IUCAT available through Facebook

Former IU President Herman B Wells is still friends with several IU students, at least online.

His Facebook profile, created by IU librarians, is just one of the many approaches Wells Library employees are using to reach out and connect with the student community.

“It seems like worlds colliding. There’s your research self and your personal self,” said Carrie Donovan, an instructional services librarian at the Wells Library. “But people have their whole personas on Facebook, and it makes sense to have your academic self as part of that persona.”

As part of this multi-faceted approach to become more accessible, Wells Library staff members introduced an IUCAT Facebook application last month, allowing users to access and search IU’s online database of books.

By collaborating with other libraries, programmers created the application within a couple of hours and with little expense. Currently, 278 people belong to the application’s page, and officials said it is growing by about 50 followers a week. Official numbers and ratings are expected to be available quarterly, so the library does not have information yet about how effective the application has been thus far.

But librarians are optimistic.

“It is a way to give access to people in a place where they were working,” said Diane Dallis, associate dean for library academic services. “It increases awareness. For many students, they don’t have any idea what IUCAT is and it’s not in their consciousness to use the resources that are available to them.”

For now, the Facebook application is limited to the book collection. Online databases and electronic articles are not yet accessible, but Donovan hopes they soon will be and that students will be able to actively research and work directly from their Facebook profiles.

“It’s not a huge risk or anything,” Donovan said. “But it is a step in that direction of us going to the people instead of the people coming to us.”

Donovan said the library continues to expand and develop a technological presence within the IU academic community. A Twitter account keeps it in communication with specific academic departments, and newsletters, including the UITS Monitor, help inform the community of its technological advancements. But this Facebook application, Dallis and Donovan said, will prove useful to individual students.