Library Management

Emerald Article: Marketing library services through Facebook groups

Z. David Xia

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Marketing
Marketing library services library services
through Facebook groups
Z. David Xia
Kelly Business School, Indiana University, Fishers, Indiana, USA 469
Received 8 January 2009
Abstract Accepted 2 May 2009
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 finds 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 finds 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 findings 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 specific
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

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 Green’s 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 Library Management
Vol. 30 No. 6/7, 2009
easier ways to discover research materials online and cutting the necessity of pp. 469-478
physically visiting a library. On the other hand, librarians, concerned with library q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0143-5124
usability rates, now have more flexibility undertaking marketing efforts through the DOI 10.1108/01435120910982159
LM use of the internet, thus expanding the horizon of finding new ways of advertising
30,6/7 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
470 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 scientific 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 fit 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 first 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 specific 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 flexibility 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, Marketing
such college-based groups focus on specific libraries of their own college and library services
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 471

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 specific fields, 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 profile and expand by using its many
features. Some of Facebook’s 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 benefits in utilizing this social network application.
Among them, Secker’s (2008) findings 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 influential 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 influenced the way that librarians used this
web site to market their libraries. In October 2006 Facebook began shutting down
profile accounts that had been created for a library as a whole (e.g. Rutgers University
Libraries), claiming that profiles had to represent specific people (Charnigo and
Barnett-Ellis, 2007). Libraries instead switched to Groups accounts and librarians
started creating individual profiles, which Breeding soon pointed out that “it may be
LM unrealistic to think that large numbers of undergraduate students would want to count
30,6/7 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).
472 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 first-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 librarian’s
personal profile 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 profiles 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 first 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
difficult to analyze precisely how active a Group member was. However, the dates of
the first 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 Marketing
order to track whether s/he returned to the Group to participate in discussions library services
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 473
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 first message. This constitutes the first finding in this research.

Student-run Groups are mostly small and inactive

This finding 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 reflected 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
difficulties 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 first-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 findings
show that overall, students have been hesitant about joining library-related Groups.
 LM

474
30,6/7

Table I.

and global groups

Facebook Groups of
library topic at Indiana
and Rutgers Universities
Wall
Affiliation Group name Members posts Discussions Earliest post Latest post Organizer

Global American Library Association Members 4,818 152 252 November 2006 January 2009 Staff (ALA)
Global Librarians and Facebook 7,847 262 453 October 2006 January 2009 Librarians
Rutgers Booklovers 176 6 39 November 2004 Decemebr 2007 Student
Rutgers Inside Info @ RU Libraries 169 40 0 September 2006 December 2008 Librarians
Rutgers Alexander All-Stars 46 1 5 August 2006 August 2006 Student
Rutgers I work at the Library but I aint no Librarian 25 0 13 October 2005 May 2006 Student
Rutgers Douglas Library Staff 13 0 2 November 2004 January 2005 Student
Rutgers We’re too good for Dana 11 0 2 December 2005 December 2005 Student
Rutgers Music Library Denizens 10 21 1 December 2007 April 2008 Student
Rutgers Future Librarians 10 1 0 January 2008 January 2008 Student
I spend entirely to [sic] much time at Alexander
Rutgers Library 9 0 0 N/A N/A Student
Rutgers Alexander Library 7 0 0 N/A N/A Student
Rutgers I sit in the front of Alexander Library 4 0 0 N/A N/A Student
Indiana Bookcrossers Anonymous 35 2 4 April 2006 November 2007 Student
Indiana The Life Sciences Library rocks my world 30 1 0 June 2006 July 2006 Librarian
Indiana Library Zombies 29 6 4 March 2006 October 2006 Student
Indiana Geology Library Rocks 15 0 13 December 2004 March 2006 Student
Indiana The Real Library Socialites 11 0 0 N/A N/A Student
So . . . the Library Is a Triscuit . . . am I Right or am
Indiana I Right? 10 0 0 N/A N/A Student
Indiana Late Night Library Clowners 9 0 4 February 2006 April 2006 Student
Indiana Yeah!! I work at the library 8 0 0 N/A N/A Student
Indiana Collins Library Rescourse 7 4 1 February 2007 March 2007 Student
Undergraduate Student Library Advisory Group
Indiana (USLAG) 5 0 0 N/A N/A Librarian
Indiana Cook Music Library: Now 24% Colder 4 4 0 August 2007 December 2007 Student
Indiana We love the Library!!! 3 0 1 February 2006 March 2006 Student
Indiana Collins Library 2 0 0 N/A N/A Librarian
Indiana Library Workers 2 3 1 April 2006 October 2006 Student
Indiana The Volume Library Club 2 0 0 N/A N/A Student
The highest library-related Group from the Rutgers and Indiana networks only Marketing
possesses about 1 percent of the students as opposed to some general-topic Groups that library services
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 475
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 finding 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 specific 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 flourished.
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 confirm this potential,
where several librarians who had joined the successful Groups did participate much in
discussions. This leads to the third finding in this research.
LM Groups with more staff and faculty are more active
30,6/7 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
476 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 officers, 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 efficient 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 profile, 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 profiles (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 profile. It may be
beneficial 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 efficient than wall posts
due to the fact that members are notified 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 Marketing
adventure and making positive contributions to promote their library services. Their library services
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.

477
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 efficient 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 fulfill 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.

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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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