Social Media Literacy for Patrons in the Information Age: A New Role for Academic Librarians in Nigeria

Abstract

Social media tools such as blogs, wikis and social networking sites offer the promise of a more vibrant, social and participatory Internet with exciting services opportunities and challenges for academic librarians. Information professionals can capitalise on social media use tendencies of the 21st century dynamic user and engage them on the same platform. Librarians can lay a foundation for academic utilisation of social media by orientating users on the roles of attention, participation, collaboration, network awareness and critical consumption in social media. Moreover, Nigeria academic libraries are starved of some of the needed funds; librarians can capitalise on availability of social media and exploit it for effective service delivery in current awareness services, selected dissemination of information and knowledge sharing. The likely problem of technophobic librarians, teaching of curriculum not tailored to meet proliferation of digital technologies, and librarians with apathetic attitudes towards ICT were identified. Among the recommendations made are that, librarians should not wait for the government or employers to train them in ICT, they can self-finance basic training in ICT on part-time mode of study. Furthermore, library schools should continually review ICT courses offered to ensure it is applicable to librarianship to broaden the intellectual capacity and cognitive bandwidth of Librarians in training ICT wise, as the 21st century academic library users are dynamic in their use of ICT.