Social media use in European Libraries
Jinfo Blog

9th August 2010

By Nancy Davis Kho

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On 8th August, as part of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) marketing satellite event in Stockholm, EBSCO unveiled the results of its survey of 1200 participants on the use of social media in libraries in Europe. It found that users in the European library community have a generally positive view of the benefits of social media and are leveraging such tools to raise and modernise the profile of their libraries. But concerns about the time it takes to maintain a social media presence, along with internal organisational and security policies, detract from success. Presented by Ebsco's Nordic Sales Manager Jakob Harnesk, the survey queried 1241 EBSCO customers based in Europe about how social media applications like blogs, wikis, Facebook, and Twitter fit in the library world. In keeping with EBSCO's customer demographics, about half of the respondents (51%) came from the University/College sector, with governments, research institutes, health organisations, and corporations, and other comprising about 10% each of the remaining participant segments. Sixty-two percent of respondents were between 35-55. In terms of how the libraries' users are engaging with social media, 59% of participants said their constituents use it at least some of the time, and another 34% said 'most of them use it regularly'. Accordingly, the vast majority (85%) of libraries queried are using it or planning to, with only 15% saying that they are not interested in interactive platforms. Social networks, blogging, RSS, and Twitter were named as the most widely used technologies by the participants. The majority of users queried say they spend 10-20% of their time maintaining that social presence. In fact, the time it takes to maintain an active social media presence - for a benchmark, 56% said they posted less than 5 times a week, and 36% post 5-10 times/week - was highlighted as one of the difficulties faced with regard to social media. EBSCO notes the rising expectation by library users that social media capabilities should be integrated within applications - workflow integration of social media for B2B services is becoming less a 'nice to have' and more a 'must have', as personal use of social media continues to explode and influence the workplace. The full findings, along with more in-depth analysis, will be presented again at London Online at the end of November. For now, view the SlideShare presentation at http://digbig.com/5bcdth

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