Polish university libraries social networking services during the COVID-19 pandemic spring term lockdown

During the spring 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, University libraries made available digital content of varying types. This article assesses the scope and breadth of content published by 18 Polish university libraries, how libraries compared in their approach to using social media, and the level of engagement and collaboration with patrons during a time when the physical library was closed. Data collection consisted of gathering social networking site information as used by Polish university libraries with the Fanpage Karma tool. The Fanpage Karma tool allowed the researcher to analyse and compare the fan pages of individual university library social networking sites. The tool simplifies the process to calculate key variables such as the number of user reactions to the library content; the number of posts, comments, likes, and dislikes; the average daily number of posts made; the most popular text, images, videos, links; and the kind of hashtags used by librarians. Findings indicate Polish university libraries most frequently used Facebook during the lockdown followed by Instagram and Twitter. To a much smaller extent, libraries also used YouTube. Not all Polish university libraries made equal use of social media during the lockdown despite the availability of content and ease of use.