Task Force on Social Networking Software

One of the first questions I had after the Task Force’s survey on social networking software was complete and the data in was, did a respondent’s age or library type have a relationship to their use of social software tools or their belief in their importance to the MLA? (Well, that was really more like 6 questions, wasn’t it?)

Starting with respondents’ answers to the blog-related questions, I used statistical software to create mosaic plots and contingency tables to help me answer my questions. Here’s what I found out:

• Library type and use of blogs
  • Hospital librarians are significantly more likely to never use blogs in their professional lives, whereas academic librarians are significantly more likely to use blogs daily in their professional lives (p <.0001)
  • The same trend holds true for blog use in personal life, but to a much lesser degree of significance (p=0.2370)–hospital librarians are slightly more likely to never use blogs and academic librarians slightly more likely to use blogs daily in their personal lives.
  • There is a very strong relationship between use of blogs in respondents’ personal and professional lives (p <.0001*)
• Belief of importance to the Medical Library Association
  • Academic librarians are more likely to think that blogs are very important for the Medical Library Association.
  • Hospital librarians are more likely to think that blogs are of little importance to the MLA.
  • There is a strong relationship between use of blogs in respondents’ personal lives and their belief in blogs’ importance to MLA (p <.0001*)
  • There is a stronger relationship between use of blogs in respondents’ professional lives and their belief in blogs’ importance to MLA (p <.0001*)
• Years experience and relationship to use and belief of importance to MLA
  • There is a very significant relationship between years experience and use of blogs in professional (p=.0018) and personal (p <.0001) lives.
  • Respondents with 3 years or less of library experience were twice as likely to use blogs daily in both their personal and professional lives than respondents with 11-20 or 21 or more years of experience.
  • Even though use of blogs differs greatly between groups with varying years of experience, there is very little variation in belief of importance of blogs to MLA. Respondents with 3 years or less experience were only very slightly more likely to find blogs very important or important to MLA.

*chi square suspect as more than 20% of squares had expected count less than 5

Mosiac Plots

For those of you who prefer a more visual look at these findings, here are some selected mosiac plots.

The mosaic plot above illustrates responses to the question “How often do you use blogs in your professional life?” by type of library. A response of “5″ indicates daily use; a response of “1″ indicates never used.

This plot shows the strong relationship between blog use in professional and personal life. The Y axis shows responses to use in professional life, and the X axis shows responses about use in personal life. A response of “5″ indicates daily use; a response of “1″ indicates never used.

This plot shows the breakdown of responses to the question, “What is your opinion of the use of blogs for sections, chapters, and SIGs of MLA?”, by respondents’ library type. A response of “5″ indicates very important; a response of “1″ indicates not important at all.

The plot above demonstrates the relationship between respondents’ use of blogs in their professional lives (Y axis) and their belief in blogs’ importance to MLA (X axis). On the Y axis (use of blogs), a response of “5″ indicates daily use; a response of “1″ indicates never used. On the X axis (belief of importance), a response of “5″ indicates very important; a response of “1″ indicates not important at all.

The two plots below demonstrate one of the most interesting findings–there is very little impact of years of library experience on the belief of importance of blogs to the MLA (first plot below). On the other hand, the second plot shows that there is a very large gap in actual use of blogs for professional reasons by years of library experience. In the first plot, a response of “5″ indicates very important; a response of “1″ indicates not important at all. In the second plot, a response of “5″ indicates daily use; a response of “1″ indicates never used.

Because this post is already lengthy, I will leave off posting the contingency tables. If anyone is interested in seeing the contingency tables, however, comment on this post! I can prepare a second post with the tables if there is demand.