The Impact of Social Media to Library Services in Digital Environment

Abstract

The developments in Web technology are creating more friendly, social, and fun environments for retrieving and sharing information and one of such is social media networking websites. However, it has been observed that despite the promise of social networking sites, limited libraries are adopting them for rendering services to their patrons and this consequently results in limited patronage and response from the users. To address this challenge of limited usage of social media by libraries and to engage more users in libraries' Social Networking Sites (SNSs), this chapter attempts to create awareness on the usefulness of SNSs to libraries. The discussion in the chapter focuses on the meaning of social media and SNSs, their impact on library services particularly in the digital environment, the features and types of SNSs available, etc.