Week 7: Microblogging

And so it has come to this: the dreaded Twitter.

It seems that all negative or semi-negative blog posts on Twitter need an "anti-Luddite" statement, so here is mine.
I am pretty tech savvy and I fall somewhere between the categories of  "Connector" and "Productivity Enhancers" on the Pew's typology. I use technology (1.0 and 2.0) every day at work and home and I am always eager to learn about something new and shiny.

I have avoided any and all things to do with Twitter since its inception. To be fair, I have tried to tweet, but I just can not understand the appeal of receiving what amounts to dozens of Facebook-like status updates.  I find it neither helpful, interesting, nor necessary. I would not go so far as the Annoyed Librarian has in pouncing on Twitter, but I have always enjoyed this post she wrote on Twitter.

However, I understand that others find Twitter useful and I also believe that any tool that can help promote the library or help patrons use library services is worth investigating.  Therefore, when the 23 Things Kansas program focused this week on Twitter, I decided to dive right in and see what elements could be useful to the library profession.

Uses for Twitter at your Library:

• Online and text messaging based Public Relations
• Event or Program promotion
• Service promotion

These few function are really all that Twitter seems to offer for libraries at this point. I have read much of the literature on this topic and the few case studies I found online (mostly from the early days of Twitter) can be effectively summarized as "Twitter helps in online or text messaging-based promotion."  

This limited function does not make Twitter ineffective for the library.  It is another in a long line of new (or newish) technologies (email, blogs, Facebook, YouTube, microblogging, social bookmarking, etc.) that allow libraries to connect with patrons. Connecting with patrons where they are, when they want, and how they want, is the biggest challenge libraries face in today's digital environment. Twitter seems like just another place our constituents might gather information, so the library needs a presense.

Richard Mason, in What is an Information Professional?, proposed that information professionals apply their special knowledge with one basic purpose in mind: to get the right information from the right source to the right client at the right time in the form most suitable for the use to which it is to be put and at a cost that is justified by its use.(citation) Twitter helps with that purpose and is therefore useful for your library.

However that does not mean I am going to use it personally. ( You can follow me if you want to make sure I do not fall under Twitter's spell! Oooooo....)


How have you used Twitter to move beyond its basic function as a public relations tool? What role do you see Twitter having in reference outreach?