Who disseminates academic library information on Twitter?

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate information dissemination by academic hbraries through an analysis of retweet users on Twitter. Academic libraries have posted a variety of information for their patrons on Twitter; however, we know little about who has an interest in academic library tweets and to whom the information is disseminated. To this end, we explored a network of academic libraries by analyzing categories of users who are involved in retweet activity. The results show which user groups disseminate academic library information. We collected 571 retweets and 506 retweet users from 10 academic libraries' Twitter accounts, and categorized them into 12 groups. The results indicate that the primary groups disseminating the tweets of academic libraries are units within universities and students.