Abstract

 tools in marketing library and information services, are the solutions to the challenges in utilizing social media for the marketing of library and information services. The study also made recommendation such as; librarians using social media to promote library and information resources and services should be very caieful and mindful ofwhat they post on social media because once a content is shared online, it might be very difficult to take it offline again and it will remain there for everybody to see and factors related to time pressure and competencies of staff need to be addressed in order to encourage libraries to take advantage of benefits offered by these web technologies. This research work investigated the Application of Social Media in Marketing of Library and Information Services in Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike. The study was guided by five objectives which includes to; identify the types ofsocial media tools used in MOUAU library to market their library and information services, identify what motivate/purpose ofthe usage of social media tools by staff and users of MOUAU library, find out the benefits of using social media for marketing of library and information services in MOUAU library, identify the challenges in utilizing social media for marketing of library and information services in MOUAU library, proffer solutions to the challenges in utilizing social media for marketing of library and information services in MOUAU library. A descriptive research design was used for the study. The area of the study was Abia State, Nigeria. The total population is 71 respondents consisting of the library staff of MOUAU library and all were sampled and used. The instrument for data collection was questionnaire. The instrument produced in accordance with the research questions, were face validated by the expert lecturer from the Department of Library and Information science, who is the researcher’s supervisor. The researcher distributed 71 copies of the questionnaire to the respondents personally and 57 copies were correctly filled and returned, representing 80.28% return rate. Frequency tables, and mean scores were used for data presentation and analysis. The results of the findings revealed that the types of social media tools used in MOUAU library to market their library and information services are; facebook, twitter, myspace, youtube, research gate, rich site summary, wikis, blog, linkedln, flickr, and online groups/forum; the purpose of usage of social media tools by staff of MOUAU library are; for marketing of library product and services, modernising the library image and e-reputation world wide, sharing useful links, sharing library news and events, tagging related resources, building discussion groups and collaborative work , research work , advertisement; the challenges in utilizing social media for marketing purposes in MOUAU library are; too many social media tools to learn, website is difficult to understand and use, available information is not authentic, low interest of librarians in learning and utilising social media, inadequate training opportunities for library staff, power failure, slow speed of internet, difficult to cope with the rapid growth of such websites, and lack of security and privacy. The study further revealed the organizing training for the library staff to inculcate the knowledge of the use of social media tools in marketing of library and information services in the digital era, librarians should endeavour to develop interest in learning and utilising social media tools in marketing library and information services, provision of alternative power supply to prevent power supply outage which alterates the use of social media tools in marketing library and information