Researching public library programs through Facebook events: a new research approach

TY - JOUR

T1 - Researching public library programs through Facebook events

T2 - a new research approach

AU - Mathiasson, Mia Høj

AU - Jochumsen, Henrik

N1 - The research reported in this paper is part of the international research project Archives, Libraries and Museum, Digitalization, and the Public Sphere (ALMPUB) funded by the Research Council of Norway.

PY - 2019/6/21

Y1 - 2019/6/21

N2 - Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on a new approach for researching public library programs through Facebook events. The term public library programs refers to publicly announced activities and events taking place within or in relation to a public library. In Denmark, programs are an important part of the practices of public libraries and have been growing in both number and variety within recent years. Design/methodology/approach: The data for the study presented in this paper consists of Facebook events announcing public library programs. In the study of this data, grounded theory is used as a research strategy and methods of web archiving are used for collecting both the textual and the visual content of the Facebook events. Findings: The combination of Facebook events as data, grounded theory as a research strategy and web archiving as methods for data collection proves to be useful for researching the format and content of public library programs, which have already taken place. Research limitations/implications: Only a limited number of Facebook events are examined and the context is restricted to one country. Originality/value: This paper presents a promising approach for researching public library programs through social media content and provides new insights into both methods and data as well as the phenomenon investigated. Thereby, this paper contributes to a conception of an under-developed researched area as well as a new approach for studying it.

AB - Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on a new approach for researching public library programs through Facebook events. The term public library programs refers to publicly announced activities and events taking place within or in relation to a public library. In Denmark, programs are an important part of the practices of public libraries and have been growing in both number and variety within recent years. Design/methodology/approach: The data for the study presented in this paper consists of Facebook events announcing public library programs. In the study of this data, grounded theory is used as a research strategy and methods of web archiving are used for collecting both the textual and the visual content of the Facebook events. Findings: The combination of Facebook events as data, grounded theory as a research strategy and web archiving as methods for data collection proves to be useful for researching the format and content of public library programs, which have already taken place. Research limitations/implications: Only a limited number of Facebook events are examined and the context is restricted to one country. Originality/value: This paper presents a promising approach for researching public library programs through social media content and provides new insights into both methods and data as well as the phenomenon investigated. Thereby, this paper contributes to a conception of an under-developed researched area as well as a new approach for studying it.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - folkebibliotek

KW - arrangementer

KW - forskningsmetode

KW - grounded theory

KW - Social media content

KW - Facebook

KW - Web archiving

U2 - 10.1108/jd-08-2018-0137

DO - 10.1108/jd-08-2018-0137

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0022-0418

VL - 75

SP - 857

EP - 875

JO - Journal of Documentation

JF - Journal of Documentation

IS - 4

ER -