lauren's library blog

When I first heard of Twitter, I was skeptical. Then, I wasn’t sure what anyone would do with it. Then I figured I should give it a try so I could answer questions about it when it came up. I found a few librarians and started following them. I still wasn’t sure what I thought… but then… THEN I realized I really liked it. And one day a few weeks ago it went down for most of the work day. That’s when it occurred to me that I had fully assimilated it into my communication flow. Even though I don’t personally know even half of my Twitter friends, I felt like I was really disconnected and a little bit lonely. I wanted to send a message out saying “really missing twitter,” but didn’t have a place to send it! (I guess I could have changed my status on Facebook, but it’s just not the same.)

So, for skeptics, these are the reasons I like Twitter (so far):

• It’s a brain trust that can help answer questions quickly… a human Google.
• I get motivated when I see that my Twitter friends are doing good things or being really productive.
• It’s nice to get reminders (I get them to my cell phone) of what my friends are up to throughout the day. It’s low volume/doesn’t take much time, but it allows the type of communication that I haven’t had since college.
• It allows me to get to know libraryland colleagues in a more personal way. Knowing that you always drink tea in the morning (like me!) is more intimate than just knowing what your job title is or that you presented at a conference I went to once.
• It gives me a way to monitor the ebb and flow of library culture during the day (in a way that is less time consuming than checking in with a reader).

So, there I was, loving Twitter and trying to decide what to do with it at work. I wasn’t sold on it for the library since so many uses require following. But it seemed like there might be something useful in pushing content to a website from Twitter. But still, I wasn’t sure. Then, I found out dining was using it. I started thinking about Twitter and ways to find out if our community would get into it. I figured the way that made the most sense would be to make something completely fun. If the feed is totally fun, people might be more likely to follow it. This will give us an idea about if people in our community are using it. If people don’t follow it, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. It just means that if we think it’s useful, we use it as a way to push content. So here’s our feed: askzakfacts. The idea is to list really quirky facts that can be found in the books in the reference collection. Using an adapted version of citation, and linking back to the physical collection, is a way to bridge the online environment with the physical one. Hopefully it’s interesting, too! So far the time commitment is pretty low. About once every two weeks I spend one of my reference desk hours pulling facts from reference books. I keep these in a text file in my time management system, then once a work day I add one to Twitter. Anyone else using Twitter in an interesting way?

I mean, if Boing Boing (directory of all wonderful things) is doing it, it’s good enough for me.

Related posts:

1. twitter with a purpose
2. Real Relationships
3. amplifying scholarly communication
4. what we’re doing
5. this is me, i work on the web