Oh, Twitter. Sometimes I just don't understand you. I joined Twitter soon after this class began and we received this blog assignment. I am following a lot of famous people and some family members, but I don't really see the point when Facebook provides pretty much the same experience, except with no character limits and pictures, video, and other media can be posted to directly to your profile. Perhaps I'll have to keep exploring in order to fully appreciate Twitter. My life is fairly boring, what would I have to tweet about?
However, I can see the many benefits for libraries (especially public libraries) in using Twitter. They can promote library events, post pictures from library events, promote new materials, and get library user's opinions on things that they want to see in the library. It provides a much less intimidating face for a library--people are a lot freer with their opinions on the web and it seems to be easier for people to tell what they really think. Librarians may seem more approachable on social networking sites as well.
Do you use Twitter (if so, follow me @mskatiesuefink)? In what ways does your library use Twitter? Are there any innovative ways that you've seen Twitter used in libraries (in your own or in others)?
As someone who works for a library system, I find Twitter very helpful to keep up with news. I follow a variety of folks, and some are very good sources for library and technology related news (ex. CNET posts a review of the new iPad, New York Public Library installs a machine to print books, Penguin is pulling titles from OverDrive, etc... these often end up in my Twitter stream long before I read about them elsewhere)
ReplyDeleteI've also posed questions in tweets and commented on things I've read and gotten feedback from folks. Ex. Wondered in a tweet how libraries were using QR codes-- got a reply from a librarian whose library just launched a big QR code project. Commented on an article about the Skokie PL's media lab and got a response from one of the guys who worked on it offering me more info about how they did it and how they're supporting it.
Good stuff! :)