Social networks

Ten years ago, Barsky and Purdon (2006) discovered that social networks which are expanding communication through social media are becoming popular and the costs involved are getting further reduced. Yet, library executives did not see how such a phenomenon could become a part of library and information services. They felt that the users should be left to their social media while the library carried on with its traditional roles (De Rosa et al., 2007). This was also the case when Charnigo and Barnett-Ellis (2007) conducted a survey of 126 academic librarians and concluded that 54% of the librarians surveyed did not believe that there was an academic purpose for Facebook. The rationale behind these librarians’ belief was that the social media was a space where students interact with each other, hence, the librarian was not welcome as their coming in might be viewed as an invasion of space. But time has proved that as the technology of the social media became more popular, users and librarians acquired digitally literacy, and libraries, seeing an explosion of social media around it, were forced to reconsider their stance. In a survey involving 497 international librarians, Taylor & Francis (2014) discovered that over 70% of librarians now feel that the use of social media is important. Though the wave began with public libraries (Mon, 2015), today, libraries of every type either have a social media presence or they are seriously considering it. Hence, the use of social media by libraries has become mainstream.