1. SOCIAL NETWORKING AND
LIBRARIES
Mihaela Banek Zorica mbanek@ffzg.hr
Tomislav Ivanjko tivanjko@ffzg.hr
Maja Benčec mbencec@ffzg.hr
University of Zagreb,
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences,
Department of Information and Communication Sciences,
Croatia
2. Croatia
• 2.5 million Internet users in Croatia
• over 60% of them (1.4 million) own a Facebook
account!
• Business sector - use Facebook to reach a large
number of potential customers in a partially
free and easy to use environment
3. • Connection between official representation
and communication and presence in the web
2.0 world
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4. Previous international research
• the content analysis (Jacobson, 2011)
– data libraries post in social networks
– such as fan numbers, wall postings, number of photographs,
etc.
– concluding that libraries used Facebook mostly as a marketing
tool while communication aspects were not utilized as much as
it would be expected ().
• the content analysis during a period of eight days
(Calvi, et al., 2010)
– posts only by librarians - profile administrators
– majority of posts were a push notes i.e. library activities,
photographs and user notifications
– the user activity was almost non-existent
5. Research
• July 2011
• Research methods:
– page “Croatian Libraries on Facebook”,
– search - “library”
– browsing of the results and the libraries’ “friend
lists” and activities
• Result
– 94 libraries with 106 various Facebook
representations (profile/group/page).
– 7 completely inactive
6. Distribution of Croatian libraries within
Facebook
Library Type # of libraries %
Elementary school 22 23%
High school 5 5%
Faculty libraries 8 9%
University libraries 5 5%
Scientific libraries 1 1%
Special libraries 2 2%
Public libraries 51 55%
TOTAL 94 100%
7. Type of presence….
FACEBOOK REGULATORY
PAGE
• “…allow an organization,
PROFILE
• “represent individuals and must business, celebrity, or band to
be held under an individual maintain a professional
name” presence on Facebook”
• (You may only create
Facebook Pages to represent
real organizations of which
you are an authorized
representative)
8. Results
• 52% profile • 84% open to general
• 36% page public
• 12% group • 16% private (8 accepted
our friend request)
12. Type of content published
Library type Posts %
Activities in the library 157 42%
Useful/interesting links 79 21%
Spam 44 12%
Notifications (working hours, etc.) 34 9%
Book arrivals 31 8%
Culture news 18 5%
Calls for cooperation 7 2%
Other 5 1%
TOTAL 375 100%
13. Conclusion
• Number of libraries in Facebook is fairly large
• Lack of strategy and business models in creating a
successful social network presence.
• Institutional support of the presence in social networks
• Understanding of potential of social networks
14. Transition - understand and learn
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