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REFEREED ARTICLE

Facebook as a classroom management solution

Matthew Loving and Marilyn Ochoa
University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA
Abstract
Purpose A recent for-credit, library research class at the University of Florida experimented with the use of the social networking site Facebook as an online course management software solution for their research methodology class. This paper seeks to examine this issue. Design/methodology/approach Using Facebook Groups to set up a class page, instructors made a case study of the exibility, functionality and utility of using Facebook as an academic communication channel with students. Findings The resulting paper reviews the literature of Facebooks academic uses to date. Originality/value This lies in the innovation of pushing forward with incorporating portions of social networking sites into the classroom and the University of Florida librarians experiences during the semester. Keywords Social networking sites, Classrooms, Communication, United States of America, Librarians, Libraries Paper type Case study

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Received 16 June 2010 Reviewed 2 November 2010

Introduction College students have a myriad of reasons for visiting Facebooks online social-networking site. Whether it is connecting with friends and family (regardless of location), keeping up with the latest events and happenings or making new friends with similar interests, Facebook allows for one-stop social networking. Unlike other social networking sites, Facebook has its roots in academia and remains unique in its organization of academic networks (e.g. University of Florida) wherein faculty and students are connected by their association and must possess an edu extension in their user e-mail to gain access. In recent years, university librarians have also become friends of Facebook, using bundles of evolving functions to promote, organize and improve access to their collections. Taking a stroll through the busy computer labs and campus libraries of American universities and colleges, it is easy to understand librarians interest in Facebook. It would require blinders to ignore the ubiquitous success of Mark Zuckerbergs dorm room creation that has poll vaulted him from Harvard drop-out to overnight billionaire, hailed at times as his generations Bill Gates. On any given day 70 million users log on to Facebook to view proles and post information about themselves and others. The University of Florida (UF) Smathers Libraries has for many years offered a library research methods credit course for undergraduate Honors students. The class has increasingly become a venue for integrating new ideas, new themes and new technologies into the classroom. In the past the class has incorporated HTML

New Library World Vol. 112 No. 3/4, 2011 pp. 121-130 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0307-4803 DOI 10.1108/03074801111117023

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development, Web 2.0 technologies and even elements of the humanities such as Borges, The Book of Sand, to bring a forward-looking, creative quality to the basic content of each class. In planning the Spring 2008 UF Honors research methods course, library faculty began experimenting with the idea of using Facebook groups in place of other course management software (CMS) options available on campus. Instructors realized that asking college students to visit online university course sites differs greatly from bringing the course site to them. This was the initial line of thought that led to appropriating a native Facebook functionality into a cobbled together CMS to support the research methods class. The following describes the reasons why Facebook groups was chosen to facilitate basic course management functions and also a best practices presentation of how a social networking application was adapted to accommodate basic academic course management. Literature review Most articles on Facebooks use in academic libraries (or libraries in general) tend to focus on explaining what the site is and why librarians may want to use it to connect with students and faculty. In a review of the literature, several articles have been written on the use of social networking sites in promoting library services via Facebook; however relatively few mention the use of Facebook as a CMS in an academic setting. In fact, at the time of writing this article there were no articles published on the use of Facebook as a CMS solution for library bibliographic instruction or information literacy courses. One of the few articles at the time of writing which spoke directly to the appropriation of Facebook as a CMS tool was an article by Bosch (2009). The article notes that one of the most important advantages that Facebook has over other conventional CMS is that students use Facebook in a much more consistent fashion that includes logging in and staying logged on even late at night, weekends and during vacation and holidays. The Bosch (2009) article notes that there are already many ways of tapping into student interest in Facebook and many more are very likely to become available in the future. Bosch also explains that, in 2007, Facebook experimented with adding an online version of Blackboard CMS that allowed 95 percent of Blackboards functionality to migrate to a Facebook environment. This experiment was quickly phased out in 2008 and Facebook is said to be currently working on other educational platforms for its web site. To date, several other outside vendors such as Podcast have created applications that provide instructors with CMS options that synchronize with Facebook. Facebook has proven to be universally addictive for college-aged students who tend to spend considerable amounts of their time maintaining social connections, making new acquaintances and maintaining a broad base of friends during their years of study. In a 2007 editorial piece written for Reference Services Review, Mitchell and Watstein (2007, p. 523) posed an important question to academic librarians with regards to connecting with students by meeting them on their own terms and preferences:
Do you understand how intrinsic Facebook is among younger scholars in their teaching and learning? Its popularity among NetGens and Millennials and those that are coming up behind them is well documented. Whether or not you get Facebook or self-identify as an antisocial

loner, the fact of the matter is that Facebook represents one of the many communities our users occupy.

The editorial heralds the endless possibilities for librarians to reach out in new ways to users via Facebook but also cautions that even while librarians attempt take advantage of such untapped terrain, they are at risk of becoming interlopers in their space. Librarians and professors seem squarely out of step in many Facebook friendships and at constant risk of imposing on the privacy and patience of the same students it was meant to attract. Survey results cited by Graham et al. (2009) show that most librarians are incorporating individual Facebook proles (77.4 percent), group pages (56.6 percent) and event information (47.2 percent) to promote their libraries and various services or special events. This study revealed also that 90.2 percent of librarians who responded were using Facebook in hopes of better communicating with student populations. Of respondents 53 percent noted in the surveys nal question that they either planned to use or will continue using Facebook to improve outreach to students. Penn State University, for example, has already developed an application allowing users access to their catalog from their institutional Facebook page. These data points seem promising in support of the idea of creating bibliographic instruction pages from Facebook group pages to achieve better communication with students in library orientations and more in-depth research method and subject area courses. Given the numbers of students that are using Facebook and the amount of time that many spend on the web site, it may be no longer possible to ignore the latent synergy Facebook holds for academic libraries. The fundamental question of whether Facebook and social networking sites pose more of a distraction from academic pursuits than a conduit towards educational goals is at the heart of an article from Selwyn (2009). This article shows that educators have in large part failed in the past when aspiring to reappropriate student interest in an increasingly popular communication channel. With such online phenomena it is never clear whether the sites popularity rests rmly mired in one of the most basic pleasures of all: that of not working on work. Selwyns (2009, p. 159) study focuses on three basic questions concerning the academic use of Facebook and other social networking sites:
When and for what purposes were students using Facebook? What evidence was there for Facebook use contributing to the increased (dis)engagement of students with their university studies? What can be said to be new about the nature of outcomes of students use of Facebook?

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The basic methodology of this study was to observe wall postings (some 68,169 in all) of a group of 612 publicly accessible student Facebook pages over a given period of time and then to sort those for the 453 percent that pertained to academic study. The research showed a further breakdown of the academic-related Facebook communication into the following ve categories: (1) Recounting and reecting on the university experience. (2) Exchange of practical information. (3) Exchange of academic information. (4) Displays of supplication and/or disengagement. (5) Banter (i.e. exchanges of humour and nonsense). (Selwyn, 2009, p 161).

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A reading of the postings is generally what one might expect from students sharing their experiences, vital information and frustrations with academic life in a very informal setting of their peers. That so few of the recorded transactions were at all concerned with academic life is noted as an important nding overall of the research. Selwyns study results underline the importance of Facebook in its role of doing the facework of sorting through the complicated identity politics of student life with peers with who they are likely to share an important off-line emotional bond. Facebooks facility in students reactions to their role in the academic architecture is seen as key and the author summarizes his study with the following suggestion:
Rather than attempting to appropriate Facebook for educationally appropriate or valid uses, or else regulate students use through coercion or surveillance, university authorities and educators are perhaps best advised to allow these practices to continue unabated and rmly backstage (Selwyn, 2009, p. 172).

Selwyns nal take on Facebook is well noted and shared in many ways, but for the purposes of UFs appropriation of the social networking site, it was felt that cautiously moving forward and experimenting directly was worth the risk of discovering a Facebook middle ground. Miller and Jensen (2007, p. 18) provide an interesting critique of Facebook Groups, targeting the Groups function as the weakest form of Facebook communication their thought being that Groups represent a simplistic expression of one idea or opinion and are typically only visited one time and then easily forgotten:
Facebook managers encouraged librarians to replace their deleted institutional user proles with new personal proles and to form groups to promote library services to patrons. We disagree with this approach. As daily users, we think that a group is one of the weakest Facebook communication methods. In general, becoming part of a group is just a simple way to express an opinion.

On the contrary, the following UF Libraries cast study will show Facebook groups can also serve as an appropriate and functional class page to which students are drawn back in order to submit course work, to stay informed about course deadlines and objectives, and to communicate with other class members and the instructor. Miller and Jensen (2007) do, however, present some excellent ways in which regular Facebook pages can be used by academic librarians, including joining classes listed through Facebook that you will be working with during the semester (instructional sessions, individual reference interviews, etc), displaying your prole during instruction sessions and encouraging students to friend you or otherwise seek you out for further assistance and friending new students that you meet during fall welcome festivals by having a laptop available or through a sign-up sheet. The academic promise and potential of Facebook are at times marred by the sites inherent intrusiveness into the lives of its users. Many features in fact have proven to be highly controversial with regard to personal privacy concerns, invoking large responses (e.g. Students Against Facebook[1]). However, with regard to privacy issues and Facebook, Mack et al. (2007) suggest that librarians are often much too hung up on certain aspects of online privacy that students in large part do not share. Mack et al. (2007) article is of particular interest in view of the recent wave of government and public criticism with regard to Facebooks confusing array of privacy controls which includes 50 privacy settings and 170 privacy options that, to date, have kept many users at arms length from making important adjustments to their accounts. As a result

of Facebooks push to provide third party companies with expanded access to user data, the company has drawn both the ire and condemnation of frustrated users who do not understand the ner points of how such information gathering works or their own options to control it. Online privacy is a universal concern for all librarians when it comes to social networks. Charnigo and Barnett-Ellis (2007) published the results of an academic librarian survey, which asked librarians to share their thoughts, concerns and insights with regard to Facebooks usage in academic library settings. The overall impression of respondents was that librarians in general remain in large part uncertain about the role of Facebook in libraries and most have strong concerns with regard to the online privacy issues it raises for their patrons. This article also reported that librarians appear to be most comfortable using Facebook as consummate outsiders, using the site mostly as a way of peering in at the lives of the students they serve as patrons and trying to gain a better understanding of them as information customers. Koerwer (2007) provides an important reminder of the thin line that faculty and instructors must walk by being accessible to students via Facebook. Perhaps the biggest reason of those who remain reluctant to sign onto Facebook in the rst place is wrapped up in the complexities of issues of online privacy posed by social networking sites and their basic functionality. Koerwer (2007, p. 40) counsels librarians in the following excerpt:
Im a summer intern at Information Today, Inc. and when I read upcoming stories about librarians using Facebook, I immediately bristled. It seemed like another instance of adults arriving too late to a fad, like a soccer mom wearing a Pikachu T-shirt. After further consideration, however, I decided that theres no reason why a medium like Facebook couldnt work for librarians purposes, if they went about it in the right way.

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This article goes on to list a series of dos and donts for librarians on Facebook such as: do not bore group members with unimportant updates, never friend someone who is not one of your library assistants, and do not be discouraged if it takes a while for students to warm up to your Facebook presence. Conversely, sharing certain aspects of facultys private lives with students may have added benets to connecting with students. Mazer et al. (2007) study on Facebooks potential educational value aimed to identify the positive or negative outcomes of student exposure to the more personable image of professors that social networking sites inherently afford (expressions of self-disclosure) to their users. The research involved three teaching assistants sharing high, low and medium amounts of personal information about themselves with their students via Facebook. The highest level of self-disclosure included candid images of the instructor in social settings and with family in public locations, while the lowest was restricted to a face-shot of the graduate instructor. Student participants were then asked to form opinions about what it would be like to participate in each of the three classes based on these Facebook pages. The paper does an excellent job in pointing out conventional psychological boundaries that exist between professors and students and aspects of social networking communication that may help to soften these traditional boundaries as described in the following quote:
Student perceptions of a teachers credibility and their reports of motivation and affective learning may also be affected by what the teacher discloses on Facebook. The number of photographs and the amount of information provided on the virtual social network may positively or negatively alter student perceptions. Much like when a teacher self-discloses

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face to face in the classroom, the comments made by the teachers Facebook friends, the special interest groups the teacher is afliated with on Facebook, and the personal information the teacher discloses in his or her Facebook biography all may affect students perceptions of the teacher (Mazer et al., 2007, p. 4).

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The self-disclosure of professors on Facebook is likened to humorous anecdotes or stories used to clarify information in a classroom setting. The positive student outcomes with regard to the classroom environment, affective learning and student motivation are measurable and appear to be important. Connell (2009) studied rst-year students at Valparaiso University on the premise of academic librarians insinuating themselves into social networking communities where students are known to gather. One of the rst concerns addressed in the article are issues of privacy on Facebook. The article brings out the fact that users have a myriad of options other than simply friending or defriending (yes, this is an option) others on Facebook. Privacy settings have an elaborate choice of combinations when it comes to deciding on who will be able to access all or parts of a users prole. As well as being able to rene types of users (undergraduates, graduates, faculty, etc.), the author also notes that settings exist (now greatly simplied) which may help preserve student privacy and bolster healthy student-teacher relationships by limiting what can be seen online:
If Facebook users want even more privacy, they can enable the limited prole feature. Users can designate certain individuals who should only have partial access to their prole. For example, if a student wanted to be Facebook friends with a librarian in order to receive updates about the library but did not want the librarian to have access to all prole information, the student could add that librarian to his or her limited prole list. The student would alter their limited prole settings and decide what the librarian would be able to access (pictures, personal information, friends, and so on) (Connell, 2009, p. 26).

As well as explaining the ner points of privacy settings, Connell (2009) underlines basic but often overlooked aspects of netiquette such as the difference between posting comments on a persons public wall versus sending them a private inbox message. University of Florida case study At the University of Florida (UF) several online learning systems are available to support in-class instruction including WebCT, Blackboard and Sakai. In planning to teach an innovative three credit course on research methodology for the Universitys Honors Program in support of the Honors thesis project, it was decided that a novel approach to the classs organization would best suit course objectives. In evaluating the choices of CMS available on campus, instructors felt that in the spirit of innovation from which the course initiated, it would be appropriate to challenge existing accepted CMS and to incorporate an unlikely tool to provide online course management possibilities. Recognizing that Web 2.0 technologies, were heavily used by undergraduate students, there was an interest in experimenting by substituting the functionality of WebCT, BlackBoard, and other CMS, with the growing popularity of social networking sites, such as Facebook, and MySpace. General CMS functions that needed to be retained were the ability to accommodate discussions, send group e-mails, update announcements and to provide an online forum that did not require additional software or other downloads for students to utilize. After taking into consideration several online options, Facebook was chosen specically for several of its features that could be used (or appropriated) to support the

electronic classroom instruction expectations listed previously. It was also decided that Facebooks unparalleled popularity among students gave it an important edge over all other options in terms of improving student/teacher communication channels. Moulaisons (2009) comments concerning Facebooks principal advantages over e-mail highlights one area where the communication advantage Facebook provides in the classroom becomes an issue for further study and debate in academia. Moulaison (2009) provides a brief summary of her Fullbright year abroad at the Ecole des Sciences de lInformation (ESI) in Morocco. While overseas, the author found it useful to communicate with her advanced library students through Facebook rather than via e-mail due to the fact that many of them did not have searchable university e-mail addresses:
ESI does not provide students with e-mail accounts, so communicating via Facebook messages was a convenient way to stay in touch with students as they worked on papers, asked about upcoming speakers, and looked for resources. I must have received ten messages from the third-year library students during spring break while they were working on their big papers for our class (Moulaison, 2009, p. 62).

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Moulaisons (2009) experience is both practical and pertinent to UFs project in that it shows the global reach and convenience of the technology and underlines its capacity for improved teacher-student communication regardless of the location. Facebook communication is able to alleviate many communication problems prone in the academic environment due of its unparalleled global popularity with student populations. From its inception, UF librarians use of Facebook groups as a CMS substitute was an experiment centered on the issue of improving classroom communication. Communicating with students through messages and knowing that they are receiving and reading those messages gives the instructor a renewed condence in the classroom support environment. With other CMS options, it is not always clear which e-mail the students are using to receive such messages (school or personal) and what priority they assign to logging into a specic online tool that is likely only used for coursework. For the purposes of UFs research methods course, entitled Exploring the virtual library: researching, evaluating and building online, a rst step in incorporating Facebook into the online course offering was to choose a functionality of the site that would best support course management needs. This eventually led to narrowing down the choices to using regular Facebook pages for the class or opting for a Facebook groups page. Facebook groups and pages differ in that groups may often have multiple administrators and are meant to foster discussions around a particular topic area, while pages allow entities such as public gures and organizations to communicate and broadcast information to their fans. In the case of UFs for-credit academic course, there was no perceived need to communicate openly to the entire Facebook community or its sub networks about general topics of course interest. Contrary to this idea, the group settings gave instructors the ability to create a closed environment for their students with the ability to communicate privately about assignments, questions and topics of discussion related to the very specic subjects covered in the course syllabus. For these reasons and others, Facebook groups became the most logical choice to support UFs research methods class. An advantage was that Facebook groups are easy to use and can be easily created by anyone with even the most cursory understanding of Facebook or other similar online environments. Designated group administrators (usually the

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instructor/instructors) control privacy settings, the inviting and approving of group members as well as the groups Facebook content. Facebook groups can be both local or within a network (such as a university) or global and span the entire Facebook social network. Whenever a group is created, there is an option of making it open, closed or private. Facebook makes it explicit what is meant by private: This group is secret. The group will not appear in search results or in the proles of its members. Membership is by invitation only, and only members can see the group information and content. For the purposes of the UF class, the private group setting was chosen (this is highly suggested) to ensure a closed environment for student postings, class assignments, to ask questions freely and reply to group discussions. Instructors wanted the course content not to appear in searches or be viewable by non-members. Also, by using the private group setting, the name of the group did not display on faculty or student Facebook proles. Thinking of students, an important initial consideration before fully committing to using a Facebook groups page is to verify that all members of the class have a Facebook account or are otherwise not opposed to signing into a Facebook groups page for the purposes of the course. Another very important privacy concern that was immediately encountered was how students felt about professors having access to portions of their Facebook page content. Not long after inviting students to the classs group page, instructors noticed that many of student prole images changed to more toned down versions of their former prole pictures. Images morphed quickly into modestly attired, sobered up versions of former depictions under the instructors virtual gaze. Even so, the Mazer et al. (2007) ndings seem to be very applicable to the UFs use of Facebook in that by making some elements of self-disclosure available to students added another dimension to the course and gave the class a more personable setting in general. Also, putting names with faces became much easier for the instructors, providing an easy reference via students page image which in most instances is a recognizable personal photo. Incorporating Facebook groups into a bibliographic instruction course is a simple and brief process; the steps taken to create UFs Facebook component included simply going to the Facebook groups application and using the Create a group link in the upper right corner of the page. On the following page, descriptive information about the class group is added along with group name, description and group type. For these considerations, the name of the course was used as the name of the group page and a course description was subsequently added in an appropriate information eld and the setting Student groups/academic groups was designated for group category. After creating a group, the instructor is automatically listed as both an administrator and the groups creator. A group administrator, or admin, controls the membership and content and can also, by using the option for multiple administrators, make other instructors administrators as well. Admins can send messages to the group, appoint other admins and edit group information and settings. Each administrator is able to control settings related to the groups privacy and add a group picture. Any subsequent changes to settings are easily accomplished by clicking Edit group on the groups main page. The group administrator can then invite members to join the group by clicking on Invite people to join or by sending an invitation from the group to their student e-mail addresses, or if they are already on Facebook, by inviting them directly through Facebook. They can also remove current members and other admins of shorter tenure.

A major consideration with regard to incorporating Facebook into an academic setting is dening the preferred method of communication and delivery of assignments using Facebook and remembering to communicate clearly that information to students at the earliest possibility. Otherwise students may post class related information directly to facultys personal Facebook pages rather than the class group page. These kinds of occurrences can be greatly diminished by syllabus instructions and a reinforced discussion in class on how projects and assignments should be turned in via regular e-mail or posted to the class group page directly rather than the instructors Facebook page. Letting students know the preferred use of the Facebook Group page is also an ideal time to educate them on ways they can limit their exposure to you and their classmates via Facebook privacy settings. Conclusion The drawbacks to appropriating technology are obvious and plentiful. Yet even in the spirit of experimentation, UF faculty found that the tradeoffs between the appropriation of Facebook as an online classroom management solution and using a conventional CMS were relatively few and in many ways worth the necessary workarounds. Facebook allows instructors to distribute documents (via posting and messaging), administer discussion lists, conduct live chat and handle some assignment posting as long as it is alright to cut and paste and share between students. Areas where Facebook cannot compete with other CMS is in grading, assignment uploading and online testing. For these aspects of conventional CMS functionality, the instructor must simply rely on e-mailing, spreadsheets and other non-integrated tools to support course management with unsophisticated patchwork of satellite applications. The decision that remains after comparing and contrasting the technology is whether certain inconveniences for instructors are outweighed by large gains in classroom communication and particularly in the areas of student online participation and buy-in. For the purposes of UFs research methods course, the sheer popularity of Facebook and a willingness to make the rst move gave the research methodology class a greatly improved level of communication that was reected in student interest and in all classroom interactions, both real and virtual.
Note 1. The Students Against Facebook News Feed, created in September 2006 by Northwestern undergraduate Benjamin Parr was a Facebook group aimed at protesting one of the social networking sites newest features which allowed members to closely track even the smallest of one anothers actions on the site. The constant, uncontrollable updating was seen as highly intrusive and, at its peak, motivated as many as 740,000 members to join Parrs protest group. A few days following the groups creation, Facebook conceded to the growing criticism by changing the feature to allow members to limit what actions are posted for view. www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1532225,00.html www.newsweek.com/2006/09/24/ facebook-s-news-feed.html References Bosch, T.E. (2009), Using online social networking for teaching and learning: Facebook use at the University of Cape Town, Communication: South African Journal for Communication Theory and Research, Vol. 35 No. 2, p. 185.

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Charnigo, L. and Barnett-Ellis, P. (2007), Checking out Facebook.com: the impact of a digital trend on academic libraries, Information Technology & Libraries, Vol. 26 No. 1, pp. 23-34. Connell, R.S. (2009), Academic libraries, Facebook and MySpace, and student outreach: a survey of student opinion, Portal: Libraries and the Academy, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 25-36. Graham, J.M., Faix, A. and Hartman, L. (2009), Crashing the Facebook party: one librarys experiences in the students domain, Library Review, Vol. 58 No. 3, pp. 228-36. Koerwer, S. (2007), One teenagers advice to adults on how to avoid being creepy on Facebook, Computers in Libraries, Vol. 27 No. 8, September, p. 40, available at: Academic OneFile via Gale: http://nd.galegroup.com/gtx/start.do?prodIdAONE&userGroupNamegain 40375 (accessed June 14, 2010). Mack, D., Behler, A. and Roberts, B. (2007), Reaching students with Facebook: data and best practices, Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship, Vol. 8 No. 2, Summer. Mazer, J.P., Murphy, R.E. and Simonds, C.J. (2007), Ill see you on Facebook: the effects of computer-mediated teacher self-disclosure on student motivation, affective learning, and classroom climate. This project was funded in part by a teaching-learning development grant from the center for teaching, learning, and technology at Illinois State University, Communication Education, Vol. 56 No. 1, pp. 1-17. Miller, S. and Jensen, L. (2007), Connecting and communicating with students on Facebook (cover story), Computers in Libraries, Vol. 27 No. 8, pp. 18-22, available at: Business Source Premier database. Mitchell, E. and Watstein, S.B. (2007), The places where students and scholars work, collaborate, share and plan: endless possibilities for us!, Reference Services Review, Vol. 35 No. 4, pp. 521-4. Moulaison, H.L. (2009), Facebook A LA FULBRIGHT: after taking the road to Morocco, a librarian connects with her students online, American Libraries, Vol. 40 No. 10, p. 60. Selwyn, N. (2009), Faceworking: exploring students education-related use of Facebook, Learning, Media, & Technology, Vol. 34 No. 2, pp. 157-74. About the authors Matthew Loving is a PhD candidate and subject bibliographer working with the University of Floridas Smathers Libraries. As Romance Languages Librarian, he works closely with American and international scholars to support specic bibliographic research projects as well as promoting information exchange across cultural boundaries. He is currently a member of CIFNAL, the WESS Research & Planning Committee and also serves as the French languages Coordinator for the Digital Library of the Caribbean project. Before arriving at UF, he worked with the American Library in Paris for a period of three years while obtaining a degree in French Literature and Culture from the University of Paris (IV)-Sorbonne. He is also a graduate of the University of South Floridas CAS School of Library and Information Science. Matthew Loving is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: mwloving@ad.u.edu Marilyn N. Ochoa is an Associate University Librarian and the Assistant Head of Education Library at the University of Florida. She actively supports the patrons of the College of Education and focuses her research on digital libraries, distance education programs and libraries, user access to services and use of information and educational technologies in libraries.

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