Twitter Blog

I visited several library sites, including Library of Congress, New York Public, Hennepin County Library, Austin Public Library, King County (in order of number of followers). Without knowing how long each library has been using Twitter, the order of number of followers was a bit surprising to me.

I also looked at Iran Election as it has one of the larger followings (according to Mashable).

Can Twitter make a librarian’s task easier? Well, “easier” is perhaps not the right word, because it is one more venue requiring maintenance.

Can it allow a library to be more effective? If you agree with Pete Cashmore that it is THE way to reach a significant demographic group, then the answer is yes. While it is A way, I would not say it is THE only way. So it could reach out to some persons not reached by other means. More likely, those who tweet also use other electronic communication/social media options.

The basic Twitter question “What are you doing?” implies that (a) everyone is doing something significant at every moment, and (b) everyone wants to share what he/she is doing. I think that both assumptions are unsound. Thankfully, Twitter has evolved from that simple premise. However, I would disagree with Twitter’s statement “tweets have evolved … and take the shape of shared links to… most importantly, real-time accounts from people who are in the midst of a newsworthy event, crisis, or natural disaster.” I hope that if I am ever in the midst of such a crisis I will have a more important priority that tweeting. (Of course, there is the possibility, though slim, that Twitter might be the only available communication mode.)

See Reference & User Services Quarterly, Vol. 49, issue 2, page 119, for a comparison of Twitter versus Facebook in Libraries (Accidental Technologist column about Next Generation Catalogs).

Photos exercise:
I edited my first blog posting to include a photo I took last weekend.

I have tried Flickr and Picassa so did exercise 1 (library photo postings). Here are my comments on some of the sites:

Copenhagen Public Library devoted the first several pages to interior shots of the library; a couple of them needed rotation. Overall, it was not very intriguing. Later pages have events and people and it seems they should have come first, or direct access provided in a more obvious way.

Waterloo Ontario had old postcards and interiors of libraries – interesting, but not tied to that library.

I was underwhelmed by the several that I visited. If this is supposed to be a marketing tool, then it should specifically promote the library and entice people to visit, physically or virtually. For example, if the images were from specific events at the library, that would be better than pictures of library spaces and computers.

One of my personal favorite websites with photos is wunderground.com with great weather pictures. And visitors to the site can vote / rate the photos. The photos tie directly to the main focus of the website, and those who don’t photo can “participate” by rating. This is more controlled that a photobucket approach. Maybe a library could solicit patons' photos of library events and then ask for votes to select the favorite activity.

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds are indeed pro-active. That is, the creator is going to to recipient, rather than the recipient seeking out the RSS feed. However, as with email, it is likely that many of the feeds go unread.

I like the USA.gov feeds, with a "one-liner" and a link to the full article. This could be a good format for library outreach.

The feed that has had the most practical use to me the the Department of State travel alerts. I enjoy the Crabby Lady feeds from Microsoft because of the mixture of humor and technical content.

I have the feeds sent to Outlook because I move from one workstation to another and the RSS feeds have to be reset at each station.

Blogs and Blog Readers

It is likely that many of our patrons read and write blogs regularly. I personally have not had any patron ask a question about the process.

Blogs have potential as marketing / outreach tools. Or they can exist just for social connectivity. Unfortunately many blogs contain lots of words and images but relatively little thought, few ideas, and no wisdom. And a blog takes on a life of itself, needing attention to be fresh and worth a repeat visit.

Blog - First of 23 Things

Here is my first blog entry!

The photo and caption were updated 20 December 2009