This project summarizes the development and use of Social Feed Manager (SFM), a software tool created by George Washington University Libraries to collect social media data from Twitter. SFM allows researchers to save the time of manually collecting tweets through tools like Google Reader and Excel. It addresses the challenge of collecting ephemeral social media for archives and research by automatically tracking Twitter accounts and saving tens of thousands of tweets. The libraries have used SFM to document student life at GWU by collecting tweets from hundreds of student organizations not otherwise archived. They aim to improve SFM for broader research and archival needs through ongoing collaboration.

1. Capturing the Ephemeral:
Collecting Social Media
with Social Feed Manager
@bergisjules @dchud @dankerchner @liblaura
George Washington University Libraries
CNI Fall Forum - 2013-12-09 - Washington, DC

2. This project was made possible in
part by the Institute of Museum and
Library Services
Grant LG-46-13-0257

3. a traditional project
● save the time of the researcher
● at-risk e-resources, licensing
● expand scope of collection development

4. save the time
of the researcher

5. "How Mainstream News Outlets
Use Twitter" (2011)
● GWU's Prof. Kimberly Gross and students
● Pew Research Center's Project for
Excellence in Journalism
● "news agenda these organizations
promoted on Twitter closely matches that of
their legacy platforms"
journalism.org/2011/11/14/how-mainstream-media-outlets-use-twitter/

6. Q: How did they
collect their data?
A: By hand.
●
●
●
●
●
google reader
copy and paste
fold, spindle, mutilate
excel
...eventually, SPSS and
similar tools

7. will take
any help
they can get

8. too much work
for
too little data
(only 1000s of tweets)

9. copy and paste
to excel
doesn't scale
(just ask her students)

10. over 5,000
theses and dissertations
since 2010

11. saving time of researchers:
strategic advantage

12. what researchers ask for
• specific users, keywords
• basic values: user, date, text, counts
• 10000s, not 10000000s
• delimited files to import
• historic time periods

13. options
for
historical data?

14. Twitter-licensed
data providers:
DataSift
Gnip
NTT Data
Topsy*

15. data providers
• friendly
• not cheap*
• more than we need
• still need tools to
collect, process, etc.

16. what can we do
ourselves?

17. lobster traps
Karpf, David. “Social Science Research Methods in Internet Time.”
Information, Communication, and Society. Volume 15, Issue 5
(May 2012) pp. 639-661.

18. when Congress turned over
• 16+ accounts deleted / hidden
• combined 105,993 followers
• 14,479 tweets saved in SFM
no longer public

19. @GWUArchives is using Social Feed
Manager to better document student life
and university culture at #GWU. #cni13f

20. for University Archives
● practical tool
○ instant value
■ addresses collection development gap
● document student organizations

21. why Student Org records
●
●
●
●
●
interest from university admin
great representation student activity
difficult collecting area
not in University Archives
active social media users

22. #GWU on Twitter
● highly active user community
○ students, administrators, offices
● over 400 student organizations
○ greek, cultural, social, political, activist
○ exclusively on Twitter
○ no other web presence

23. what we’ve collected
● since March 2013
● tracking 329 accounts
● 216,371 tweets
○ 10,000 tweets in one month

24. for Special Collections
● new type of record/collection
● enhance existing collections

25. and beyond...
“content on social media is likely a federal
record” - NARA
NARA Bulletin 2012-02: Guidance on Managing Social Media Records. October
25, 2013. http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/bulletins/2014/2014-02.html

26. moving forward
●
●
●
●
●
collection development
metadata
links
images
web archiving

27. Social Feed Manager
(“SFM”)
the software

28. the software
django/python
django-social-auth
tweepy
github.com/gwu-libraries/social-feed-manager
open source, MIT-style license

33. technical topics
● how deep must we
go?
● other sources
● media and web
capture
● search / analysis
● managing
processes and data
flow
● import / export /
delivery
● app packaging

34. next steps
● improve SFM to meet diverse research,
teaching, collection development needs
● meeting at GW Libraries this week
● a robust, reliable, implemented, tested, and
documented application
● looking for collaborators

35. thanks!
gwu-libraries.github.io/social-feed-manager
@bergisjules @dchud @dankerchner @liblaura