Social Media Practices and Support in U.S. Public Libraries and School Library Media Centers

摘要

Many U.S. teens spend hours each day communicating withfriends via social technologies like Facebook, YouTube,Twitter, and Flickr. To develop a better understanding ofthe state of library support of teens’ social technologypractices, we are conducting a national survey of arepresentative sample of 750 public and 750 school librariesin the United States about their current policies and socialmedia strategies. Preliminary results indicate that publicand school libraries’ use of social media differ in terms ofpolicy and strategies, and that rather than enabling librariesto harness the power of social networking tools, librarypolicies often serve as use barriers.