ZHENG, Yi (Faculty of Education, Univeristy of Hong Kong) LIU, Yuyang (Faculty of Education, Univeristy of Hong Kong) CHU, Samuel Kai Wah (Faculty of Education, Univeristy of Hong Kong) HUANG, Hong (School of Information, University of South Florida, United States) http://citers2013.cite.hku.hk/en/paper_609.htm --------------------------- Author(s) bear(s) the responsibility in case of any infringement of the Intellectual Property Rights of third parties. --------------------------- CITE was notified by the author(s) that if the presentation slides contain any personal particulars, records and personal data (as defined in the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance) such as names, email addresses, photos of students, etc, the author(s) have/has obtained the corresponding person's consent.

1. Interaction Between Librarians
and Library Users
On Weibo and Twitter
Philip, Yi Zheng (HKU)
Lesley, Yuyang Liu (HKU)
Samuel, Kai Wah Chu (HKU)
Hong Huang (USF)

2. Agenda
• Introduction
• Research Gaps and Questions
• Libraries Samples
• Data Collection and Coding
• Research Findings
• Further Study and Conclusion
• Q & A

3. Introduction
• Social Networking Sites – SNS
– Widely use
– Twitter: 500 million users (Lunden, 2012)
– Weibo: 309 million users in China (Xinhua, 2013)
• SNS and Libraries
– Increasing numbers of universities using SNS
– Very few followers, low engagement (Stuart, 2010)

4. Research Gaps and Questions
• Very fewer studies --- interaction between
librarians and users in social networks.
1. How do librarians interact with library users
on Twitter and Weibo?
2. Which type of interactions are more
engaging to library users?
3. What are the differences regarding the
interactions?

5. Libraries Samples
• QS 2012-2013 University Rankings
– World and Asian rankings
– Less famous Chinese universities (bottom – top)
– Consistent universities in similar rankings (English)
• 20 university libraries – mainland China
• 20 university libraries – English speaking
countries (US, UK, CA, AU, NZ)

6. Region Academic Library
(Code Name) SNS type No. of
Subscribers
No. of
Posts
MainlandChina
1 SJUL
Weibo
2859 510
2 NJUL 7758 882
3 ZJUL 870 270
4 USTUL 594 212
5 BNUL 4856 2119
6 BITUL 866 153
7 NKUL 1723 332
8 SYUL 684 216
9 TJUL 6148 1149
10 WHUL 10125 1315
11 XMUL 11007 726
12 SEUL 5028 955
13 BUAAL 5171 864
14 ECNUL 6676 799
15 DUTL 1650 470
16 BUTL 3892 221
17 SCUL 3567 2492
18 SCUTL 595 104
19 NAUL 2517 630
20 HNUL 1235 341
English-
speakingCountries
1 LVUL
Twitter
1501 1599
2 FUL 1300 441
3 LCUL 767 626
4 ITRMUL 898 748
5 TUL 110 101
6 BUL 515 323
7 NUL 1758 907
8 RUL 526 321
9 SUTL 641 2198
10 SYUL 674 915
11 OKUL 456 611
12 UVL 1153 539
13 LSUL 868 918
14 TUL 1167 1644
15 BFUL 167 355
16 GSUL 1004 1208
17 MUL 194 316
18 UAL 740 899
19 UDL 945 1206
20 WPI 277 1768
Table 1:
Investigated
libraries

7. Data Collection and Analysis
• Systematic random sampling
– September 2012 to January 2013
– 3, 6, 10, 13, 17, 20, 24, 27 (data/ each month)
– 8 (per month) * 5 (months) * 40 (libraries)
– 1,600 posts harvested in total
• Coding Scheme (4 types of interaction)
– Library news, Sharing, Communication and Survey

8. Coding Scheme – part 1

9. Coding Scheme – part 2
C. Communication

10. Q1: How do librarians interact with library users on
Weibo and Twitter?
A.Library
News
39%
B. Sharing
11%
C.
Communi
cation
49%
D. Survey
1%
Weibo
Weibo Twitter
Main Category Quantity Percentage Quantity Percentage
A. Library News 310 39% 408 51%
B. Sharing 93 12% 197 25%
C. Communication 391 49% 186 23%
D. Survey 6 1% 9 1%
Total 800 100% 800 100%

11. Q1: How do librarians interact with library users on
Weibo and Twitter?
• Communication
• Information dissemination
(Library News)
A.Library
News
51%B.
Sharing
25%
C.
Commu
nication
23%
D.Survey
1%
Twitter Most Interacting activies

12. Q2: Which types of interaction are more engaging to
library users?

13. Rank Uni No. English-speaking
Library
Avg No. of
Retweets
Number of
Followers
Retweets-Followers
Ratio
No.1 15 BFUL 0.79 167 0.476%
No.2 5 TUL 0.45 110 0.409%
No.3 17 MUL 0.53 194 0.271%
No.4 8 RUL 1.38 526 0.261%
No.5 9 SUTL 0.95 641 0.148%
No.6 3 LCUL 1.08 767 0.140%
No.7 13 LSUL 1.10 868 0.127%
No.8 10 SYUL 0.45 674 0.066%
No.9 11 OKUL 0.28 456 0.060%
No.10 4 ITRMUL 0.50 898 0.056%
No.11 12 UVL 0.55 1,153 0.048%
No.12 7 NUL 0.80 1,758 0.046%
No.13 1 LVUL 0.68 1,501 0.045%
No.14 18 UAL 0.33 740 0.044%
No.15 6 BUL 0.20 515 0.039%
No.16 14 TUL 0.43 1,167 0.036%
No.17 16 GSUL 0.35 1,004 0.035%
No.18 19 UDL 0.30 945 0.032%
No.19 20 WPI 0.08 277 0.027%
No.20 2 FUL 0.21 1,300 0.016%
Successful
Less
Successful
Table 2: Twitter Posts Retweets Ratio (High to low)

14. Q2: Which type of interactions are more engaging to
library users?
Interaction Types Weibo Percentage Twitter Percentage
A. Library News 93 38.8% 156 65.0%
B. Sharing 24 10.0% 48 20.0%
C. Communication 123 51.3% 30 12.5%
D. Survey 0 0.0% 6 2.5%
Total 240 100% 240 100%
Successful libraries’ posts on both Weibo and Twitter (top 6, 240 posts in each)

15. Q3: What are the differences regarding the
interactions on Weibo and Twitter?
Weibo Twitter
Interactions Successful Less Successful Successful Less Successful
A. Library News 93 81 156 106
B. Sharing 24 22 48 76
C. Communication 123 136 30 57
D. Survey 0 1 6 1
Total 240 240 240 240

16. 0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
Twitter – Success vs. Less Success
Twitter -
Successful
Twitter - Less
Successful
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
Weibo – Success vs. Less Success
Weibo -
Successful
Weibo - Less
Successful
• Twitter
Library News plays critical roles in interactions (success)
• Weibo
Preferred as communication medias

17. Further Study
• Types of interaction
– Sub Category (A1-A8, B, C1-C8, D1-D2)
• Twitter (Comparing with Weibo)
– Number of followers (less)
– Followers as % of total students (less)
– Avg. numbers of forwards/retweets
from each post (much less)

18. Conclusion
1. Weibo for communication
– mainland China university libraries
2. Twitter for information dissemination
– English speaking counties libraries
3. Information dissemination and knowledge
sharing are also critical in engaging
library users in Weibo.

19. Reference
• Lunden, I. (2012). Analyst: Twitter Passed 500M Users in June
2012, 140M of Them in US; Jakarta’ Biggest Twitting’ City.
TechCrunch.
• Stuart, D. (2010). “What are libraries doing on Twitter?”.
Online, 34(1), 45-47
• Xinhua. (2013). China’s Internet user reach 564
million, Xinhuanet.

20. Q & A
Thanks