Polish University Libraries and Their Facebook Activity Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic (in 2019-2021)

Thesis/Objective: The primary purpose of this paper is to present the results of a a quantitative comparative analysis of the activity of 18 Polish public university libraries on the social networking site Facebook in the period before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal of this research research is to evaluate the use of Facebook by university libraries and to assess the popularity of the content shared by these organizations. Research methods: The methods study involved the use of quantitative approaches, with a commercial online tool the Karma Fanpage service for social media analytics monitoring being used to collect data from individual fanpages. This service enabled the data collected to be processed for statistical purposes. The data collected were then analyzed using a spreadsheet. Data collection was done separately for the pre-pandemic and pandemic periods. Results/Conclusions: All Polish university libraries (part of public universities) used Facebook as part of their daily activities, both before and during the pandemic. However, Facebook use varied across institutions, for example, in terms of types of posts (graphic posts, posts with links, video posts). Importantly, libraries did not use Facebook in the same way. It is clear that for some institutions, it was one of the primary tools for library marketing and also for communicating with users. It seems important to note that the libraries belonging to the largest universities in Poland were not the only ones most active and able to mobilize the largest number of users to respond to the published posts. Based on the number of posts published by each library, it could be seen that there was not always a correlation between the size of the university, of which the library is a part, and its activity on Facebook.