The paper presents results of a study on public libraries from 31 Informational World Cities regarding their social media use and outreach. The analysis focuses on prototypical social media-platforms used for information dissemination and library patron’s engagement (i.e., Facebook, Sina Weibo, Twitter, and YouTube). The results of the statistical analysis of the social media activity carried out from public libraries and users show that social media-posting frequency strongly varies between libraries. Strikingly, similar posting behavior (i.e. frequency and content type) results in different numbers of fans and distribution ratios, i.e. forwarding libraries’ content via Facebook or retweets.

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Social Media Use and Outreach of
Selected Public Libraries in
Informational World Cities
Sarah Hartmann, Isabella Peters & Agnes Mainka
Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (Germany)
Department of Information Science
{s.hartmann | isabella.peters | agnes.mainka} @uni-duesseldorf.de
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Agenda
 Introduction:
 Typical characteristics of Informational Cities
 What is an Informational World City?
 Which cities are Informational World Cities?
 Method
 Results for
 Facebook
 Twitter
 YouTube
 Conclusion
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Introduction: Informational Cities
 prototypical cities of the knowledge society are called
Informational Cities (Manuel Castells)
 Infrastructures of information and communication
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Informational Cities
Indicators for measuring Informational Cities:
1. Infrastructures
2. Position in the world city hierarchy
3. Structure of the labor market
4. Mix of companies
5. Political willingness
6. Weak location factors
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Informational World City
(Orszullok, L., Stallmann, A., Mainka, A., & Stock, W. G., 2012).
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Informational World Cities
(Orszullok, L., Stallmann, A., Mainka, A., & Stock, W. G., 2012).
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Public Libraries
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Methods
 Examined social media accounts by
 browsing the websites
 Searching within the social media service
 In some cases more than one account was found:
 More than one public library
 More than one account on website
 Additional accounts via searching on social media services
 Data collection: October 17, 2012 – December 13, 2012
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Libraries’ Posting Behavior on
Facebook
0
0,5
1
1,5
2
2,5
3
3,5
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
Amsterdam
Berlin
Boston
Chicago
FrankfurtamMain
Helsinki
KualaLumpur
London
LosAngeles
Melbourne
Montreal
Munich
NewYork
Paris
SanFrancisco
*SaoPaulo
Seoul
Singapore
**Stockholm
Tokyo
Toronto
Vancouver
Vienna
average#postsperday
#posts
Link Posts
Video Posts
Photo Posts
Status Posts
Average Posts
*BibliotecasSP, Biblioteca de São Paulo
**Stockholms stadsbibliotek - 40 folkbibliotek, Internationella biblioteket, Internationella biblioteket
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Comparison of Libraries’ Posting
Frequency on Facebook and Outreach
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Results: Interaction with Facebook-
users
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0
5000
10000
15000
20000
Boston
NewYork
Amsterdam
SanFrancisco
LosAngeles
KualaLumpur
**Stockholm
*SaoPaulo
Singapore
Vancouver
FrankfurtamMain
London
Vienna
Munich
Chicago
Toronto
Paris
Montreal
Tokyo
Berlin
Melbourne
Seoul
Helsinki
#likes
# talking about this
# were here
*BibliotecasSP, Biblioteca de São Paulo
**Stockholms stadsbibliotek - 40 folkbibliotek, Internationella biblioteket, Internationella biblioteket
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
Singapore
Vancouver
FrankfurtamMain
London
Vienna
Munich
Chicago
Toronto
Paris
Montreal
Tokyo
Berlin
Melbourne
Seoul
Helsinki
#likes
# talking about this
# were here
*BibliotecasSP, Biblioteca de São Paulo
**Stockholms stadsbibliotek - 40 folkbibliotek, Internationella biblioteket, Internationella

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Distribution Ratio: Interaction of
Facebook-users with Libraries’ Content
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
120%
140%
160%
180%
200%
Amsterdam
Berlin
Boston
Chicago
FrankfurtamMain
Helsinki
KualaLumpur
London
LosAngeles
Melbourne
Montreal
Munich
NewYork
Paris
SanFrancisco
*SaoPaulo
Seoul
Singapore
**Stockholm
Tokyo
Toronto
Vancouver
Vienna
ratio library action/user action
*BibliotecasSP, Biblioteca de São Paulo
**Stockholms stadsbibliotek - 40 folkbibliotek, Internationella biblioteket, Internationella biblioteket
distributionratio
↑
1071 %
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How many posts from
libraries found their way
into users‘ conversations?

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User Interaction on Libraries'
Microblogging Accounts
0
50.000
100.000
150.000
200.000
250.000
0
5
10
15
20
25
30 Amsterdam
Boston
Chicago
Helsinki
London
LosAngeles
Melbourne
Montreal
NewYork
Paris
SanFrancisco
SaoPaulo
Singapore
Stockholm
Tokyo
Toronto
Vancouver
Vienna
Seoul
Beijing
Shanghai
Shenzhen
#followers
average#
average # tweets
average # retweets
# followers
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Libraries' and Users' YouTube Activity
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It is important
to post
regularly!
0
200.000
400.000
600.000
800.000
1.000.000
1.200.000
0
500
1.000
1.500
2.000
2.500
3.000
3.500
NewYork
Toronto
Montreal
Helsinki
Vienna
Vancouver
LosAngeles
*SaoPaulo
SanFrancisco
Amsterdam
Boston
Berlin
Stockholm
#views
total#
# videos
# subscribers
# views
*BibliotecasSP, Biblioteca de São Paulo
**Stockholms stadsbibliotek - 40 folkbibliotek, Internationella biblioteket, Internationella biblioteket
0
10.000
20.000
30.000
40.000
50.000
60.000
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
Montreal
Helsinki
Vienna
Vancouver
LosAngeles
*SaoPaulo
SanFrancisco
Amsterdam
Boston
Berlin
Stockholm
#views
total#
# videos
# subscribers
# views
*BibliotecasSP, Biblioteca de São Paulo
**Stockholms stadsbibliotek - 40 folkbibliotek, Internationella biblioteket, Internationella biblioteket

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Conclusion
 Social media services reach
users and facilitate communication
 Regular publishing leads to more
interaction and attention from users
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Thank you for your attention!
Sarah Hartmann
Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (Germany)
Department of Information Science
s.hartmann@uni-duesseldorf.de
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References
 Castells, M. (1989). The Informational City. Information Technology,
Economic Restructuring, and the Urban-Regional Process. Oxford, UK,
Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.
 Mainka, A., Khveshchanka, S., & Stock, W. G. (2011). Dimensions of
informational city research. In Digital Cities 7 – Real World Experiences.
International Workshop at C&T 2011, 30 June 2011, Brisbane, Australia.
 Orszullok, L., Stallmann, A., Mainka, A., & Stock, W. G. (2012). Core Services
of Digital and Physical Libraries in Informational World Cities. An Empirical
Investigation. In Proceedings of the 6th Shanghai International Library Forum,
Shanghai, China (pp. 288-301). Shanghai, China: Shanghai Scientific and
Technological Literature Publishing House.
 Sekyere, K. (2009). Too Much Hullabaloo about Facebook in Libraries! Is it
really helping libraries? Nebraska Library Association Quarterly, 40(2), 25–27.
 Stock, W. (2011). Informational cities: Analysis and construction of cities in
the knowledge society. Journal of the American Society for Information Science
and Technology, 62(5), 963-986.
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