations between librarians and readers (Green, 1876). Throughout the years, many marketing policies have been developed and a variety of activities has been carried out, ranging from creating attractive posters to display upcoming library events to investing in newspaper advertisements, and to even making personal solicitations. It has been proven that marketing does play an important role in publicizing library services. Library marketing strategies respond to changes from socio-cultural, political as well as technological conditions of a particular time. With the recent boom of information technologies in the new millennium, especially the invention and development of the internet, library marketing now faces new challenges, but at the same time, has more opportunities. On one hand, popular internet search engines such as Google.com and Yahoo.com have altered the role of libraries by offering students easier ways to discover research materials online and cutting the necessity of physically visiting a library. On the other hand, librarians, concerned with library usability rates, now have more exibility undertaking marketing efforts through the

Library Management Vol. 30 No. 6/7, 2009 pp. 469-478 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0143-5124 DOI 10.1108/01435120910982159

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use of the internet, thus expanding the horizon of nding new ways of advertising library services. Increasing the visibility of their library through high technologies has become the top priority of librarians. Facebook is one of the high technologies that has been integrated into library marketing efforts. As an interactive web site, Facebook has been very popular among college students. According to the statistics reported by Facebook.com, roughly 80 million users are its members, making it one of the most popular web sites in the world (Facebook.com, 2008). This provides a great opportunity for librarians to utilize. The importance of Facebook to libraries has already been discussed in library literature. Most of such studies highlight the potentials of Facebook in promoting library visibility and assume its possibilities of connecting library services to library users. However, until now, very few projects have designed scientic investigations to systematically explore the impact of Facebook on the effectiveness of library marketing. Moreover, investigating Facebook Groups in order to take a closer look at the results of Facebook use by students and faculty on library topics is still an untouched research area. The purpose of this article is to t into the gap by attempting to collect data from library Facebook groups at two research universities. It is designed to discover whether these groups are good practices for library marketing by examining group discussion transcripts and history. It is the hope of this article to provide recommendations to librarians for the improvement of their marketing policies and strategies. Background Facebook and groups Facebook was created in February 2004 by a Harvard student as a social networking web site for college students to stay in touch (Phillips, 2007). It gained huge success immediately. Within the rst month of its creation, more than half of the Harvard undergraduate students registered on the service for a membership. It was soon expanded to all Ivy League schools, and then to all colleges, becoming a popular way for college students, faculty, and staff to get to know other people on campus and to exchange information and ideas about university policies, events, as well as many other things. During the next couple of years, Facebook became open to the public as membership climbed to tens of millions of active users (Facebook.com, 2008). Several months after Facebook was invented, an important feature, Groups, was added for the convenience of sharing similar topics of interest among members. Since then, Facebook Groups have been heavily utilized. Upon registration, any person can create a Group and invite members that are either just his/her own friends, people in a network (such as a specic university), or open for anyone that wishes to join (global). Users can enroll in a group of their interest as long as it is global or in their network. Group members have the exibility of adding videos and photos, discussing various topics of their choice on the discussion board, or writing on the Wall for everyone to read. Group members can also invite other people, thus further expanding the Group. A global Group is utilized by Facebook members across networks to communicate on a common topic. There are several global Groups that were initiated by librarians or students such as the American Library Association (ALA), within which people exchange information and talk about their concerns pertaining to ALA activities and library business in general. However, most Facebook groups are set at the college level

and are open only to members of a particular university. With regard to library topics, such college-based groups focus on specic libraries of their own college and concentrate on the daily activities of their own campus. In comparison to Facebook global groups, these groups are usually small in participant size, but provide better information for people to understand the practices of individual academic libraries. Literature review Since the invention of Facebook at the beginning of the new millennium, there have been numerous research articles, proposals, and speeches written about the seemingly unlimited potential of the social network in communication. Researchers recognized the importance of their application to many specic elds, one of which is libraries. Increasing literature started discussing the usability of Facebook in the assistance of library marketing (e.g. Breeding, 2007; Farkas, 2006; Kwong, 2007; Miller and Jensen, 2007). Studies explored how to create a personal prole and expand by using its many features. Some of Facebooks features, such as Groups and Events, were considered to be important to library marketing and were explained in detail in the literature. When many libraries actually started their experiment of utilizing Facebook for the purpose of advertising library services, the focus of the literature shifted to the introduction of their marketing projects and the practicability of the applications. One example is a recount of his experiences with Facebook by a librarian at Georgia Tech (Mathews, 2006). Mathews experiment was to send out welcome messages introducing himself to undergraduate and graduate students in a selected department. He believed that this was a good way to increase the visibility of librarians and thus, of the library. This Facebook greeting was pleasantly received and a number of students responded, with some students even approaching him on campus to say that they had seen him on Facebook. However, not all experiments provided encouraging results. Some studies discovered more problems than benets in utilizing this social network application. Among them, Seckers (2008) ndings were representative. She particularly examined the limitations of Facebook Groups and pinpointed their ineffectiveness in keeping students interested enough to return in the future. A recent OCLC report, Sharing, privacy and trust in our networked world, also analyzed social networking web sites and seemed to contend that they are not useful for libraries (OCLC, 2007). Indeed, Facebook Groups are not as inuential as they look, because although the amount of members seems to be large in some groups with general or popular topics, many group members may never come back if discussions in the group become less interesting. This major problem has made Groups less cohesive and raised skepticism in researchers who are using the feature to market libraries. To solve this problem, some Group organizers have adopted changes by sending out messages to all of its members in their inboxes to periodically announce upcoming events or interesting topics. Another solution is to maintain useful and enjoyable discussions in a Group. A change in Facebook operations also inuenced the way that librarians used this web site to market their libraries. In October 2006 Facebook began shutting down prole accounts that had been created for a library as a whole (e.g. Rutgers University Libraries), claiming that proles had to represent specic people (Charnigo and Barnett-Ellis, 2007). Libraries instead switched to Groups accounts and librarians started creating individual proles, which Breeding soon pointed out that it may be

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unrealistic to think that large numbers of undergraduate students would want to count librarians among their Facebook Friends (Breeding, 2007). Students have indeed been reluctant from receiving any intrusions in their social lives by librarians. A survey conducted at the University of Michigan revealed that the majority of undergraduate students were hesitant about contacting librarians through Facebook (Chapman et al., 2007). In spite of the shortcomings mentioned above, most researchers are still optimistic about the applicability of Facebook in social networking. An increasing number of students have begun to realize the impact of Facebook in their academic lives. Another study of rst-year undergraduate students at California State University San Macros found that 90 percent of students said they conversed with their Facebook friends about courses, homework, and professors (Chu and Meulemans, 2008). Many have even planned study groups. Befriending librarians has become a recognized advantage to students who, instead of walking to the library, can simply go to the librarians personal prole and ask questions through the Facebook web site. Ease of use and accessibility are the fundamental factors of this relationship. It is worth noticing that very few, if any, researchers have actually participated in student discussions in Facebook Groups. Their assumptions of the Facebook Groups usability, either positive or negative perspectives, largely rely on the analysis of the features of the web site or limited surveys among students. No one has attempted to join a Facebook Group and monitor the proceedings of the group. This is what this article is designed for to examine all library-related Groups organized by librarians as well as students at two major research universities in the United States. Each discussion message in these Groups was read and Group-related information was recorded to observe how library topics were handled among students, faculty and staff members. The purpose of this research is to look for solutions for librarians to market their libraries through the best use of Facebook. Data collection Two major research universities were selected for the research: Indiana University and Rutgers University. Each has a student body of over 30,000, which can guarantee the availability of adequate data and appropriate Facebook discussion Groups. Facebook only allows users to view global Groups and those of their own networks based on universities, so the author carried out this research by using personal connections to members of the universities to log onto their proles for data collection. Inside Facebook, searches using the generic word library as the keyword returned all Groups related to library business. Upon careful examination, Groups that only contained the word library in its description but were obviously unrelated to library business were discarded. Each Facebook Group, regardless of the creators being students or staff/faculty, was visited within which all posts were read and several points of information, including the total number of members, the status of each member, the dates of the rst and last posts, etc., were recorded. The status of group members was divided into the categories of faculty/staff and student. A main problem in the data collection was that the number of times a Group member returned to view new posts and messages was not available. This made it difcult to analyze precisely how active a Group member was. However, the dates of the rst and last posts for a Group in many cases could be good indicators, which

partially remedy the problem. Another solution was to keep a tally for each poster in order to track whether s/he returned to the Group to participate in discussions frequently. Particular attention was paid to Groups with a large amount of staff and faculty members, because this may provide information about the efforts of librarians for supporting or starting groups (see Table I). Findings A total of 26 library-related Groups were found in Facebook for Rutgers and Indiana Universities networks, of which Rutgers has 11 Groups and Indiana has 15. As many as ten of Rutgers Groups were initiated and organized by students while the number for Indiana is 13. It is therefore obvious that students are the most active Group organizers and discussants in this social network practice. Almost all of the student-run Groups are small and have attracted only 20 members on average, and contain very minimal discussion activities. By examining the number of posts by individual students, it was found that most Facebook Groups failed in retaining member conversations and Group members rarely returned again after they posted their rst message. This constitutes the rst nding in this research. Student-run Groups are mostly small and inactive This nding is corresponding to the discoveries by Secker (2008) who was skeptical about the importance of Facebook Groups for marketing library services. From this research, evidence gathered seems to suggest some possibilities for why Groups run by students are languishing. First, most of these Groups were designed for a single event, such as protesting closing a library early on weekends. During this event, there would be an explosion of activity, which was reected in Group discussions with several posts within days of each other. It is understandable that such event-driven Groups would not be able to last much longer than the end of the target event. The result is that members never returned to the Group again. Second, several of the Groups unknowingly put limitations on the number of possible members. For example, there is a Rutgers group named Douglas Library Staff run by students for student-workers, which immediately restricts its potential members to those who have worked at the Douglas Library. Third, most of the Groups are about narrow topics that inevitably restrict the development of the Groups. For example, a Group at Indiana University called So. . . the Library is a Triscuit . . . has provided a unique (delicious) perspective of the physical library building, but once members joined to express their agreement with the statement, there was nothing further to discuss. Both Group organizers and members failed in encouraging wall posts or discussion topics to keep Group discussions alive. Not only did student-run Groups have a short lifetime, they also experienced difculties attracting members from the very beginning. For one, though with a large number of members, Facebook only attracts a certain portion of college students. According to Chu and Meulemans survey (2008) of rst-year undergraduate students, only 57 percent of them used Facebook actively, although this was considered to be a conservative approximation. Taking this into consideration, the total number of students at the universities was multiplied by 57 percent to obtain this estimate of the quantity of students with an active Facebook account (around 17,000). The ndings show that overall, students have been hesitant about joining library-related Groups.

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Afliation Group name 4,818 7,847 176 169 46 25 13 11 10 10 9 7 4 35 30 29 15 11 10 9 8 7 5 4 3 2 2 2 0 0 0 4 0 4 0 0 3 0 0 4 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 1 6 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 4 13 0 N/A N/A N/A April 2006 June 2006 March 2006 December 2004 N/A N/A February 2006 N/A February 2007 N/A August 2007 February 2006 N/A April 2006 N/A 152 262 6 40 1 0 0 0 21 1 252 453 39 0 5 13 2 2 1 0 November 2006 October 2006 November 2004 September 2006 August 2006 October 2005 November 2004 December 2005 December 2007 January 2008 January 2009 January 2009 Decemebr 2007 December 2008 August 2006 May 2006 January 2005 December 2005 April 2008 January 2008 N/A N/A N/A November 2007 July 2006 October 2006 March 2006 N/A N/A April 2006 N/A March 2007 N/A December 2007 March 2006 N/A October 2006 N/A

Global Global Rutgers Rutgers Rutgers Rutgers Rutgers Rutgers Rutgers Rutgers

Rutgers Rutgers Rutgers Indiana Indiana Indiana Indiana Indiana

Indiana Indiana Indiana Indiana

Indiana Indiana Indiana Indiana Indiana Indiana

Table I. Facebook Groups of library topic at Indiana and Rutgers Universities and global groups Members Wall posts Discussions Earliest post Latest post Organizer Staff (ALA) Librarians Student Librarians Student Student Student Student Student Student Student Student Student Student Librarian Student Student Student Student Student Student Student Librarian Student Student Librarian Student Student

American Library Association Members Librarians and Facebook Booklovers Inside Info @ RU Libraries Alexander All-Stars I work at the Library but I aint no Librarian Douglas Library Staff Were too good for Dana Music Library Denizens Future Librarians I spend entirely to [sic] much time at Alexander Library Alexander Library I sit in the front of Alexander Library Bookcrossers Anonymous The Life Sciences Library rocks my world Library Zombies Geology Library Rocks The Real Library Socialites So . . . the Library Is a Triscuit . . . am I Right or am I Right? Late Night Library Clowners Yeah!! I work at the library Collins Library Rescourse Undergraduate Student Library Advisory Group (USLAG) Cook Music Library: Now 24% Colder We love the Library!!! Collins Library Library Workers The Volume Library Club

The highest library-related Group from the Rutgers and Indiana networks only possesses about 1 percent of the students as opposed to some general-topic Groups that have more than 5,000 members (over 30 percent). This is by no means a claim for the mortality of Facebook Groups for the purpose of library marketing. In fact, not all student-run Groups faded away quickly. It was observed that some Groups did actually gain ground and kept a relatively healthy operation. Those that survived and attracted more members to keep alive discussions were usually groups with broad topics and managed by active organizers. One Rutgers Group called Booklovers particularly stands out, discussing the newest books at the libraries as well as classic favorites and recommendations. There are an impressive 176 members (the largest Group in both universities) with six wall posts and 39 discussion posts, the latest being in December 2007. Some members have returned to view and contribute to the Group, as shown by their wall posts written in various months and even years. This becomes the second nding in this research. Active organizers promote the health of a Group The management style of Facebook Groups is key to the success of Group discussions. The problems mentioned above in sustaining Groups suggest that topics should be general rather than specic to last longer. Group organizers should maintain a cohesive group of people who share the same interests and are willing to communicate to each other on a long-term basis. Also important from the evidence is that Group organizers should try to be proactive and enthusiastic about updating topics and news to keep discussions active. A Rutgers Group that has shown its merits in attracting a large membership and keeping an active communication among its members is called Inside Info @ RU Libraries. It is comprised of 169 members, of which 15 are librarians, including the two Group organizers. From the very beginning, the organizers have been active, constantly sending messages to the members about upcoming events at the libraries as well as other issues that are of interest to its members. Of the 40 wall posts, 36 were written by the organizers, meaning that they have made great efforts to remind their members of the Group by the many postings. Those Groups that neither limited membership nor had narrow subjects ourished. Group activity could not only be extensive but also diverse. The commonly exercised format of Group activity includes discussion topics and wall posts. The former has been able to provide an active interaction among members for an exchange of ideas and concerns, while the latter has made the Groups an online place where information is distributed and important events are announced. Another feature is messages that Group organizers can send in mass to members. These personal messages show up in the members inboxes and are accompanied by a new-message alert to remind members. Messages are especially critical for library marketing in terms of informing library users of new books, new services, upcoming events, and the like. These features provide librarians with excellent tools to advertise their library by personally organizing Groups and making them active. Some successful stories of Facebook Group management at both Rutgers and Indiana conrm this potential, where several librarians who had joined the successful Groups did participate much in discussions. This leads to the third nding in this research.

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Groups with more staff and faculty are more active Let us take a quick look at Facebook global Groups to see if their successful experiences can help promote the health of institutional Groups. A global Group called American Library Association Members was examined due to the popularity of the ALA. Since it was an open Group, anyone could join regardless of profession or network. The organizers, who carefully monitor the Group, are comprised of four people, all of whom work at the ALA, with two of them having the job title of communication and marketing (ALA.org, 2008). There are also two other ofcers, the president-elect and immediate past president. As of January 2009, there were 4,818 members with 152 wall posts. Out of the wall posts, roughly a third were by professors and librarians, a third by administrators and students (all graduate) combined, and a third by others (whose professions were not listed). The earliest wall post was in December 2006, whereas the latest was January 2009 (the time this article was written). This reveals that the Group has remained active, in large part due to the ALA conferences, which provides members with topics to discuss; there have been 64 discussion topics, most of which only generated a few replies though. Another global Group examined is called Librarians and Facebook. This Group is even more populated with 7,847 members, and as with the ALA-oriented Group, only a small portion of the members are students. It is also up-to-date with 262 wall posts (one of which was just written nine minutes ago) and 131 discussion topics. Going back to university networks, it is shown that most Facebook groups that are regarded as successful because of their discussion frequency have a heavy membership of staff and faculty. Librarians have played an important role in keeping these Groups running. It is also found that staff and faculty seem to have contributed more to Group discussions than students in the same Group, given that the Group has business with library services. For the reasons of utilizing libraries for research and teaching, staff and faculty are more interested in getting familiar with library operations and keeping informed of new changes and resources. Previous studies of using Facebook to promote library usage concentrated exclusively on the student population and ignored the potential of providing an efcient and effective communication to staff and faculty. This can be an interesting topic for further investigations. Library as a service center aims at supporting the learning of students as well as the research and teaching of instructors and others. In addition, Indiana University presents an interesting case, in which there is a personal prole, instead of a Group, for the Herman B. Wells library. Of its 132 friends, nearly half are students. This is a positive trend as students are able to ask questions freely to librarians through Facebook. However, since libraries are not allowed to have personal proles (Facebook.com, 2008), it will be interesting to see whether the Wells library will have as many members when it becomes a Group from a prole. It may be benecial if Facebook can change its policy to allow more diverse practices. In general, there is evidence for the success of library marketing through the use of Facebook Groups. Strategies could be worked out to actively support libraries if Group organizers could maintain an energetic discussion agenda and refresh Group activities. Personal messages sent to all of the members are much more efcient than wall posts due to the fact that members are notied of a message instead having to constantly check the Group for new postings. A general topic is superior to a narrow subject for the survival of a group unless the narrow subject can keep the interest of the members

for a long time. Most of all, librarians should become more passionate in joining the adventure and making positive contributions to promote their library services. Their participation in Group organization and discussion will ensure the longevity of these Groups and build an effective communication between the library and the students and faculty. Conclusion Facebook Groups as a platform of communication and marketing library services was advocated, used, and then criticized. This research looked into the development of all library-related Groups available at two research universities networks. It found that although most Groups struggled to survive because of their narrow topics and inactive management, other Groups have been successful at keeping an energetic discussion among Group members on the topics of library operations, making them an effective and efcient way for libraries to be visible among the students and faculty they serve. Keys to success include creating a more general group topic and maintaining an active management style. This research also found that librarians can play a functional role in organizing Facebook Groups. By constantly announcing new library services and events and notifying members of new books, librarian organizers will be able to connect libraries and library users. This may have a similar function as many other library outreach initiatives, but through a more casual and fashionable way. Library marketing can be undertaken through the innovative social networking. Facebook Groups can also be used as a useful platform to support the teaching and research of faculty who showed their enthusiasm for connecting to library services. The groups that last longer are those that have more faculty participation. It has been a challenge for academic libraries to promote new means of scholarly communication; and many experiments have been made to fulll such a task, such as the development of institutional repositories. It should be noted that Facebook is able to provide an easier and more manageable way of enhancing library services and encouraging faculty to use library resources. More attention should be paid to this part of technology.
References ALA.org (2008), available at: www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section stafists&Template /CFApps/Information/staff_directory.cfm (accessed 25 November 2008). Breeding, M. (2007), Librarians face online social networks, Computers in Libraries, Vol. 27 No. 8, pp. 30-2. Chapman, S., Varnum, K. and Creech, M. (2007), Library web survey, report, University of Michigan Libraries, Ann Arbor, MI. Charnigo, L. and Barnett-Ellis, P. (2007), Checking out Facebook.com: the impact of a digital trend on academic libraries, Information Technology and Libraries, Vol. 26 No. 1, pp. 23-34. Chu, M. and Meulemans, Y.N. (2008), The problems and potential of Myspace and Facebook usage in academic libraries, Internet Reference Services Quarterly, Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 69-85. Facebook.com (2008), available at: www.facebook.com (accessed 25 August 2008).

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Farkas, M. (2006), Libraries in social networking software, personal blog, available at: http:// meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2006/05/10/libraries-in-social-networking-software/ (accessed 25 August 2008). Green, S.S. (1876), Personal relations between librarian and readers, American Library Journal, Vol. 1, pp. 74-81, (cited from Renborg, G. (1997), Marketing library services. How it all began., speech, 63rd IFLA General Conference, available at: www.ia.org/IV/ia63/ 63reng.htm (accessed 25 August 2008)). Kwong, V. (2007), Reach out to your students using Myspace and Facebook, Indiana Libraries, Vol. 26 No. 3, pp. 53-7. Mathews, B.S. (2006), Do you Facebook? Networking with students online, College & Research Libraries News, Vol. 67 No. 5, pp. 306-7. Miller, S.E. and Jensen, L.A. (2007), Connecting and communicating with students on Facebook, Computers in Libraries, Vol. 27 No. 8, pp. 18-22. OCLC (2007), Sharing, privacy and trust in our networked world, report, OCLC, available at: www.oclc.org/reports/sharing/ (accessed 25 August 2008). Phillips, S. (2007), A brief history of Facebook, The Guardian, 25 July, available at: www. guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia (accessed 25 August 2008). Secker, J. (2008), Case Study 5: Libraries and Facebook, LASSIE: Libraries and Social Software in Education, Centre for Distance Education, University of London, London. About the author Z. David Xia a sophomore in the Kelley Business School of Indiana University. He can be contacted at: zdxia@indiana.edu

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