Twitter in Libraries

"The stream is winding its way throughout the Web and organizing it by nowness.... So jump into the stream and let it carry you away. Or you can stand timidly on the banks until everyone else around you has already taken the plunge."

-- Schonfeld, 2009

The use of Twitter within a library or other information organization actually makes much more sense to me than the use of Twitter by an individual in order to contact friends. If said individual is a celebrity or needs to contact a large mass of people at the same time, then Twitter does work to the best effect. But I still am of the mind that Twittering about shopping in an American Eagle store has nothing to do with other people, unless they are supposed to meet me at said store.

A library, however, should be able to fully integrate the use of Twitter as a social media outreach tool to not only inform current library patrons of the newest information, events, and services, but reach out to under served or non-library-patrons. As stated in David Allen Kelly's article, Twitter can be used for normal event announcement, quite like a library's Facebook page. Also like Facebook and other social networking tools, Twitter allows libraries to promote materials or simply point to information that patrons may find pertinent. Unlike other tools, however, Twitter would allow libraries to search through and keep track of (via RSS feeds) the number of times "library" is brought up by other Twitter users, or other keywords that pertain to programs or services. Then the Twitter-librarian could respond to the user with a plug to that specific library service.

One of Kelly's examples was for a yoga program at the library whose user base was expanded through a local user search for the word "yoga" and an "@user:" response. I could see many uses of this sort of Twitter outreach for my library, to not only get the word out on an event through broadcast but to also search out for potential participants much like walking through the library and verbally advertising.

Lastly, while I had not heard of this aspect of Twitter previously, TwitPix allows for a visual continuation of the real-time stream of this social media tool. Being able to upload photographs from a smartphone directly onto the library's Twitter account of an event would one, make it easier for the librarian to keep up-to-date with photo-documentation and two, possibly attract nearby patrons to the event.

All in all, while I still am not a fan of "mundane Tweets," I do believe there is an untapped resource in Twitter for libraries.

Kelly, D. A. (2009, July 29). How your library may not be using Twitter but should. Retrieved from: http://kellyd.com/2009/07/29/how-your-library-may-not-be-using-twitter-but-should/.

Schonfeld, E. (2009, May 17). Jump into the stream. Retrieved from: http://techcrunch.com/2009/05/17/jump-into-the-stream/.