Chapter 11
From Library 2.0 Initiatives in Academic Libraries
Taking the Library to Users: Experimenting with Facebook as an Outreach Tool
Dawn Lawson
New York University
Contact: dl80@nyu.edu
The chapter as originally published in the book is available from my home page. Read the chapter first; it provides context for the update published below. For an introduction to my project and to the exciting work described in Chapter 9 of this book, listen to the podcast.
Facebook and Libraries News
Cool New Facebook Widgets from OCLC The Facebook app that lets you search OCLC WorldCat has been around for a while, but now OCLC has released something that makes it even better--CiteMe, a write 'n' cite tool that links to WorldCat.
Michigan Study Here is a blog posting that mentions and links to the University of Michigan report about social networking and libraries. This report has been out since last December, and when it is talked about it is somewhat misleadingly said to be evidence that students don't want librarians in their Facebook space. If you've read my research you know that my experience shows otherwise. I can't help thinking that there is a big difference between asking students in the abstract how they feel about their librarians or professors being on Facebook and how they feel when those people actual contact them there or are present there with services the students need and want.
Other Facebook Outreach Projects Stephen Francoeur, information services librarian at Baruch College, gave a presentation, "Social Networking Sites and Reference Services," at the American Library Association Midwinter meeting, mentioning the work that I and others have done in the area of Facebook outreach. You can view the presentation slides on his blog now, and a video of the entire session is available at the OCLC web site.
Updates on My Outreach Effort
November 2009As has happened each time I have attempted to renew my outreach, Facebook has, once again, changed its search functionality. The most recent changes, which took place in October when the company acquired FriendFeed, have made it next to impossible to conduct the kind of search necessary for my project. There is no longer an Advanced Search function at all. Facebook filters your (basic) search results in terms of whether they occur on pages for People, Groups, Applications, or Posts (those by Friends or Everyone); it also allows you to “refine” your results, but only by Location, School, or Workplace. No more searching for specific class years or concentrations. Searching “East Asian Studies” and refining my results to NYU yielded a list of only 14 people. After eliminating the alumni and the students I had contacted previously, I ended up with 5 names. Among those, one student had her privacy set so that I was unable to verify that she fit the parameters of my project, but the other four had open profile information, which allowed me to ascertain that they were current undergraduates with an interest in East Asian Studies whom I had not contacted in the past. I sent messages to all 4 and have received no replies as of 10 days later. Am I discouraged? Yes. But more by Facebook’s constant changing of its searching functions than the lack of replies. Naturally I wonder whether the fact that I have not received replies from the students to whom I have reached out the last two times is validation of the arguments made about students not wanting librarians and teaching faculty in “their space,” although I am still not ready to jump to that conclusion. While waiting to see if I received any replies before posting this update, Facebook posted an open letter to users about more changes that it is planning to implement. In addition to eliminating regional networks (those based on localities rather than on institutions, companies, etc.), it will be introducing new privacy controls that they promise will allow users to control who sees each piece of content they post on a person-by-person basis. At the same time, they are promising to simplify the privacy settings function. It will be interesting to watch this unfold. Perhaps this ability to monitor who sees what will help eliminate apprehensions that some students may have held about becoming Facebook friends with librarians, professors, and others.
April 2009I timed this semester’s outreach to coincide with our “term paper clinic,” as I began doing a year ago. After last semester’s experience of fumbling around to find the profile search, this time I knew simply to use the all-purpose search box to do a random search, because it renders a results list that includes the Profile Search at the top of the page. Using the Profile Search to execute my usual search for NYU undergraduates with East Asian Studies as their concentration, I experienced the same funkiness in terms of result numbers as I had last time; that is, the number changed as I advanced through the results. To double-check, I also did separate searches of that concentration by each of the four active class years, 2009-2012. Nearly all of the EAS majors I located this time were students to whom I had already reached out via Facebook in the past. I found four new listings: one from the class of 2010 and three from the class of 2011. I sent messages to the latter three (none of whom replied), but not to the former because I had already made contact with that one in the course of a new outreach project, described below, that I began this semester. I overheard the phrase “embedded librarian” at an outside meeting in January, and with no time to do a library literature search to find out what colleagues in the profession might mean by this, I simply decided to embed myself in a course. I selected an undergraduate elective course in Japanese history being taught by a first-year faculty member. The professor was delighted when I volunteered to attend the class as often as my schedule permitted and to maintain a page in my online research guide tied to the course, which I promised to update frequently. He gave me full access to the course’s BlackBoard site, and I changed the target link of its Library button from the general library site to my own research guide. Happily, the timing of this overlapped with NYU’s acquisition of LibGuides and my creation of a new guide using that wonderful tool. The professor introduced me in the first class, and I have gotten to know some of the students, largely by staying after class to listen in on their questions to him and contributing help when applicable. Sometimes this has led directly to updates to the part of my research guide). Also this semester, I managed to get updated figures on the number of EAS majors (88) and minors (83) at NYU. When a student designates East Asian Studies as their concentration in Facebook, one can’t know if they are a major or minor; I suspect that some are minors because many list more than one concentration, sometimes as many as four or five. However, I have found 74 such students on Facebook, which would represent around 80 percent of either group, or 43 percent of the combined total of majors and minors. In either case, the number is large enough to validate the merit of using this social networking approach as an outreach tool.
November 2008
I did this semester’s update about a week later than last year, which means that it fell a week after our term paper clinic (see April 2008 update, below, for an explanation of this) and a couple of weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday.
Alas! I was disappointed and frustrated to discover that “advanced” searching in Facebook has become both more difficult and less reliable than ever. As mentioned in my previous update, last spring it was possible to access an Advanced Search function from your Facebook home page after logging in, although the option was well hidden. Now, however, there is no access from Home to anything but one search box. A Find Friends feature is available under the Friends tab when you are logged in and even from the main Facebook page without logging in. However, in both cases you are sent to a screen that prominently features new ways of “searching” for people on Facebook. These require giving Facebook access to sources of data on your own computer: your contact file (i.e., your e-mail address book), your AIM buddy list (people you IM with via America Online), and/or your Windows Live Contacts. I can’t provide more information about these options here, because I don’t intend to give Facebook access to my contact files. The one search box appears below these options.
A thorough search for Advanced Search under all tabs was fruitless. A search for the word “search” in Facebook’s Help system produced a small amount of information. That is, there are now a few “shortcuts” you can use in the search box to allow you to search more than one field at a time. Unfortunately, they include parameters like “rl” for relationship status and “sex” for gender, but none of the fields I used in my original research, such as academic concentration and class year. Also, searching for certain types of combinations requires use of the pipe symbol. I seriously doubt that average Facebook users would be likely, first, to search the Help file for this information, and second, take the trouble to digest and use it even if they did.
Through trial and error I finally found a Profile Search option, which allows combined searching of many more fields in the profile than the shortcuts listed in Help (you must first do a search using the one search box; the Profile Search option appears at the top of the first results screen). Fortunately, network, concentration, and school status (e.g., undergrad) are all listed there. I searched for undergrads with the concentration East Asian Studies. The top of the screen states that Profile Search is restricted to the friends and profiles I can see from my network, NYU.
The first screen of 10 results indicated that I had retrieved 123 total results. After looking through these for new majors to whom I could reach out and offer library services, I went to the next screen. Now it said that I was looking at 10 out of 77 results. Ditto, the next screen. Both of the final two pages of results gave my total as 45. However, after deduping the total came to 39.
I repeated my search at different days and times to be sure that the strange renumbering of results recurred, which it did. My finding was validated further when I found a comment in a Facebook Discussion Forum describing the strange phenomenon exactly as I had experienced it. Neither Facebook nor any other users had responded to that user comment.
The Bottom Line: I found 9 new East Asian Studies majors and sent outreach messages to them within Facebook. Four are from the class of 2012, one from the class of 2011, three from the class of 2010, and one from the class of 2009. Three replied within Facebook expressing their thanks and assuring me that they would contact me when the need arose.
April 2008
This semester I did my update approximately a month before the end of the semester because I wanted to experiment with scheduling it to coincide with our library's "term paper clinic," a service we offer to undergraduates for two weeks each semester at a time that our instructional services department has determined to be when they are most likely to need our assistance. This heavily advertised service consists of inviting students to make appointments for a thirty-minute personal consultation with a reference librarian to receive individualized help doing research for their papers. The number of participants in the service has grown steadily since its inception; nearly 200 students took advantage of it last fall.
I had read about Facebook's new privacy controls, but I had not done an Advanced Search under this new system until I attempted to follow my established methodology of searching the current four classes of NYU undergraduates—those of 2008-2011—for students who had listed East Asian Studies as a concentration in their Facebook profile. The standard words "Advanced Search" no longer appear on the site. To get beyond the one search box that appears when you log in, you must first realize that the word Search, above the search box, is a link, although there is no underlining or other cue to indicate this. When you do click the word, a screen titled Basic Search displays, again accompanied by just one box (what hath Google wrought!). Text below the box offers four options: Browse people in your networks; Find Classmates; Find Coworkers; and Search the profiles of people you can see. I realized immediately that only the fourth option held any promise of resembling an advanced search, and I also realized that my result sets were likely to shrink dramatically because, I assumed, most users would have taken advantage of the new privacy controls to limit access to their profile. I was right on both counts. The Search Profiles option did allow me to select my customary parameters (School Status, Class Year, and Concentration), and my result sets were much smaller than before.
I located a total of 8 East Asian Studies majors whom I had not found or contacted previously, 4 each in the classes of 2010 and 2011. Given this small pool, however, I was quite happy with the outcome. In response to my message introducing myself and the library, I heard from 2 students, or 25 percent. One student both wrote a brief thank-you message and friended me, and the other responded immediately with a research question! As was true when I did the initial work, the latter type of interaction in particular affirms my belief that reaching out to students proactively in a social networking environment is yet another way to bring the library to users.
November 2007
In early November, at roughly the middle of the fall semester, I did a new Facebook outreach project following the same methodology I describe in my chapter. That is, I searched the current four classes of NYU undergraduates—those of 2008-2011—for students who had listed East Asian Studies as a concentration in their Facebook profile.
Looking at the results, I noticed right away that something was different from before. Previously, each search result had been unique. That is, if a search for East Asian Studies and class of 2010 displayed 34 results, each represented a different student. This time, however, many students appeared in the results set twice. Furthermore, once I had deduped the results, there appeared to be significantly fewer East Asian Studies majors than there had been in the spring. What was going on?
Given that they are only a couple of months into their college career, I was not surprised that only 2 members of the freshman class turned up in my search results. And of course students of all levels are likely to change their majors. The purpose of this project is to help me reach out to the appropriate users, wherever they are. I am not seeking to track the changes in numbers of majors over time. In any event, Facebook would not be the place to do such research, for obvious reasons. But there still seemed to be something wrong with the numbers. Approximately 50 majors I had found in the spring were missing.
Before I accepted these new, dramatically reduced numbers as my final results, I did some thinking and digging. I decided to search by name for each of the 50 students who did not come up in November’s initial search using my normal parameters of class and concentration but who had appeared as majors in February.
In some cases (about 10), I did not find the student by name. There are several possible explanations for this. The student might no longer have a Facebook account at all, for example. Or the student, even if still on Facebook and at NYU, might have used Facebook's privacy options to restrict their findability to people they have designated as friends on Facebook. It's also possible that the student dropped out or transferred to another school—I limit my searches to NYU.
The remaining 40 or so students who didn’t turn up in my parameter-based search this time did appear in Facebook when searched by name. I was able to view the profiles of about half of these. I saw that, as I had imagined, East Asian Studies was no longer listed among their concentrations. But I was blocked from seeing the profiles of the rest of the students, and thus I could not confirm that they are still East Asian Studies majors. Again, I probably wasn’t able to access their profiles because they had invoked a privacy option that restricts the display of their profile to people who are among their designated friends on Facebook.
After the deduping and name-searching, I ended up with 11 sophomores, 20 juniors, and 39 seniors whom I was able to confirm as East Asian Studies majors. Of these, many were students I had e-mailed in Facebook to introduce myself and the library as part of the February outreach, so I did not contact them again this time. I did send e-mail messages within Facebook to the 12 majors I found for the first time in November. One of the 12 replied via Facebook e-mail, thanking me; that was the only response of any kind. The table below compares my November results to those of February.
| Class Year | Majors in FB, 2/07 | Majors in FB, 11/07 | Newly Identified Majors, 11/07 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 44 | 39 | 4 |
| 2009 | 34 | 20 | 0 |
| 2010 | 16 | 11 | 6 (1 reply) |
| 2012 | NA | 2 | 2 |
What does it all mean? I’m reluctant to speculate, because I do not want my project to metamorphose into a study of the use of privacy options by Facebook users, nor, as I mentioned, into an examination of trends in choices of major. I will say, however, that Facebook’s opening itself up to search engines as of September 5 of this year (see, for example, this ZDnet blog entry) may have made users more conscious of their privacy options and led some to make more use of them than before. And I don’t doubt that the debacle over Beacon (Facebook's account) increased Facebook member consciousness of privacy issues all the more.
Despite the relatively small scale and minimal response to my latest effort, I am still keenly interested in continuing to explore Facebook as a way to take the library to users, and I will continue to do so.
Links and Resources
Charnigo, Laurie and Paula Barnett-Ellis. 2007. Checking out Facebook.com: The impact of a digital trend on academic libraries. Information Technology and Libraries, 26 (March): 23-34. The first article in the mainstream library and information science literature to treat Facebook and libraries in depth. Includes a broad literature review.
Farkas, Meredith. 2007. Social Software in Libraries: Building Collaboration, Communication, and Community Online. Medford, NJ: Information Today. Includes a chapter on social networking that discusses Facebook. See also the book's companion web site and Farkas's excellent blog Information Wants to Be Free
Friends: Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services. This blog, produced by Gerry McKiernan, Science and Technology Librarian at Iowa State University, is a rich, frequently updated site of news about Facebook and other social networks.
Mathews, Brian S. 2006. Do you Facebook? Networking with students online. College and Research Libraries News 67 (May): 306-307. Describes a very early Facebook outreach project. Mathews's blog, The Ubiquitous Librarian, is an outstanding source of musings on the academic librarian and technology.
