feb14_b.indd


February 2014 101 C&RL News

C & R L  S p o t l i g h tSarah Steiner

Sarah Steiner is C&RL social media editor and honors, 
nursing, and virtual services librarian at Georgia State 
University, e-mail: ssteiner@gsu.edu

Last month, C&RL successfully moved to online 
only publication. In order to provide you with 
a fully engaging online experience with C&RL’s 
research, Facebook (www.facebook.com 
/collegeandresearchlibraries ) and Twitter (twit-
ter.com/CRL_ACRL ) accounts are now being 
actively maintained. You’re invited to join in 
the conversation. 

C&RL’s social media outlets feature updates 
on preprint and current articles, book reviews, 
highlights of past articles from the journal’s nearly 
75-year history, and exclusive content from C&RL 
editors and researchers. C&RL readers will be 
able to engage in discussions on journal contents 
with authors and members of the editorial board, 
as well as share their thoughts on cutting-edge 
library research. These weekly posts and informal 
conversations are being supported by free online 
fora, which are hosted through Google Hangouts. 
Each forum will bring together C&RL study authors 
and expert panelists to discuss recently published 
research. Learn more and view the first session at 
http://crl.acrl.org/site/misc/fora.xhtml.

If you’re interested in scholarly research 
on social media, as well, there are three 
available C&RL preprints (http://crl.acrl.org 
/content/early/recent) that focus on social media 
as it relates to teaching and learning.

• “YouTube Has Changed Everything”? 
Music Faculty, Librarians, and Their Use and 
Perceptions of YouTube, by Kirstin Dougan, 
anticipated publication date: July 1, 2014.

YouTube’s accessibility, ease of use, and 
depth of content are strong lures for music stu-
dents. But do music teaching faculty and librar-
ians encourage this, and do they use it in their 
own research, teaching, and work? This study 
surveyed more than 9,000 music faculty and 300 
music librarians in the United States. It discovered 
that faculty rank is at times a factor in faculty use 
of YouTube for teaching and research, but not 
always in expected ways. It also found that faculty 
and librarians do not entirely share perspectives 

concerning the quality of YouTube’s content, 
metadata, or copyright concerns.

• Undergraduates’ Use of Social Media as 
Information Sources, by Kyung-Sun Kim, Sei-
Ching Joanna Sin, and EunYoung Yoo-Lee, 
anticipated publication date: July 1, 2014.

Social media have become increasingly 
popular among different user groups. Although 
used for social purposes, some social media 
platforms (e.g., Wikipedia) have been emerging 
as important information sources. Focusing on 
undergraduate students, a survey was conducted 
to investigate the following: 1) which social me-
dia platforms are used as information sources, 
2) what are the main reasons for using these 
social media platforms for information seeking, 
and 3) what kinds of actions are taken to evalu-
ate the quality of the information gained from 
such sources. The study provides a snapshot 
of current trends in terms of the use of social 
media as information sources. It also sheds lights 
on the actions that the undergraduate students 
took to evaluate information from social media, 
including social networking and video sharing 
sites that have rarely been studied previously. 
Based on the findings, suggestions are made 
for information literacy programs and roles of 
librarians and educators. 

• Factors Affecting Adoption of Facebook: 
An Exploratory Study of the LIS Community Per-
spective in Israel, by Noa Aharony, anticipated 
publication date: January 1, 2015.

This study seeks to investigate whether infor-
mation professionals, as well as LIS students, are 
ready to assimilate Facebook in their work and 
educational environments. The study uses the 
Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as well as 
some characteristics of the “Big Five” model of 
personality as a theoretical base from which to 
predict factors that may influence the adoption 
of Facebook by information professionals as 
well as by LIS students. Findings reveal that the 
TAM, as well as other personal characteristics, 
significantly predict the likelihood of Facebook 
use, and highlight the importance of individual 
characteristics when considering technology 
acceptance.