Facebook and Twitter in Public Libraries: Are North Carolina Public Libraries Selling Themselves as Community Information Providers in the Face of Social and Environmental Disasters?

This paper examines how well North Carolina public libraries use Facebook and Twitter to portray themselves as community information providers in the face of social and environmental disasters. As technology connects people more and more on a daily basis, public libraries are continuing to connect themselves to patrons as well by using social media to extend, and even create, new services that they would not have been able to twenty years ago, or at least not as well as new technologies and software are allowing them to now. However, in the face of community strife, emergencies, disasters of a social, environmental, political, or economic nature, can public libraries use the power through alternative avenues to reach out to their communities and provide as unbiased resources as possible?Master of Science in Library Scienc