Using social networking software to promote digital libraries

Abstract

The impact of the social networks nowadays is impossible to ignore. Sales companies turn towards them as they acknowledge the opportunities provided by the socio-emotional value of the information that spreads quickly within the communities of these networks. Facebook, at more than 600 million users, is the largest of these, to date. We made a study on this very network, in order to observe the way an application can spread among its users for a week, without using any paid publicity. The use of Facebook's framework for the promotion of digital libraries can constitute an opportunity and a challenge at the same time. In this paper, we propose an architecture to enable the promotion of digital libraries within the social network environment. The results prove that such an approach can have a significant impact in the online community.