Application of Social Media Networking (SMN) To Library and Information Service Delivery in Nigerian Academic Libraries (Published)
The paper expounds the meaning of social networking as a process of building relationship among group of people with common interest and ideology. Social networking is achieved through the use of social media. Social media is an essential tool for library to explore in its unquenchable passion to pervade society with relevant and current information. Social media offers a powerful and pervasive communications platform that is radically changing the way we interact. With its viable feedback mechanism, social networking could assist library to respond to queries, current awareness, SDI, new arrival, send out reading list, alert on overdue among other services. Brief Historical Trace of social media were stated. Publications of a university’s research findings and intellectual contents are easier shared with social media. The challenges on the use of Social Media Networking (SMN) for Library Service Delivery were discussed as Copyright issues which is a common challenge when making use of social media to disseminate information and this is not restricted to information disseminated in print format alone but it also cuts across information disseminated in audio and video format. Cost of carrying out library services using social network sites could be enormous and other challenges were discussed in the paper. It was recommended that social media should be made accessible to user information needs of online users to help libraries get closer to the society.
Keywords: Nigerian academic libraries, library and information service delivery, social media networking (SMN)