5 This diverged sharply from professionals in the public relations industry, where 52 percent were measuring use. Bettina Peacemaker, Sue Robinson, and Emily Hurst found that only 27 percent of libraries surveyed had a system of evaluation and measurement to determine effectiveness and time invested in social networking sites. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to determine the return on investment (ROI) for the staff hours required to engage on a daily basis in virtual communities. 3 Young adults, however, increasingly turn to SNS for their everyday information needs, forcing businesses “to leverage in everything they do, whether it’s servicing their clients or talking to them or listening to what they care about.” 4 Academic librarians need to reconsider whether SNS should be integrated more deliberately into reference practice and which applications provide the best opportunities for extending services and interacting with students. 2 Jill Benn and Dawn McLoughlin found many instances of SNS being used to promote reference services but few examples of integration. This is likely because the overall number of interactions occurring through SNS has been lower in studies that compared usage to more established methods for answering questions such as e-mail or instant messaging. 1 Rarely, though, are these tools studied within the library literature as a component of reference services.
After all, 90 percent of young adults ages 18–29 used social networking sites in 2015. Increasingly, academic libraries have acknowledged the role of social networking sites (SNS) in the lives of their target audiences by creating Twitter or Facebook accounts to provide outreach and general information to their users. It argues that libraries should be more intentional about monitoring emerging information ecosystems such as Yik Yak to share their knowledge with users and to identify potential issues with library services. This study is an exploratory analysis of the postings on Yik Yak in the geographic area of a four-year, regional public institution during the 2015–2016 academic year. One such SNS is Yik Yak, a mobile app launched in 2013 that allows users to pose anonymous questions in a limited geographic range, such as a college or university campus. Even as reference departments field fewer questions requiring in-depth resources or responses, librarians have not consistently examined how SNS might be employed for simple informational inquiries from university students who already view those sites as information-seeking tools. Should We Yak Back? Information Seeking among Yik Yak Users on a University CampusĪcademic librarians have embraced tools such as e-mail or chat that allow them to deliver reference services virtually, but not many studies have advocated for using social networking sites (SNS) as a medium for answering user questions.