Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Social Media Collaboration: A Case Study From The University Of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Sarah Christensen, Jaena Manson, Leah Dudak

JLAMS

Large academic libraries with a decentralized structure can lead to individual library units creating and maintaining their own social media accounts with little standardization or cohesiveness across the library system. As a result, social media account owners often duplicate efforts, overwhelming patrons with communication channels, and lacking a consistent message. At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I), for example, the library system comprises nearly thirty separate library units, and maintains nearly eighty social media accounts. These accounts are spread across platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, and Flickr, as well as a plethora of blogs. …