Facebook in Academic Libraries

Academic Libraries, Facebook and Myspace, and Student Outreach: A Survey of Student Opinion by Ruth Sara Connell.  After reading this article a few thoughts came to mind the first being the relevance of the old adage that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.  Library's students are the horse and the Library's Facebook page is the water.  Even though the horse has had water before doesn't mean it is going to drink it and just because the students have used Facebook before does not mean that they will use your page.  But that does not mean that you should not show them the water at all.  I think that asking students to like the library's page is an important advertisement tool and they may or may not do so but at least you have given the opportunity.  Also this will put that nugget of knowledge that the Library has a Facebook page in their mind which they could choose to pull out that nugget at a later date.  The study performed by the author did show that 57.7% of the students survey said that if the library friended them that they would accept the friend request.  I thought that it was great that 42.6% of the students would be receptive to information being send through Facebook.  This shows that student may be willing to utilize the Library's Facebook page if one is offered to them.  Overall, a survey should be conducted of your libraries students in order to determine if this form of social media would be right for them or if they are even interested in using it.