Web 2.0 and Semantic Web Technologies: Usage of Social Media in Major University Libraries in Sri Lanka: With Special Reference to Face book

Abstract

Social media has revolutionized means and modes of communication and has created a new information culture. As such social media has to be integrated in promoting library services and resources of the university libraries. An attempt to explore the usage of social media by university libraries was undertaken. The objectives of the study were to explore social networking tool usage in libraries with special reference to Facebook, to investigate the academic librarians’ attitudes towards the usefulness of Facebook as a social media networking tool, and to explore the problems/ issues related to using Facebook as a library promotional tool. This study was designed using quantitative research methodology. The data collection methods were postal questionnaire and observations. All 19 national university librarians were taken as study population. Facebook Pages belongs two libraries were observed under the following criteria: date of establishment, number of fans, basic information of the respective library they share, promoting the library services, important web links given etc. The response rate of 94.7% overall may be considered sufficient to allow valid conclusions to be drawn. 66.7% of the librarians were in the opinion that using a Facebook page in promoting library resources and services is important and another 33.3% said it is very important. Only 16.7% of the libraries own a Facebook Page for libraries, and rest of the libraries (83.3%) do not own such a page.