A January 2009 PEW Internet & American Life Project report, Adult and Social Network Websites, shows that in the past 3 years, more and more adult Internet users have started using social network sites.  The figures rose from 8% usage in February 2005 to 35% in December 2008.

The survey results indicate that younger adults are much more likely to use social networks than their older counterparts, and the majority use the networks for personal instead of professional interests. For those who do use it for both personal and professional purposes, they usually maintain multiple profiles on different sites. MySpace is the most popular social network site among adult users.

With 75% of online adults between 18 and 24 and 57%  between 25 and 34 having a social network profile, there is huge potential for libraries to reach patrons through these sites.

Here are examples of some regional libraries with profiles on social network sites:

• Northeastern State University Libraries, Broken Arrow, OK on MySpace
• Harris County Public Library on LinkedIn
• John P. Ische Library / LSUHSC New Orleans Libraries on Facebook

For more information, see: Hendrix D, Chiarella D, Hasman L, Murphy S, Zafron ML. Use of Facebook in academic health sciences libraries. J Med Libr Assoc. 2009 Jan;97(1):44-7.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 4:02 pm and is filed under General (all entries), NLM Announcements, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.