In the time of global development of the Internet, effective use of the opportunities it offers can be a decisive factor in the success of most endeavors. Most Ukrainians expect to be able to get the information they need online. Therefore, we believe that it would be a mistake to overlook the opportunities offered by the Internet to promote librarianship.
There are different options for using Internet resources: creating your own library website, advertising on other websites (which is not a good option for public libraries due to funding constraints and the fact that advertising mostly costs money), using social networks.
Social networks are social structures formed by individuals or organizations. On the Internet, social networks are websites where users can create personal pages and communities to communicate and disseminate information to a large number of people. More than half of Internet users are registered in at least one of the social networks, which indicates their popularity. Therefore, using them to promote libraries is a logical solution to find new readers and keep in touch with existing ones.
In Ukraine, the most popular sites are Facebook, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki and Twitter. They differ in structure and age statistics of participants: for example, more than half of registered Ukrainians in "VKontakte" are under 25 years old, while the audience of other networks belongs to the older age category.
Promotion through social networks allows to increase the library's reputation outside the subsidiary site, because it gives an additional opportunity to find potential users who under normal conditions may simply not be aware of the library's existence and useful services it provides.
Also, links and mentions in social networks of the library's website affect search results in search engines, for example, Yandex and Google, thanks to the "citation index" the site will be on higher positions in search engines, which makes it easier for people to find it among other sites of related topics. Networks also help to create a permanent audience of the site: subscribers will regularly see updates on their news feed, and therefore are likely to return to the library's website and use the services offered.
Also, social networks make it easy to get feedback from readers due to the possibility to send a message to the library's page, in which they can express their opinion on the quality of the library's work, point out possible shortcomings, suggest ideas for better service, or ask a question that can be promptly answered by library staff.
The State Scientific Architectural and Construction Library named after V. Zabolotnyi (SSACL) actively uses the opportunities provided by social networks to maintain and develop its website. The library has created pages on Facebook, VKontakte and Twitter. All the library's news are published there and links to the full version of articles posted on the library's website are provided. "Facebook" is the most popular social network in the world and one of the most visited sites. Among the users are representatives from all over the world, including a large number of Ukrainians, who are potential users of the library. "VKontakte" is the most popular network among the CIS countries. It is distinguished by its youth audience, including students of architectural and construction universities, who may be interested in the subject matter of the V.H. Zabolotnyi DSNABB.
Social networks "Facebook" and "VKontakte" have mostly similar structure, where the library's page is formed in the form of a group, to which any users can subscribe and follow regular updates.
The peculiarity of Twitter is a significant limitation of the size of messages that can be published, so the structure encourages the shortest possible updates that will contain only a brief description of the news and a link to the full version. Also, due to the lack of opportunities to send private messages, this network is more specialized than other networks.
One of the features of networks is the constant flow of new information to users from friends, communities to which they are subscribed, etc. This leads to the need to keep up with the times when maintaining a library page: news quickly becomes outdated, and in the absence of constant updates, it is easy to get lost among other pages and groups.