The "reading" for this week was to join Twitter, build a network of at least 25 professionals in our fields, and tweet or re-tweet at least five times. After having done the minimal amount of work for this assignment, I feel comfortable commenting on the state of librarianship on Twitter.
An interesting thing that I immediately noticed was that, in contrast to the blogs we've been reading, the levels of professionalism on Twitter are highly variable. The most career-focused or academically-focused bloggers that I have been following are the ones tweeting about the season finale of Cougar Town. Even organizations such as the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County (@cincylibrary) take on a very informal tone from time to time. This made it difficult to judge whether an account was worth following in a professional context; maybe an account sometimes tweets brilliantly about librarianship, or maybe it's really just all cat videos. Related to that was the observation that it's not always worth it to build a "network" of a bunch of librarians and information professionals if not all of those professionals tweet anything about the field. Although, some of the silly or lighthearted tweets from libraries and librarians go a long way toward reminding me why I wanted to be a librarian in the first place. Always a good thing.
Observing the difference between the content on Twitter and on personal blogs is a great illustration of how the medium influences the message. Twitter is great for short, one-off messages and links, less so for serious conversations.
Twitter is also a great tool for keeping up with the news and other recent developments. People often tweet links to articles, which are then re-tweeted throughout the original poster's network So if someone I follow retweets a link about school librarianship from someone she follows, that link shows up on my feed, and I see the story, which I may never have seen otherwise. You can also follow the Twitter accounts of organizations like NPR, which means that about a million news stories show up in your feed every day. For an information professional, this makes Twitter a great tool.
Finally, on a completely selfish note, Twitter is great for networking. It's the virtual equivalent of casually meeting someone at a cocktail party - you see a conversation, you say something witty, and you hope you make a good impression. I'm currently sidling over to some librarians from the PLCH. Would it be too gauche to tweet a photo of my business card?
I like your metaphor of Twitter as the virtual equivalent of the casual introduction at a cocktail party- which may explain why I dislike Twitter (or, at the least, find it very disorienting), since I'm not really a fan of cocktail parties, either.
ReplyDeleteI feel like for many people, myself included, one of the biggest problems with Twitter is the 140 character limit. But I've found I like it more when I stop trying to use Twitter as a platform for discussions and use it more as a way to start discussions, or to keep up on news. I've only ever used Twitter before like a de facto RSS feed, to be honest. It was weird having to actually use it. I agree with Kirsten that it's a nice metaphor of Twitter to compare it to a cocktail party; maybe I should stop finding it weird that people I don't know follow me, and take it more as a handshake.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Twitter is great for networking. Arguably, it is the primary function of this social media tool. However, as you mention, the level of professionalism varies quite a bit. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but something to keep in mind when developing your professional network.
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