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How not to be all a flutter about Twitter
1. How to not be all a-flutter about
in your library
OLA Tech Petting Zoo November2009
Tualatin, OR
Margaret Hazel, Technology Manager
Eugene Public Library
2. The skinny
• Twitter is a “microblogging” tool, limited to 140 characters
• Can be accessed on the web and on cell phones
• “Follow” – to subscribe to get someone’s tweets
• “Hash-tag” – Use a # to create a searchable keyword in
your tweet that will associate your tweet with the subject
• “RT” – re-tweeting is copying an interesting tweet and
sending it to all of your own followers ; include
commentary for added value
• “@username” - used at the beginning of a tweet to send a
message publically to another user
• “DM – Direct message someone, privately
6. libraryfuture Become a Mobile Library: Join us @
Lakeville Public Lib 1/14 full day tech prgrm abt
mobile libs http://bit.ly/4i1tir RT @semls
about 3 hours ago from Tweetie
7. What goals does this tech meet?
• Institutionally:
– EPL uses mainly to market events
– Reference: Google, Microsoft have announced will start including
tweets in search results
– Add a hashtag widget to your webpage keep patrons abreast of
current hot topics
– To get feedback, solicited and un-
– To connect with additional groups of users, such as teens
• Professionally:
– Networking with peers in a specialized field, including many links to
relevant articles
– Enhanced conference experience
– LinkedIn just announced a partnership
8. wccls
New in large-print: Shop class as soulcraft : an inquiry into the
value of work by Matthew Crawford - http://bit.ly/10M6of
#largeprint
about 3 hours ago from TweetDeck Reply
9. General Social Media considerations:
• Social media policy - for staff and for the public
http://mashable.com/2009/09/20/social-media-
policies/
• What is the“Voice” of your library?
• Single institution acct or individuals; formal/informal
• Use a “character” as a persona? Sports teams, etc.
• Legal implications: archiving, union rules
• How interactive will you be?
• Respond to critical/hostile comments?
• Respond to inaccurate comments?
10. Additional Twitter considerations:
• Will you RT (reTweet, or forward a message you have
seen to your own followers)
• Who will you “follow”? Following others is both useful
and important, as Twitter might think you are trying to
sell something, if you don’t use it as an interactive
medium.
• Will you block some folks from following you? I’d
recommend not accepting all followers blindly. Porn
and spam are here, too.
• Will you track local and hashtag mentions?
• Proactive interaction, or mainly passive ?
• Twitter interface or other 3rd party app?
12. Eugene’s use
• Posting - about 15-20 minutes each week, 2-3
posts a week of events for which we’ve
already written press releases, etc.
• Scanning for local tweets relating to us – a
couple of times a day, while on hold on the
phone, while something is printing, etc.
• Future – exploring more interaction with our
followers
13. hclib RT @ExperienceLife Three cheers for
@hclib. Librarians are an invaluable
resource, especially when your deadline
is looming!
14. Many Additional Tools, such as…
• Twitterific http://iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific/ (Mac)
• Google Gadget http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/twitter.html?hl=en
• PocketTweets for iPhone/iPods
• http://www.ubertwitter.com/ for Blackberry
• Itweet, http://twidroid.com/ for Android OS
• Tweed and TweeFree for Palm Pre
• TwitPic to share pictures on Twitter http://twitpic.com/
• Various tools to update several sites, such as Facebook, at the same time
– Disgsby
http://www.digsby.com/?utm_campaign=vid&utm_source=vid&utm_medium
=vid&utm_content=vid
– Tweetdeck, http://www.twhirl.org/
– Seesmic http://seesmic.com/
22. MVPublicLibrary "Perhaps no place in any
community is so totally democratic as the
library. The only entrance requirement is
interest." Lady Bird Johnson
23. “a central real-time hub that serves to enhance
every other content platform on the web... a
central place where people can post or link to
any and all content of their choosing…”
– Soren Gordhamer
Writing/updating: We update usually a couple of times a week. Sometimes more when we have a lot of events that week, or if there’s a big event and we have a few angles to promote it from. (For ex., we may ask an intriguing question and give the link; then announce the event directly; then tweet about an article in the local paper about our event, with a link to the article instead of to our own page.) Also, we sometimes tweet the same thing again just to catch people who are paying attention at different times of day. Scanning: a couple/3x daily. The ability to do that in so little time depends on locale, though. Twitter traffic for Portland, for example, couldn’t be monitored the way I’m doing Eugene.
