A Study on the Usage Behavior of Middle-level Staff of Buddhist and Pali University on Facebook

The use of social media has increased in the recent era compared to the past. Social media is the collection of tools and, online spaces available for communication among individuals and groups. Easy access and accessible communication facilities, flexible languages, and ability to create free accounts are the main reasons for the popularity of Facebook (FB) among nations worldwide, including Sri Lankans. The library of the Buddhist and Pali University (BPU) of Sri Lanka wants to introduce online user groups to communicate and share library-related information through FB. Currently, Wi-Fi facilities are used to communicate with academic staff and higher-level administrative staff. Hence the problem affected was that the behaviour of the non-academic middle-level staff in an online environment is not understood. The primary objective of the study is to understand the behavior of the university non-academic middle-level staff in an online environment before introducing an online communication system for them. In addition, it is necessary to be aware of 'why and how' FB is used by the staff. The survey method was used to collect data using a questionnaire from the selected sample using a mixed method. An applied research type was adhered to conduct the study. Findings revealed that the primary purpose of the use of FB by BPU middle-level staff was to look forward 'for news'. The behavioral study proved that there are efficient users of FB and they are capable of sharing, delivering, liking, commenting, criticizing, and uploading the posts. However, they are not proficient in creating many exciting posts. The main problem that seems to affect them is 'unknown friend requests.' It was found that there is a significant association between gender and purpose, and gender and posting authentic personnel information. It was recommended to create online 'library user groups' for communication purposes and to hold IT training sessions for middle-level staff to improve their knowledge and skills in IT usage for library related activities.


Background of the Study
Buddhist and Pali University (BPU) Library uses traditional communication tools to communicate with library users, student and staff, as there are no proper infrastructure facilities available to support Internetbased communication in the library currently. BPU has taken several steps recently to establish proper networking facilities at the university.
Networking of library building, automation of library collection, building a digital archive, improving infrastructure facilities to conduct zoom classes, financial database, Faculty of Graduate Studies database with the support of Arthur C. Clarke Institution for Modern Technologies, are a few of them. Meanwhile, BPU recently initiated a project called the 'sustainable development' through the Ministry of Sustainable Development, Wildlife, and Regional Development. The project's primary purpose is to support a sustainable future by achieving sustainable goals (Gunasekera & Samarakoon, 2020). The library had to initiate several activities in the library to support achieving university goals. One goal is to introduce online communication user groups to support the said project and reduce paperwork, time and labour. Local researchers (Thuseethan & Vasanthapriyan, 2015), (Fernando, Abeysekera & Satgunalingam, 2017) have also reported the possibility of creating such groups and their usefulness to organizations, services, and business activities.
Further, Adetayo and Williams-ilemobola also state 'In recent years, Social Media (SM) has become a new tool in the delivery of library services in a rapid and dynamic pace' (Adetayo & Williams-ilemobola, 2021, p.3). Further, they emphasized the rapidity with which information of interest can be spread to a larger audience than traditional outlets like print media. The technology has become so popular that they now dominate the everyday personal and professional lives of millions of users and affect how libraries operate.
In addition, the BPU is trying to build a digital environment in the university for students and staff through several projects, and the library has to integrate membership profiles and lending activities in the future.
Therefore, the BPU library needs to create different online user groups which enable easy communication. The possibility of creating such groups and their usefulness has been emphasized by Taylor and Francis (2014); Fasola (2015). Moreover, researchers indicated that the effective use of SNS would enable libraries to gain various advantages, such as the promotion of library services and new ways to render instruction. There is a need for redesigning the services to meet the demands of their users to remain relevant and retain their place as information providers in this technological era. BPU library also need to shift from traditional communication and to adopt SM in library services.

Problem of the Study
The reason for conducting this study was to understand the usage behaviour of the middle-level staff of BPU on Facebook. Without understanding the nature of the benefiter, services cannot be successfully implemented. Further, managers of this business age is faced by the challenge of how to enhance the productivity of the workforce in order to uplift profits and avoid wastage of applications based on participation and feedback that encourages free access and exchange of valuable information. With this underlying assumption, the study intends to assess whether they are active and efficient in an online environment and whether they have good communication experience. Further, the study aims to observe how they behave and whether they have experienced any problem when they are using, posting, and sharing information online. Accordingly, the following research questions were compiled to address above mentioned issues.

Research Questions
i.
What are the purposes of using FB by BPU middle-level staff?
ii. How does BPU middle-level staff behave on FB? iii.
What are the problems faced by the BPU middle-level staff when using FB?
iv. Is there any association between respondents' demographics and Facebook usage?

Purpose of Using Facebook
FB is a valuable tool to show the behaviour, both positively and negatively. Islam and Habiba (2015) pointed out that FB is a robust platform that can be extensively used online for social and professional purposes and to enhance information dissemination. The literature revealed many purposes. According to Thuseethan and Vasanthapriyan (2015) the main purpose of using FB by Sri Lankans is to get news instantly than reading weekend newspapers and more than half of Sri Lankan adults who use media sharing, blogs, microblogging, social news, and bookmarking sites also use social networks. According to Adzovie, Nyieku, and Daniel (2017)  requests that they know.
One of the adverse effects of social media or networks is an addiction (Amarakoon & Amarakoon, 2012). Weerasinghe and Hindagolla (2018) also proved the same idea through their findings. Another downside of social media is that the user shares too much information, which may pose threats. Even with tight security settings, your personal information may leak on social sites. The other drawback is that anyone can download personnel videos or pictures, copy and convert them into different formats which is an easy task in this digital environment using just few clicks.
Furthermore, when there is a problem, children no longer go to their parents for comfort or support. Instead they'd much rather vent on a social media site since social media had managed to change the comfortability of individuals that they used to have when it came to sharing their emotions.
As a result, more people tend to be isolated from each other in the real world (Wijekoon, 2017).

Problems Encountered when Using Facebook
According to Chitumbo and Chewe (2015), the major impediments to SM adoption and usage are limited internet access points, poor internet connectivity and limited bandwidth, lack of awareness of the existing SM, lack of privacy, many SM to explore and lack of clear policy on SM tools. can be identified as a problem encountered by Sri Lankan university staff when using FB. However, most of the respondents believed that the use of SM in the workplace could benefit university librarians in Sri Lanka.

Methodology
The main purpose of the study was to survey the behavior of the BPU staff community on FB. Population of the study is BPU non-academic staff.
As indicated in Table 1 below, 116 non-academic staff members are working in the university. Out of 116, 18 were lower-level workers and 12 were upper-level officers who were not included in the study sample.
Available sample of 86 middle-level non-academic staff were selected as a sample for the study. Keeping in view of the nature of the study's research questions, the most appropriate research method is a survey. Since the behaviour of FB users is to be measured, a mixed-method approach and applied research type were the best suited for the study; as the findings will be applied for introducing online user groups to BPU staff.
Data collection was done using the questionnaire, which consisted of open and closed-ended questions. A hard copy of the questionnaire was hand-distributed among 86 staff members who belong to the middle level of the non-academic category in February 2020, and completed questionnaires were collected during the first week of March. Six (6) questionnaires were rejected due to non-completion of the questions. It was also observed that some questions were partly completed by respondents, which means that respondents skipped some items. However, a total number of 80 (93%) were considered for data analysis. The data were analyzed and interpreted with the help of SPSS statistical software using simple frequency counts, and Pearson chi-square test was conducted to find association between demographic variables with the purpose of using FB and behaviour on FB by the sample.

Respondents' Demographic Information
Demographic information includes the gender and age of the samples. Table 2 gives an overview of the sample. The majority (60%) of respondents are female while males were the minority (40%). In response to age, most respondents were between the ages 30-40, while 36% of them were between the ages of 20-30 and 24% of them were above 40. The purposes of using FB by BPU staff were examined, as given in  This part of the questionnaire entailed the 20 attributes regarding behavior of respondents on FB. Table 4 shows the frequency of recorded feedback. The findings indicate that 96% of BPU middle-level staff has given their real name and picture on FB, while 90% of them indicated their actual age on FB. It was also found that 89% have used their real gender on FB as indicated in Table 6 above, under the attributes 1, 2, 3, and 4. of BPU staff stated that they do not reveal whatever they do on FB. Further, the majority stated that FB neither promotes happy culture nor hate culture.
The majority (68%) of the respondents never encourage their friends to share others' posts, while 52% do not click 'likes' for other's posts. Lastly, most respondents have positive behaviour on 6,7,9, and 17-20 attributes, as indicated in Table 4 above. noted that very few of them use FB during office time, as given in Figure   1 above.

Question 3-What are the problems faced by the BPU middle-level staff when using FB?
As shown in Figure 2 below, the main problem faced by the 23% BPU middle level staff was 'unknown friend's requests' while 'time and money waste' was the secondly affected by 19% of staff. The main problem, 'useless and needless posts sent by others' was affected by 16% of the staff while 'Fake news' being the fourth problem that affected by the 14% of them. 'Sensitive posts', slow internet speed', 'accounts checked by unknown persons,' and 'different types of ideas' were the problems that were encountered by a very few.

Figure 2
Problems affected using FB Pearson chi-square test was used to assess the association between demographic variables and purpose and behaviour to examine the relationship. The results are given as contingency tables in Tables 6 and 7 below.

Question 4 -Is there any association between respondents' demographics and Facebook usage?
It was found that there is a significant association between purpose and gender and the purpose and age on the use of FB, as shown in Table 6 below.

Association Between Gender and Behaviour
According to the results given in table 7, only 02 associations were found as statistically significant, namely association between 'gender and the behavior attribute', 'I use my real name as FB ID' and association between 'gender and the behavior attribute' 'I show my real photo'. All the other four associations were found statistically insignificant.

Discussion
The use of FB has gained popularity among Sri Lankans with no geographic barriers. This network is used mainly for 'news' and for communication and information sharing in both Sri Lanka and worldwide.
Due to this, professionals are adopting it and utilizing its features for various purposes and activities, as pointed out by several researchers  (2017), who found 36% of people log on to FB occasionally and 60% of the respondents, reported that they updated their FB statuses one to three times a day.
The main purpose of using FB varies from for news (53.8%), for entertainment (15%), for world news, for communicating with friends, and for reducing stress. Thuseethan and Vasanthapriyan (2015); Adzovie, Nyieku, and Daniel (2017) also reported similar purposes from their respondents.
Gender-wise analysis indicates that 70.8% of females in the 20-30 age category used FB for 'news' while 37.5% of male staff members' purpose of using FB is 'entertainment.' The second purpose of female respondents is to know the worldwide information while for 'news' is the second purpose of the males. Significantly, females have never used FB for 'entertainment', and males have never used it 'to reduce the stress'.
Further, findings indicated that only the females in the 20-40 age categories have used the FB to reduce stress. This may be due to the fact that females also have many responsibilities at home. They have to do a lot of planning related to home affairs after office work. It was found that there is a significant association between purpose and gender and purpose and age on the use of FB and statistically significant association between 'gender and the behavior attribute' on the use of real name and photo on FB were also found. With regard to the association between purposes and age the problems affected the BPU staff is as same as the findings of Ali and Ahmed (2018). It is the nature of the group or mass. It can be concluded that answers for the four research questions of the study were found, and suggestions are given next section.

Conclusion and Recommendations
The main purpose of this research was to identify the usage behaviour of the BPU middle-level staff on FB to understand whether they are capable of handling information online to create online user groups to inform library-related information. Accordingly, the findings of this study confirmed the answers to the set research questions by revealing the main and other purposes, the behaviour pattern of staff on FB, problems experienced and demographic association. Hence, the findings of this study support the possibility of designing and delivering social mediabased information services at BPU for the target group.
It is suggested that the creation of user groups will be helpful and successful for BPU staff. Wi-Fi facilities should also be given to nonacademic middle-level staff after creating of user groups. Though BPU middle-level staff has neutral attitudes towards FB usage, it is also suggested that some restrictions on use of social media and internet use policies by employers should be imposed as it affects daily routines.
It was evident from the study's findings that most BPU middle-level staff, male and female and 20-40 age groups, are using FB daily basis at 8-11 pm. However, few of the respondents showed a usage at the working time also. All of them showed them as having 'high experience' in using FB except a few. FB usage by employees can become a strength for organizations when used to build good relationships with employees. It can be used to collect and share information about employee behaviour as well as to train them.
It is suggested that the library management should organize awareness training sessions to inform BPU staff of the implementation of the online communication system and to educate them on its usefulness and details of library-related transactions that would take place online.
The BPU staff prefers to use 'like' and comment on others' posts, but they do not like to criticize others' posts. They are able to share, deliver, like, comments, criticize, and upload the posts, but are unable to create many exciting posts. Findings revealed that 95% of them could upload images, photos, and videos efficiently and communicate, share and post skillfully. So, it can be concluded that BPU staff has positive behaviour on FB. The development of creative skills of the staff is needed for the university, and it is a motivation. So, organizing IT skill development workshops for non-academic middle-level staff is recommended.
Policymakers can develop a learning platform and a quick and costfree communication platform using these upcoming trends in technology.
Then the university staff will absorb the positive aspects of these technologies before they use them in negative aspects. In this digital era, the provision of the correct information to the right users at the right time is a challenge for library professionals. Therefore, emerging technologies like SNS could be used as an interactive platform to communicate with library customers at a low cost. As there are no fully strengthened networking facilities at BPU, one of the problems faced by the staff is slow internet access.
Therefore, it is suggested that policymakers strengthen the networking capacity and Wi-Fi connection facility, enabling BPU staff to improve their online communication skills, breaking the traditional mode of communication.
However, FB continues to be popular, and universities are interested in increasing productivity and creating a lively working environment. It is essential for those working in higher education to familiarize themselves with FB (and other such social media platforms) and design and support interventions that meet staff expectations to help them give off their best.
Hence, it is recommended that the library management organize training sessions on the effective use of SNS to educate and train nonacademic staff of the BPU as they are an essential asset as much as the academic staff in the university.