Proceedings of the Annual Conference of CAIS (Canadian Association for Information Science)
DOI: 10.29173/cais1851
Abstract
This research presents a comparative review of hashtags in tweets posted by the two large Canadian public libraries, Edmonton Public Library (EPL) and Calgary Public Library (CPL), serving communities in the Province of Alberta. The descriptive statistics reveals variation between the two libraries in the number and types of hashtags. Both the libraries used a number of hashtags that had libraries’ names including initialism to contribute to their visibility, and local airport codes or the respective city names to establish their explicit and implicit associations with their geographical area of operations. The paper contributes to literature on the use of hashtags particularly in the context of Canadian public libraries. It will provide evidence-driven insights to other libraries on ways to create hashtags to strengthen their online presence, and digitally share information and promote events, programs and services.
Figure 1. Distribution of Hashtags in CPL and EPL Tweets Source: 10.29173/cais1851
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
