Reach Out to Your Students Using MySpace and Facebook

According to a survey conducted by Eszter Hargittai, an assistant professor of communications studies and sociology at Northwestern University, students often ignore messages coming from their colleges as they consider them a form of spam (Carnevale, 2006). If students are not using campus e-mail to keep up with their friends and classmates, how do they communicate with each other? The answer is that they instead use MySpace and Facebook. Both MySpace and Facebook are social networking websites that provide personalized and interactive services based on users’ interest and activities on the Web. Each of them features the opportunity to meet friends through networking and services like blogs, photos, and interest-based events and groups, etc. According to the 2006 Anderson Analytics GenX2Z Annual College Brand Survey, MySpace and Facebook ranked as the top two websites among college students (Weinbery, 2006). Comparing with 2005, MySpace had a 258% increase for the number of visits, while Facebook received a 41% increase for the number of visits (Weinbery, 2006). With an increasing number of students using MySpace and Facebook, many libraries around the country started to experiment with MySpace and Facebook. In May 2006, Franklin D. Schurz Library at Indiana University South Bend set up accounts in both MySpace and Facebook. This article will discuss how the Schurz Library set up an effective profile and utilized different features within MySpace and Facebook to promote itself to students.