Exploring Social Media as an Information Source in IL Instruction

Abstract

According to a 2021 Pew Research report, over 80 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds use social media. Studies also show that higher education students use social media in both academic and everyday life. However, there is minimal research about how, or whether, librarians utilize social media in their library instruction as a source of information for students’ academic work. We examined 162 responses to a survey sent to an uncounted number of librarians in higher education, asking them about their teaching practices regarding social media to enable us to answer the following research questions: (1) How are teaching librarians using social media as an information source in their instruction?; (2) What are the benefits teaching librarians perceive regarding the use of social media in instruction?; (3) What are the challenges teaching librarians perceive regarding the use of social media in instruction? The survey results showed that most librarians surveyed are not utilizing social media as an information source in their library instruction. Although our results cannot be generalized, our study sheds light on how librarians incorporate social media in information literacy (IL) instruction, the tension between scholarly literature and voices not considered authoritative, and librarians’ perceptions of benefits and challenges to incorporating social media in library sessions.