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).
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