Interesting survey of 330 students at the University of Michigan; the social networking question was just one question out of the survey. The rest of the survey is kind of interesting, too!
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QUESTION: If you could contact a librarian via Facebook or MySpace for help with your research, would you? If not, why?
Data/Analysis
A total of 23% of respondents stated that *yes* or *maybe* they would be interested in contacting a librarian via these two social networking sites.
Undergrads had a slightly higher than average percentage of 34%.
Nearly half of the total respondents stated they would not be interested, but for various reasons – the biggest reason being that they
feel the current methods (in-person, email, IM) are more than sufficient. 14% said no because they felt it was inappropriate or that Facebook/MySpace is a social tool, not a research tool.
http://onlinesocialnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/01/data-students-
facebook-library-outreach.html
Entire survey:
http://www.lib.umich.edu/usability/projects/ProjectReports/
WebSurvey_Fall2007.pdf