Microsoft Word - March_ITAL_young_TC proofread.docx Building  Library  Community   Through  Social  Media   Scott  W.  H.  Young     and  Doralyn  Rossmann     INFORMATION  TECHNOLOGY  AND  LIBRARIES  |  MARCH  2015             20   ABSTRACT   In  this  article  academic  librarians  present  and  analyze  a  model  for  community-­‐building  through   social  media.  Findings  demonstrate  the  importance  of  strategy  and  interactivity  via  social  media  for   generating  new  connections  with  library  users.  Details  of  this  research  include  successful  guidelines   for  building  community  and  developing  engagement  online  with  social  media.  By  applying   intentional  social  media  practices,  the  researchers’  Twitter  user  community  grew  100  percent  in  one   year,  with  a  corresponding  275  percent  increase  in  user  interactions.  Using  a  community  analysis   approach,  this  research  demonstrates  that  the  principles  of  personality  and  interactivity  can  lead  to   community  formation  for  targeted  user  groups.  Discussion  includes  the  strategies  and  research   approaches  that  were  employed  to  build,  study,  and  understand  user  community,  including  user-­‐type   analysis  and  action-­‐object  mapping.  From  this  research  a  picture  of  the  library  as  a  member  of  an   active  academic  community  comes  into  focus.     INTRODUCTION   This  paper  describes  an  academic  library’s  approach  to  building  community  through  Twitter.   Much  of  the  literature  offers  guidance  to  libraries  on  approaches  to  using  social  media  as  a   marketing  tool.  The  research  presented  here  reframes  that  conversation  to  explore  the  role  of   social  media  as  it  relates  to  building  community.  The  researchers’  university  library  formed  a   social  media  group  and  implemented  a  social  media  guide  to  bring  an  intentional,  personality-­‐rich,   and  interaction-­‐driven  approach  to  its  social  media  activity.  Quantitative  analyses  reveal  a   significant  shift  and  increase  in  Twitter  follower  population  and  interactions,  and  suggest   promising  opportunities  for  social  media  to  strengthen  the  library’s  ties  with  academic   communities.     LITERATURE  REVIEW   Research  in  libraries  has  long  brought  a  critical  analysis  to  the  value,  purpose,  and  practical  usage   of  social  media.  Glazer  asked  of  library  Facebook  usage,  “Clever  outreach  or  costly  diversion?”1   Three  years  later,  Glazer  presented  a  more  developed  perspective  on  Facebook  metrics  and  the   nature  of  online  engagement,  but  social  media  was  still  described  as  “puzzling  and  poorly   defined.”2  Vucovich  et  al.  furthermore  notes  that  “the  usefulness  of  [social  networking  tools]  has   often  proven  elusive,  and  evaluating  their  impact  is  even  harder  to  grasp  in  library  settings.”3     Scott  W.  H.  Young  (swyoung@montana.edu)  is  Digital  Initiatives  Librarian  and     Doralyn  Rossmann  (doralyn@montana.edu)  is  Head  of  Collection  Development,                 Montana  State  University  Library,  Bozeman.     BUILDING  LIBRARY  COMMUNITY  THROUGH  SOCIAL  MEDIA  |  YOUNG  AND  ROSSMANN   21   Li  and  Li  similarly  observe  that  there  “seems  to  be  some  confusion  regarding  what  exactly  social   media  is.”4  Social  media  has  been  experimented  with  and  identified  variously  as  a  tool  for   enhancing  the  image  of  libraries,5  as  a  digital  listening  post,6  or  as  an  intelligence  gathering  tool.7   With  such  a  variety  of  perspectives  and  approaches,  the  discussion  around  social  media  in   libraries  has  been  somewhat  disjointed.     If  there  is  a  common  thread  through  library  social  media  research,  however,  it  ties  together  the   broadcast-­‐based  promotion  and  marketing  of  library  resources  and  services,  what  Li  calls  “the   most  notable  achievement  of  many  libraries  that  have  adopted  social  media.”8  This  particularly   common  approach  has  been  thoroughly  examined.9,10,11,12,13,14,15  In  evaluating  the  use  of  Facebook   at  Western  Michigan  University’s  Waldo  Library,  Sachs,  Eckel,  and  Langan  found  that  promotion   and  marketing  was  the  only  “truly  successful”  use  for  social  media.16  A  survey  of  Estonian   librarians  revealed  that  Facebook  “is  being  used  mainly  for  announcements;  it  is  reduplicating   libraries’  web  site[s].  Interestingly  librarians  don’t  feel  a  reason  to  change  anything  or  to  do   something  differently.”17  With  this  widespread  approach  to  social  media,  much  of  the  library   literature  is  predominated  by  exploratory  descriptions  of  current  usage  and  implementation   methods  under  the  banner  of  promoting  resources  by  meeting  users  where  they  are  on  social   media.18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27  This  research  is  effective  at  describing  how  social  media  is  used,  but  it   often  does  not  extend  the  discussion  to  address  the  more  difficult  and  valuable  question  of  why   social  media  is  used.     The  literature  of  library  science  has  not  yet  developed  a  significant  body  of  research  around  the   practice  of  social  media  beyond  the  broadcast-­‐driven,  how-­‐to  focus  on  marketing,  promotion,  and   public-­‐relations  announcements.  This  deficiency  was  recognized  by  Saw,  who  studied  social   networking  preferences  of  international  and  domestic  Australian  students,  concluding  “to  date,   the  majority  of  libraries  that  use  social  networking  have  used  it  as  a  marketing  and  promotional   medium  to  push  out  information  and  announcements.  Our  survey  results  strongly  suggest  that   libraries  need  to  further  exploit  the  strengths  of  different  social  networking  sites.”28  From  this   strong  emphasis  on  marketing  and  best  practices  emerges  an  opportunity  to  examine  social  media   from  another  perspective—community  building—which  may  represent  an  untapped  strength  of   social  networking  sites  for  libraries.     While  research  in  library  and  information  science  has  predominantly  developed  around  social   media  as  marketing  resource,  a  small  subset  has  begun  to  investigate  the  community-­‐building   capabilities  of  social  media.29,30,31,32  By  making  users  feel  connected  to  a  community  and   increasing  their  knowledge  of  other  members,  “sites  such  as  Facebook  can  foster  norms  of   reciprocity  and  trust  and,  therefore,  create  opportunities  for  collective  action.”33  Lee,  Yen,  and   Hsiao  studied  the  value  of  interaction  and  information  sharing  on  social  media:  “A  sense  of   belonging  is  achieved  when  a  friend  replies  to  or  ‘Likes’  a  post  on  Facebook.”34  Lee  found  that   Facebook  users  perceived  real-­‐world  social  value  from  shared  trust  and  shared  vision  developed   and  expressed  through  information-­‐sharing  on  social  media.  Research  from  Oh,  Ozkaya,  and     INFORMATION  TECHNOLOGY  AND  LIBRARIES  |  MARCH  2015      22   LaRose  indicated  that  users  who  engaged  in  a  certain  quality  of  social  media  interactivity   perceived  an  enhanced  sense  of  community  and  life  satisfaction.35   Broader  discussion  of  social  media  as  a  tool  for  community-­‐building  has  been  advanced  within  the   context  of  political  activity,  where  social  media  is  identified  as  a  method  for  organizing  civic  action   and  revolutionary  protests.36,37,38  Related  research  focuses  on  the  online  social  connections  and   “virtual  communities”  developed  around  common  interests  such  as  religion,39  health,40   education,41  social  interests  and  norms,42  politics,43  web-­‐video  sharing,44  and  reading.45  In  these   analyses,  social  media  is  framed  as  an  online  instrument  utilized  to  draw  together  offline  persons.   Hofer  notes  that  communities  formed  online  through  social  media  activity  can  generate  a  sense  of   “online  bonding  social  capital.”46  Further  marking  the  online/offline  boundary,  research  from   Grieve  et  al.  investigates  the  value  of  social  connectedness  in  online  contexts,  suggesting  that   social  connectedness  on  Facebook  “is  a  distinct  construct  from  face-­‐to-­‐face  social   connectedness.”47  Grieve  et  al.  acknowledges  that  the  research  design  was  predicated  on  the   assumptive  existence  of  an  online/offline  divide,  noting  “it  is  possible  that  such  a  separation  does   not  exist.”48   Around  this  online/offline  separation  has  developed  “digital  dualism,”  a  theoretical  approach  that   interrogates  the  false  boundaries  and  contrasts  between  an  online  world  as  distinct  from  an   offline  world.49,50  Sociologist  Zeynep  Tufekci  expressed  this  concisely:  “In  fact,  the  Internet  is  not  a   world;  it’s  part  of  the  world.”51  A  central  characteristic  of  community-­‐building  through  social   media  is  that  the  “online”  experience  is  so  connected  and  interwoven  with  the  “offline”  experience   as  to  create  a  single  seamless  experience.  This  concept  is  related  to  a  foundational  study  from   Ellison,  Steinfield,  and  Lampe,  who  identified  Facebook  as  a  valuable  subject  of  research  because   of  its  “heavy  usage  patterns  and  technological  capacities  that  bridge  online  and  offline   connections.”52  They  conclude,  “Online  social  network  sites  may  play  a  role  different  from  that   described  in  early  literature  on  virtual  communities.  Online  interactions  do  not  necessarily   remove  people  from  their  offline  world  but  may  indeed  be  used  to  support  relationships.”53   This  paper  builds  on  existing  online  community  research  while  drawing  on  the  critical  theory  of   “digital  dualism”  to  argue  that  communities  built  through  social  media  do  not  reside  in  a  separate   “online”  space,  but  rather  are  one  element  of  a  much  more  significant  and  valuable  form  of  holistic   connectedness.  Our  research  represents  a  further  step  in  shifting  the  focus  of  library  social  media   research  and  practice  from  marketing  to  community  building,  recasting  library-­‐led  social  media  as   a  tool  that  enables  users  to  join  together  and  share  in  the  commonalities  of  research,  learning,  and   the  university  community.  As  library  social  media  practice  advances  within  the  framework  of   community,  it  moves  from  a  one-­‐dimensional  online  broadcast  platform  to  a  multidimensional   socially  connected  space  that  creates  value  for  both  the  library  and  library  users.   METHOD     In  May  2012,  Montana  State  University  Library  convened  a  social  media  group  (SMG)  to  guide  our     BUILDING  LIBRARY  COMMUNITY  THROUGH  SOCIAL  MEDIA  |  YOUNG  AND  ROSSMANN   23   social  media  activity.  The  formation  of  SMG  marked  an  important  shift  in  our  social  media  activity   and  was  crucial  in  building  a  strategic  and  programmatic  focus  around  social  media.  This  internal   committee,  comprising  three  librarians  and  one  library  staff  member,  aimed  to  build  a  community   of  student  participants  around  the  Twitter  platform.  SMG  then  created  a  social  media  guide  to   provide  structure  for  our  social  media  program.  This  guide  outlines  eight  principal  components  of   social  media  activity  (see  table  1).     Social  Media  Guide  Component   Twitter  Focus   Audience  focus   Undergraduate  and  graduate  students   Goals   Connect  with  students  and  build  community   Values   Availability,  care,  scholarship   Activity  focus   Information  sharing;  social  interaction   Tone  &  tenor   Welcoming,  warm,  energetic   Posting  frequency   Daily,  with  regular  monitoring  of  subsequent  interactions   Posting  categories   Student  life,  local  community   Posting  personnel   1  librarian,  approximately  .10  FTE     Table  1.  Social  Media  Activity  Components   Prior  to  the  formation  of  SMG,  our  Twitter  activity  featured  automated  posts  that  lacked  a  sense  of   presence  and  personality.  After  the  formation  of  SMG,  our  Twitter  activity  featured  hand-­‐crafted   posts  that  possessed  both  presence  and  personality.  To  measure  the  effectiveness  of  our  social   media  program,  we  divided  our  Twitter  activity  into  two  categories  based  on  the  May  2012  date  of   SMG’s  formation:  Phase  1  (Pre-­‐SMG)  and  Phase  2  (Post-­‐SMG).  Phase  1  user  data  included   followers  1–514,  those  users  who  followed  the  library  between  November  2008,  when  the  library   joined  Twitter,  and  April  2012,  the  last  month  before  the  Library  formed  SMG.  Phase  2  included   followers  515–937,  those  users  who  followed  the  library  between  May  2012,  when  the  library   formed  SMG,  and  August  2013,  the  end  date  of  our  research  period.  Using  corresponding  dates  to   our  user  analysis,  Phase  1  Tweet  data  included  the  library’s  tweets  1–329,  which  were  posted   between  November  2008  and  April  2012,  and  Phase  2  included  the  library’s  tweets  330–998,   which  were  posted  between  May  2012  and  August  2013  (table  2).  For  the  purposes  of  this   research,  Phase  1  and  Phase  2  users  and  tweets  were  evaluated  as  distinct  categories  so  that  all   corresponding  tweets,  followers,  and  interactions  could  be  compared  in  relation  to  the  formation   date  of  SMG.  Within  Twitter,  “followers”  are  members  of  the  user  community,  “tweets”  are     INFORMATION  TECHNOLOGY  AND  LIBRARIES  |  MARCH  2015      24   messages  to  the  community,  and  “interactions”  are  the  user  behaviors  of  favoriting,  retweeting,  or   replying.  Favorites  are  most  commonly  employed  when  users  like  a  tweet.  Favoriting  a  tweet  can   indicate  approval,  for  instance.  A  user  may  also  share  another  user’s  tweet  with  their  own   followers  by  “retweeting.”         Followers   Tweets   Duration   Phase  1   1–514   1–329   Nov.  2008–April  2012   Phase  2   515–937   330–998   May  2012–August  2013   Table  2.  Comparison  of  Phase  1  and  2  Twitter  Activity   We  employed  three  approaches  for  evaluating  our  Twitter  activity:  user  type  analysis,  action-­‐ object  mapping,  and  interaction  analysis.  User  type  analysis  aims  to  understand  our  community   from  a  broad  perspective  by  creating  categories  of  users  following  the  library’s  Twitter  account.   After  reviewing  the  accounts  of  each  member  of  our  user  community,  we  collected  them  into  one   of  the  following  nine  groups:  alumni,  business,  community  member,  faculty,  library,  librarian,   other,  spam,  and  student.  Categorization  was  based  on  a  manual  review  of  information  found  from   each  user’s  biographical  profile,  Tweet  content,  account  name,  and  a  comparison  against  campus   directories.     Action-­‐object  mapping  is  a  quantitative  method  that  describes  the  relationship  between  the   performance  of  an  activity—the  action—in  relation  to  an  external  phenomenon—the  object.   Action-­‐object  mapping  aims  to  describe  the  interaction  process  between  a  system  and  its   users.54,55,56,57  Within  the  context  of  our  study,  the  system  is  Twitter,  the  object  is  an  individual   tweet,  and  the  action  is  the  user  behavior  in  response  to  the  object,  i.e.,  a  user  marking  a  tweet  as  a   favorite,  retweeting  a  tweet,  or  replying  to  a  tweet.  We  collected  our  library’s  tweets  into  sixteen   object  categories:  blog  post,  book,  database,  event,  external  web  resource,  librarian,  library  space,   local  community,  other  libraries/universities,  photo  from  archive,  topics—libraries,  service,   students,  think  tank,  hortative,  and  workshop.   Interaction  analysis  serves  as  an  extension  of  action-­‐object  mapping  and  aims  to  provide  further   details  about  the  level  of  interaction  between  a  system  and  its  users.  For  this  study  we  created  an   associated  metric,  “interaction  rate,”  that  measures  the  rate  by  which  each  object  category   received  an  action.  Within  the  context  of  our  study,  we  have  treated  the  “action”  of  action-­‐object   mapping  and  the  “interaction”  of  Twitter  as  equivalents.  To  identify  the  interaction  rate,  we  used   the  following  formula:  “total  number  of  Tweets  within  an  object  category”  divided  by  “number  of   Tweets  within  an  object  category  that  received  an  action.”  Interaction  rate  was  calculated  for  each   object  category  and  for  all  Tweets  in  Phase  1  and  in  Phase  2.     BUILDING  LIBRARY  COMMUNITY  THROUGH  SOCIAL  MEDIA  |  YOUNG  AND  ROSSMANN   25     RESULTS   The  changes  in  approach  to  the  library’s  Twitter  presence  through  SMG  and  the  Social  Media   Guide  are  evident  in  this  study’s  results  (figure  1).  An  analysis  of  user  types  in  Phase  1  reveals  a   large  portion,  48  percent,  were  business  followers.  In  comparison,  the  business  percentage   decreased  to  30  percent  in  Phase  2.  The  student  percentage  increased  from  6  percent  in  Phase  1  to   28  percent  in  Phase  2,  representing  a  366  percent  increase  in  student  users.  As  noted  earlier,  the   Social  Media  Guide  Component,  “audience  focus”  for  Twitter  is  “undergraduate  and  graduate   students”  and  includes  the  “goal”  to  “connect  with  students  and  build  community”  (table  1).  The   increase  in  the  percentage  of  students  in  the  follower  population  and  the  decrease  in  the  business   percentage  of  the  population  suggest  progress  towards  this  goal.     Figure  1.  Comparison  of  Twitter  Users  by  Type     The  object  categorization  for  Phase  1  shows  a  heavily  skewed  distribution  of  tweets  in  certain   areas,  while  Phase  2  has  a  more  even  and  targeted  distribution  reflecting  implementation  of  the   Social  Media  Guide  components  (figure  2).  In  Phase  1,  workshops  is  the  most  Tweeted  category   with  of  36  percent  of  all  posts.  Library  space  represents  18  percent  of  tweets  while  library  events   is  third  with  17  percent.  The  remaining  13  categories  range  from  5  percent  to  a  fraction  of  a   percent  of  tweets.  Phase  2  shows  a  more  balanced  and  intentional  distribution  of  tweets  across  all   object  categories,  with  a  strong  focus  on  the  Social  Media  Guide  “posting  category”  of  “student     INFORMATION  TECHNOLOGY  AND  LIBRARIES  |  MARCH  2015      26   life,”  which  accounted  for  25  percent  of  tweets.  Library  Space  consists  of  11  percent  of  tweets,  and   external  web  resource  composes  9  percent  of  tweets.  The  remaining  categories  range  from  8   percent  to  1  percent  of  tweets.       Figure  2.  Comparison  of  Tweets  by  Content  Category   Interaction  rates  were  low  in  most  object  categories  in  Phase  1  (see  figure  3).  Given  that  the  Social   Media  Guide  has  an  “activity  focus”  of  “social  interaction,”  a  tweet  category  with  a  high  percentage   of  posting  and  a  low  interaction  rate  suggests  a  disconnect  between  tweet  posting  and  meeting   stated  goals.  For  example,  workshops  represented  a  large  percentage  (36  percent)  of  the  tweets   but  yielded  a  0  percent  interaction  rate.  Library  space  was  18  percent  of  tweets  but  had  only  a  2   percent  interaction  rate.  Eleven  of  the  16  categories  in  Phase  1  had  no  associated  actions  and  thus   a  0  percent  interaction  rate.  The  interaction  rate  for  Phase  1  was  12.5  percent.  In  essence,  our   action-­‐object  data  and  interaction  rate  data  shows  us  that  during  Phase  1  we  created  content  most   frequently  about  topics  of  low  interest  to  our  community  while  we  tweeted  less  frequently  about   topics  of  high  interest  to  our  community.         BUILDING  LIBRARY  COMMUNITY  THROUGH  SOCIAL  MEDIA  |  YOUNG  AND  ROSSMANN   27     Figure  3.  Interaction  Rates,  Phase  1   In  contrast  to  Phase  1,  Phase  2  interaction  rate  demonstrates  an  increase  in  interaction  rate  across   nearly  every  object  category  (figure  4,  figure  5),  especially  student  life  and  local  community.     Figure  4.  Interaction  Rates,  Phase  2   INFORMATION  TECHNOLOGY  AND  LIBRARIES  |  MARCH  2015      28     Figure  5.  Interaction  Rate  Comparison   The  local  community  category  of  tweets  had  the  highest  interaction  rate  at  68  percent.  The   student  life  category  had  the  second  highest  interaction  rate  at  62  percent.  Only  2  of  the  16   categories  in  Phase  2  had  no  associated  actions  and  thus  a  0  percent  interaction  rate.  The   interaction  rate  for  Phase  2  was  46.8  percent,  which  represented  an  increase  of  275  percent  from   Phase  1.  In  essence,  our  action-­‐object  data  and  interaction  rate  data  shows  us  that  during  Phase  2   we  created  content  most  frequently  about  topics  of  higher  interest  to  our  community  while  we   tweeted  less  frequently  about  topics  of  low  interest  to  our  community.   DISCUSSION   This  research  suggests  a  strong  community-­‐building  capability  of  social  media  at  our  academic   library.  The  shift  in  user  types  from  Phase  1  to  Phase  2,  notably  the  increase  in  student  Twitter   Followers,  indicates  that  the  shape  of  our  Twitter  community  was  directly  affected  by  our  social   media  program.  Likewise,  the  marked  increase  in  interaction  rRate  between  Phase  1  and  Phase  2   suggests  the  effectiveness  of  our  programmatic  community-­‐focused  approach.     The  Montana  State  University  Library  social  media  program  was  fundamentally  formed  around  an   approach  described  by  Glazer:  “Be  interesting,  be  interested.”58  Our  Twitter  user  community  has   thrived  since  we  adopted  this  axiom.  We  have  interpreted  “interesting”  as  sharing  original     BUILDING  LIBRARY  COMMUNITY  THROUGH  SOCIAL  MEDIA  |  YOUNG  AND  ROSSMANN   29   personality-­‐rich  content  with  our  community  and  “interested”  as  regularly  interacting  with  and   responding  to  members  of  our  community.  The  twofold  theme  of  personality-­‐rich  content  and   interactivity-­‐based  behavior  has  allowed  us  to  shape  our  Phase  2  user  community.   Prior  to  the  formation  of  SMG,  social  media  at  the  MSU  Library  was  a  rather  drab  affair.  The  library   Twitter  account  during  that  time  was  characterized  by  automated  content,  low  responsiveness,  no   dedicated  personnel,  and  no  strategic  vision.  Our  resulting  Twitter  community  was  composed  of   mostly  businesses,  at  47  percent  of  followers,  with  students  representing  just  6  percent  of  our   followers.  The  resulting  interaction  rate  of  12.5  percent  reflects  the  broadcast-­‐driven  approach,   personality-­‐devoid  content,  and  disengaged  community  that  together  characterized  Phase  1.   Following  the  formation  of  SMG,  the  library  Twitter  account  benefitted  from  original  and  unique   content,  high  responsiveness,  dedicated  personnel,  and  a  strategic,  goal-­‐driven  vision.  Our  Phase  2   Twitter  community  underwent  a  transformation,  with  business  representation  decreasing  to  30   percent  and  student  representation  increasing  to  28  percent.  The  resulting  interaction  rate  of  46.8   percent  reflects  our  refocused  community-­‐driven  program,  personality-­‐rich  content,  and  engaged   community  of  Phase  2.     Figure  6.  Typical  Phase  1  Tweet   Figure  6  illustrates  a  typical  Phase  1  Tweet.  The  object  category  for  this  tweet  is  database  and  it   yielded  no  actions.  The  announcement  of  a  new  database  trial  was  auto-­‐generated  from  our   library  blog,  a  common  method  for  sharing  content  during  Phase  1.  This  tweet  is  problematic  for   community-­‐building  for  two  primary  reasons:  the  style  and  content  lacks  a  sense  and  personality   of  a  human  author  and  does  not  offer  compelling  opportunities  for  interaction.         INFORMATION  TECHNOLOGY  AND  LIBRARIES  |  MARCH  2015      30     Figure  7.  Typical  Phase  2  Tweet   Figure  7  illustrates  a  typical  Phase  2  Tweet.  The  object  category  for  this  tweet  is  student  life  and  it   yielded  6  actions  (2  retweets  and  4  favorites).  The  content  relates  to  a  meaningful  and  current   event  for  our  target  student  user  community,  and  is  fashioned  in  such  a  way  as  to  invite   interaction  by  providing  a  strong  sense  of  relevancy  and  personality.  Figure  8  further   demonstrates  the  community  effect  of  Phase  2.  In  this  example  we  have  reminded  our  Twitter   community  of  the  services  available  through  the  library,  and  one  student  user  has  replied.  During   our  Phase  2  Twitter  activity,  we  prioritized  responsiveness,  availability,  and  scholarship  with  the   goal  of  connecting  with  students  and  building  a  sense  of  community.  In  many  ways  the  series  of   tweets  shown  in  figure  8  encapsulates  our  social  media  program.  We  were  able  to  deliver   resources  to  this  student,  who  then  associates  these  interactions  with  a  sense  of  pride  in  the   university.  This  example  illustrates  the  overall  connectedness  afforded  by  social  media.  In   contacting  the  Library  Twitter  account,  this  user  asked  a  real-­‐world  research  question.  Neither  his   inquiry  nor  our  response  was  located  strictly  within  an  online  world.  While  we  pointed  this  user   to  an  online  resource,  his  remarks  indicated  “offline”  feelings  of  satisfaction  with  the  interaction.   Lee  and  Oh  found  that  social  media  interactivity  and  information  sharing  can  create  a  shared   vision  that  leads  to  a  sense  of  community  belonging.59,60  By  creating  personality-­‐rich  content  that   invites  two-­‐way  interaction,  our  strategic  social  media  program  has  helped  form  a  holistic   community  of  users  around  our  Twitter  activity.         BUILDING  LIBRARY  COMMUNITY  THROUGH  SOCIAL  MEDIA  |  YOUNG  AND  ROSSMANN   31     Figure  8.  Phase  2  Example,  Community  Effect   Currently  our  work  addresses  the  formation  of  community  through  social  media.  A  next  step  will   introduce  a  wider  scope  by  addressing  the  value  of  community  formed  through  social  media.   There  is  a  rich  area  of  study  around  the  relationship  between  social  media  activity,  perceived   sense  of  community  and  connectedness,  and  student  success.  61,62,63,64,65  Further  research  along   this  line  will  allow  us  to  explore  whether  a  library-­‐led  social  media  community  can  serve  as  an  aid   in  undergraduate  academic  performance  and  graduation  rate.  Continued  and  extended  analysis     INFORMATION  TECHNOLOGY  AND  LIBRARIES  |  MARCH  2015      32   will  allow  us  to  increase  the  granularity  of  results,  for  example  by  mapping  user  types  to  action-­‐ object  pairs  and  identifying  the  interaction  rate  for  particular  users  such  as  students  and  faculty.   CONCLUSION   In  articulating  and  realizing  an  intentional  and  strategic  social  media  program,  we  have  generated   results  that  demonstrate  the  community-­‐building  capability  of  social  media.  Over  the  course  of   one  year,  we  transformed  our  social  media  activity  from  personality-­‐devoid  one-­‐way  broadcasting   to  personality-­‐rich  two-­‐way  interacting.  The  research  that  followed  this  fundamental  shift   provided  new  information  about  our  users  that  enabled  us  to  tailor  our  Twitter  activity  and  shape   our  community  around  a  target  population  of  undergraduate  students.  In  so  doing,  we  have   formed  a  community  that  has  shown  new  interest  in  social  media  content  published  by  the  library.   Following  the  application  of  our  social  media  program,  our  student  user  community  grew  by  366   percent  and  the  rate  of  interaction  with  our  community  grew  by  275  percent.  Our  research   demonstrates  the  value  of  social  media  as  a  community-­‐building  tool,  and  our  model  can  guide   social  media  in  libraries  toward  this  purpose.   REFERENCES   1. Harry  Glazer,  “Clever  Outreach  or  Costly  Diversion?  An  Academic  Library  Evaluates  Its   Facebook  experience,”  College  &  Research  Libraries  News  70,  no.  1  (2009):  11,   http://crln.acrl.org/content/70/1/11.full.pdf+html.     2. Harry  Glazer,  “‘Likes’  are  Lovely,  but  Do  They  Lead  to  More  Logins?  Developing  Metrics   for  Academic  Libraries’  Facebook  pages,”  College  &  Research  Libraries  News  73,  no.  1   (2012):  20,  http://crln.acrl.org/content/73/1/18.full.pdf+html.   3. Lee  A.  Vucovich  et  al.,  “Is  the  Time  and  Effort  Worth  It?  One  Library’s  Evaluation  of  Using   Social  Networking  Tools  for  Outreach,”  Medical  Reference  Services  Quarterly  32,  no.  1   (2013):  13,  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2013.749107.   4. Xiang  Li  and  Tang  Li,  “Integrating  Social  Media  into  East  Asia  Library  Services:  Case   Studies  at  University  of  Colorado  and  Yale  University,”  Journal  of  East  Asian  Libraries  157,   no.  1  (2013):  24,   https://ojs.lib.byu.edu/spc/index.php/JEAL/article/view/32663/30799.     5. Colleen  Cuddy,  Jamie  Graham,  and  Emily  G.  Morton-­‐Owens,  “Implementing  Twitter  in  a   Health  Sciences  Library,”  Medical  Reference  Services  Quarterly  29,  no.  4  (2010),   http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2010.518915.     6. Steven  Bell,  “Students  Tweet  the  Darndest  Things  about  Your  Library—And  Why  You   Need  to  Listen,”  Reference  Services  Review  40,  no.  2  (2012),   http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/00907321211228264.         BUILDING  LIBRARY  COMMUNITY  THROUGH  SOCIAL  MEDIA  |  YOUNG  AND  ROSSMANN   33   7. Robin  R.  Sewell,  “Who  is  Following  Us?  Data  Mining  a  Library’s  Twitter  Followers,”   Library  Hi  Tech  31,  no.  1  (2013),  http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/07378831311303994.     8. Li  and  Li,  “Integrating  Social  Media  into  East  Asia  Library  Services,”  25.   9. Remi  Castonguay,  “Say  It  Loud  Spreading  the  Word  with  Facebook  and  Twitter,”  College  &   Research  Libraries  News  72,  no.  7  (2011),   http://crln.acrl.org/content/72/7/412.full.pdf+html.     10. Dianna  E.  Sachs,  Edward  J.  Eckel,  and  Kathleen  A.  Langan,  “Striking  a  Balance:  Effective   Use  of  Facebook  in  an  Academic  Library,”  Internet  Reference  Services  Quarterly  16,  nos.  1– 2  (2011),  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10875301.2011.572457.   11. Christopher  Chan,  “Marketing  the  Academic  Library  with  Online  Social  Network   Advertising,”  Library  Management  33,  no.  8,  (2012),   http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/01435121211279849.   12. Melissa  Dennis,  “Outreach  Initiatives  in  Academic  Libraries,  2009–2011,”  Reference   Services  Review  40,  no.  3,  (2012),  http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/00907321211254643.   13. Melanie  Griffin  and  Tomaro  I.  Taylor,  “Of  Fans,  Friends,  and  Followers:  Methods  for   Assessing  Social  Media  Outreach  in  Special  Collections  Repositories,”  Journal  of  Web   Librarianship  7,  no.  3  (2013),  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19322909.2013.812471.     14. Lili  Luo,“Marketing  via  Social  Media:  A  Case  Study,”  Library  Hi  Tech  31,  no.  3  (2013),   http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/LHT-­‐12-­‐2012-­‐0141.     15. Li  and  Li,  “Integrating  Social  Media  into  East  Asia  Library  Services,”  25.   16. Sachs,  Eckel,  and  Langan,  “Striking  a  Balance,”  48.   17. Jaana  Roos,  “Why  University  Libraries  Don’t  Trust  Facebook  Marketing?,”  Proceedings  of   the  21st  International  BOBCATSSS  Conference  (2013):  164,   http://bobcatsss2013.bobcatsss.net/proceedings.pdf.   18. Noa  Aharony,  “Twitter  Use  in  Libraries:  An  Exploratory  Analysis,”  Journal  of  Web   Librarianship  4,  no.  4  (2010),  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19322909.2010.487766.   19. A.  R.  Riza  Ayu  and  A.  Abrizah,  “Do  You  Facebook?  Usage  and  Applications  of  Facebook   Page  among  Academic  Libraries  in  Malaysia,”  International  Information  &  Library  Review   43,  no.  4  (2011),  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.iilr.2011.10.005.   20. Alton  Y.  K.  Chua  and  Dion  H  Goh.,  “A  Study  of  Web  2.0  Applications  in  Library  Websites,”   Library  &  Information  Science  Research  32,  no.  3  (2010),   http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2010.01.002.         INFORMATION  TECHNOLOGY  AND  LIBRARIES  |  MARCH  2015      34   21. Andrea  Dickson  and  Robert  P.  Holley,  “Social  Networking  in  Academic  Libraries:  The   Possibilities  and  the  Concerns,”  New  Library  World  111,  nos.  11/12  (2010),   http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/03074801011094840.     22. Valerie  Forrestal,  “Making  Twitter  Work:  a  Guide  for  the  Uninitiated,  the  Skeptical,  and   the  Pragmatic,”  Reference  Librarian  52,  nos.  1–2  (2010),   http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02763877.2011.527607.   23. Gang  Wan,  “How  Academic  Libraries  Reach  Users  on  Facebook,”  College  &  Undergraduate   Libraries  18,  no.  4  (2011),  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10691316.2011.624944.   24. Dora  Yu-­‐Ting  Chen,  Samuel  Kai-­‐Wah  Chu,  and  Shu-­‐Qin  Xu,  “How  Do  Libraries  Use  Social   Networking  Sites  to  Interact  with  Users,”  Proceedings  of  the  American  Society  for   Information  Science  and  Technology  49,  no.  1  (2012),   http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/meet.14504901085.   25. Rolando  Garcia-­‐Milian,  Hannah  F.  Norton,  and  Michele  R.  Tennant,  “The  Presence  of   Academic  Health  Sciences  Libraries  on  Facebook:  The  Relationship  between  Content  and   Library  Popularity,”  Medical  Reference  Services  Quarterly  31,  no.  2  (2012),   http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2012.670588.   26. Elaine  Thornton,  “Is  Your  Academic  Library  Pinning?  Academic  Libraries  and  Pinterest,”   Journal  of  Web  Librarianship  6,  no.  3  (2012),   http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19322909.2012.702006.   27. Katie  Elson  Anderson  and  Julie  M.  Still,  “Librarians’  Use  of  Images  on  LibGuides  and  Other   Social  Media  Platforms,”  Journal  of  Web  Librarianship  7,  no.  3  (2013),   http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19322909.2013.812473.   28. Grace  Saw,  “Social  Media  for  International  Students—It’s  Not  All  about  Facebook,”  Library   Management  34,  no.  3  (2013):  172,  http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/01435121311310860.   29. Ligaya  Ganster  and  Bridget  Schumacher,  “Expanding  Beyond  Our  Library  Walls:  Building   an  Active  Online  Community  through  Facebook,”  Journal  of  Web  Librarianship  3,  no.  2   (2009),  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19322900902820929.     30. Sebastián  Valenzuela,  Namsu  Park,  and  Kerk  F.  Kee,  “Is  There  Social  Capital  in  a  Social   Network  Site?  Facebook  Use  and  College  Students’  Life  Satisfaction,  Trust,  and   Participation,”  Journal  of  Computer-­‐Mediated  Communication  14,  no.  4  (2009),   http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-­‐6101.2009.01474.x.   31. Nancy  Kim  Phillips,  “Academic  Library  Use  of  Facebook:  Building  Relationships  with   Students,”  Journal  of  Academic  Librarianship  37,  no.  6  (2011),   http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2011.07.008.       BUILDING  LIBRARY  COMMUNITY  THROUGH  SOCIAL  MEDIA  |  YOUNG  AND  ROSSMANN   35   32. Tina  McCorkindale,  Marcia  W.  Distaso,  and  Hilary  Fussell  Sisco,  “How  Millennials  Are   Engaging  and  Building  Relationships  with  Organizations  on  Facebook,”  Journal  of  Social   Media  in  Society  2,  no.  1  (2013),   http://thejsms.org/index.php/TSMRI/article/view/15/18.     33. Valenzuela,  Park,  and  Kee,  “Is  There  Social  Capital  in  a  Social  Network  Site?,”  882.   34. Maria  R.  Lee,  David  C.  Yen,  and  C.  Y.  Hsiao,  “Understanding  the  Perceived  Community   Value  of  Facebook  Users,”  Computers  in  Human  Behavior  35  (February  2014):  355,   http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.03.018.   35. Hyun  Jung  Oh,  Elif  Ozkaya,  and  Robert  LaRose,  “How  Does  Online  Social  Networking   Enhance  Life  Satisfaction?  The  Relationships  among  Online  Supportive  Interaction,  Affect,   Perceived  Social  Support,  Sense  of  Community,  and  Life  Satisfaction,”  Computers  in  Human   Behavior  30  (2014),  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.07.053.   36. Rowena  Cullen  and  Laura  Sommer,  “Participatory  Democracy  and  the  Value  of  Online   Community  Networks:  An  Exploration  of  Online  and  Offline  Communities  Engaged  in  Civil   Society  and  Political  Activity,”  Government  Information  Quarterly  28,  no.  2  (2011),   http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2010.04.008.   37. Mohamed  Nanabhay  and  Roxane  Farmanfarmaian,  “From  Spectacle  to  Spectacular:  How   Physical  Space,  Social  Media  and  Mainstream  Broadcast  Amplified  the  Public  Sphere  in   Egypt’s  ‘Revolution,’”  Journal  of  North  African  Studies  16,  no.  4  (2011),   http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13629387.2011.639562.   38. Nermeen  Sayed,  “Towards  the  Egyptian  Revolution:  Activists  Perceptions  of  Social  Media   for  Mobilization,”  Journal  of  Arab  &  Muslim  Media  Research  4,  nos.  2–3  (2012):  273–98,   http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/jammr.4.2-­‐3.273_1.   39. Morton  A.  Lieberman  and  Andrew  Winzelberg,  “The  Relationship  between  Religious   Expression  and  Outcomes  in  Online  Support  Groups:  A  Partial  Replication,”  Computers  in   Human  Behavior  25,  no.  3  (2009),  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2008.11.003.   40. Christopher  E.  Beaudoin  and  Chen-­‐Chao  Tao,  “Benefiting  from  Social  Capital  in  Online   Support  Groups:  An  Empirical  Study  of  Cancer  Patients,”  Cyberpsychology  &  Behavior:  The   Impact  of  the  Internet,  Multimedia  and  Virtual  Reality  on  Behavior  and  Society  10,  no.  4   (2007),  http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/cpb.2007.9986.     41. Manuela  Tomai  et  al.,  “Virtual  Communities  in  Schools  as  Tools  to  Promote  Social  Capital   with  High  Schools  Students,”  Computers  &  Education  54,  no.  1  (2010),   http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2009.08.009.         INFORMATION  TECHNOLOGY  AND  LIBRARIES  |  MARCH  2015      36   42. Edward  Shih-­‐Tse  Wang  and  Lily  Shui-­‐Lien  Chen,  “Forming  Relationship  Commitments  to   Online  Communities:  The  Role  of  Social  Motivations,”  Computers  in  Human  Behavior  28,   no.  2  (2012),  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2011.11.002.   43. Pippa  Norris  and  David  Jones,  “Virtual  Democracy,”  Harvard  International  Journal  of   Press/Politics  3,  no.  2  (1998),  http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1081180X98003002001.     44. Xu  Cheng,  Jiangchuan  Liu,  and  Cameron  Dale,  “Understanding  the  Characteristics  of   Internet  Short  Video  Sharing:  A  YouTube-­‐Based  Measurement  Study,”  IEEE  Transactions   on  Multimedia  15,  no.  5  (2013),  http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TMM.2013.2265531.   45. Nancy  Foasberg,  “Online  Reading  Communities:  From  Book  Clubs  to  Book  Blogs,”  Journal   of  Social  Media  in  Society  1,  no.1  (2012),   http://thejsms.org/index.php/TSMRI/article/view/3/4.     46. Matthias  Hofer  and  Viviane  Aubert,  “Perceived  Bridging  and  Bonding  Social  Capital  of   Twitter:  Differentiating  between  Followers  and  Followees,”  Computers  in  Human  Behavior   29,  no.  6  (2013):  2137,  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.04.038.     47. Rachel  Grieve  et.  al.,  “Face-­‐to-­‐Face  or  Facebook:  Can  Social  Connectedness  be  Derived   Online?,”  Computers  in  Human  Behavior  29,  no.  3  (2013):  607,   http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.11.017.   48. Ibid.,  608.   49. Nathan  Jurgenson,  “When  Atoms  Meet  Bits:  Social  Media,  the  Mobile  Web  and  Augmented   Revolution,”  Future  Internet  4,  no.  1  (2012),  http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/fi4010083.   50. R.  Stuart  Geiger,  “Bots,  Bespoke,  Code  and  the  Materiality  of  Software  Platforms,”   Information,  Communication  &  Society  17,  no.  3  (2014),   http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2013.873069.     51. Zeynep  Tufekci,  “The  Social  Internet:  Frustrating,  Enriching,  but  Not  Lonely,”  Public   Culture  26,  no.  1,  iss.  72  (2013):  14,  http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/08992363-­‐2346322.   52. Nicole  B.  Ellison,  Charles  Steinfield,  and  Cliff  Lampe,  “The  Benefits  of  Facebook  ‘Friends’:   Social  Capital  and  College  Students’  Use  of  Online  Social  Network  Sites,”  Journal  of   Computer-­‐Mediated  Communication  12,  no.  4  (2007):  1144,   http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-­‐6101.2007.00367.x.     53. Ibid.,  1165.   54. Roger  Brown,  A  First  Language:  The  Early  Stages  (Cambridge:  Harvard  University  Press,   1973).       BUILDING  LIBRARY  COMMUNITY  THROUGH  SOCIAL  MEDIA  |  YOUNG  AND  ROSSMANN   37   55. Mimi  Zhang  and  Bernard  J.  Jansen,  “Using  Action-­‐Object  Pairs  as  a  Conceptual  Framework   for  Transaction  Log  Analysis,”  in  Handbook  of  Research  on  Web  Log  Analysis,  edited  by   Bernard  J.  Jansen,  Amanda  Spink,  and  Isak  Taksa  (Hershey,  PA:  IGI,  2008).   56. Bernard  J.  Jansen  and  Mimi  Zhang,  “Twitter  Power:  Tweets  as  Electronic  Word  of  Mouth,”   Journal  of  the  American  Society  for  Information  Science  &  Technology  60,  no.  11  (2009),   http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.v60:11.     57. Sewell,  “Who  is  Following  Us?”     58. Glazer,  “‘Likes’  are  Lovely,”  20.   59. Lee,  Yen,  and  Hsiao,  “Understanding  the  Perceived.“   60. Oh,  Ozkaya,  and  LaRose,  “How  Does  Online  Social  Networking.”     61. Reynol  Junco,  Greg  Heiberger,  and  Eric  Loken,  “The  Effect  of  Twitter  on  College  Student   Engagement  and  Grades,”  Journal  of  Computer  Assisted  Learning  27,  no.  2  (2011),   http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-­‐2729.2010.00387.x.   62. Susannah  K.  Brown  and  Charles  A.  Burdsal,  “An  Exploration  of  Sense  of  Community  and   Student  Success  Using  the  National  Survey  of  Student  Engagement,”  Journal  of  General   Education  61,  no.  4  (2012),  http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jge.2012.0039.   63. Jill  L.  Creighton  et  al.,  “I  Just  Look  It  Up:  Undergraduate  Student  Perception  of  Social  Media   Use  in  Their  Academic  Success,”  Journal  of  Social  Media  in  Society  2,  no.  2  (2013),   http://thejsms.org/index.php/TSMRI/article/view/48/25.     64. David  C.  DeAndrea  et  al.,  “Serious  Social  Media:  On  the  Use  of  Social  Media  for  Improving   Students’  Adjustment  to  College,”  The  Internet  and  Higher  Education  15,  no.  1  (2012),   http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2011.05.009.   65. Rebecca  Gray  et  al.,  “Examining  Social  Adjustment  to  College  in  the  Age  of  Social  Media:   Factors  Influencing  Successful  Transitions  and  Persistence,”  Computers  &  Education  67   (2013),  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2013.02.021.