Use of Facebook fan pages in Polish academic libraries (2009–2022)

Abstract

The article presents the results of a quantitative comparative analysis of the activity of 59 Polish public university libraries on the social networking site Facebook (2009–2022). The study aimed to assess the use of Facebook by university libraries of different types and to evaluate the popularity of the content shared by these institutions based on the number of posts shared and the users' reactions to them. Fanpage Karma, a commercial online tool for monitoring social media monitoring was used to collect and statistically analyze the data from individual fan pages. The findings showed that overall, the degree of social media activity was not dependent on the type of library. Although the existence of Facebook is not new in the area of social networking, its use in Polish libraries has not yet become widespread. The phenomenon of the lack of library fan pages on social media is worrying given that several of these tertiary level libraries had no fan pages on any kind of social media. Nevertheless, for those that had a Facebook fan page, it was discovered that it was one of the primary tools for communicating with users, promoting library and information services, and other library activities.