working with Twitter

The decision to go with Twitter (verses Facebook or Google+) for the Instructional Resource Center was not quick or easy.  A consistent web presence exists; the IRC web site was one of the first things I developed when starting as a curriculum librarian at AU and in recent months I have been rebuilding it in Drupal. I've used a blog for the IRC since 2005; it features news, information, and new book updates for the IRC and juvenile collections. We've been lucky to have LibGuides for several years, and resources for Education students and general IRC pages are part of the collection.Taking steps to add another resource required careful consideration:

• How will the proposed addition work with existing resources?
• The library has a Facebook page, is it necessary to have two?
• Do students want the IRC on Facebook?
• Students have AU Gmail accounts, but are they using Google+?
• Are students willing to use Google+?
• How popular is Twitter with college students?
• Will Twitter character constraints help or hinder use?

A final question, one of significance, how much time am I willing /able to expend on maintaining the project?  Regardless of the social media choice, time and effort will be needed to make the resource viable.  Periodic discussions with my student workers and students using the IRC helped me with the decide to use Twitter for the IRC. Why Twitter? It's will provide opportunity for quick, simple, short, and timely updates that will supplement the web site, blog, and LibGuides. 

I posted the first IRC tweet on Tuesday morning @ircaulibrary

It took time to research and determine who the IRC should follow, I selected a mix of children's literature, education, AU accounts, and educational technology to start. Using a library background and university colors allowed me to brand the page. To publicize, I've created Twitter widgets for the IRC blog, requested a link be placed on the main IRC page sidebar with the blog feed, posted to the IRC blog, and utilized the library's digital signage to scan the account rotate the five most recent tweets.

I have a short list of subjects to tweet for the next several weeks.  At this point, the only drawback has been ...

I usually tweet using my iPhone app, and was surprised to see the little "over capacity" whale shortly after making the account live. In the last three days, I've been subject to "over capacity" while posting tweets - and - when showing students the account.  I'm hoping the little whale, cute as he is, does not become problematic (though several of my students indicate he's a regular occurrence).

Pew Internet Report: Social Networking Sites & Our LIves

A recently released Pew Internet & American Life report, Social Networking Sites and Our Lives. It presents information gathered about social networking, social networking sites, and the impact they have on our lives. 

"Questions have been raised about the social impact of widespread use of social networking sites (SNS) like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter. Do these technologies isolate people and truncate their relationships? Or are there benefits associated with being connected to others in this way? The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project decided to examine SNS in a survey that explored people's overall social networks and how use of these technologies is related to trust, tolerance, social support, and community and political engagement."

"The findings presented here paint a rich and complex picture of the role that digital technology plays in people's social worlds. Wherever possible, we seek to disentangle whether people's varying social behaviors and attitudes are related to the different ways they use social networking sites, or to other relevant demographic characteristics, such as age, gender and social class."

"The number of those using social networking sites has nearly doubled since 2008 and the population of SNS users has gotten older." -- Lee Rainie, Kristen Purcell, Lauren Sessions Goulet, & Keith N. Hampton - Pew Internet & American Life Project, Summary of Findings, Social Networking Sites and Our Lives, 6/16/11

How LibGuides Link Librarians

I'm not sure how many of you use LibGuides at your libraries or how many of you have even heard of LibGuides. Just in case here is a little background. LibGuides is a knowledge sharing system which allows librarians to create individual guides or pathfinders that link users to library resources. While providing access to resources these guides also embrace the push towards web 2.0 by allowing librarians to share RSS feeds, podcasts, videos and polls.
I have had the pleasure of using LibGuides for the past few years while working at Ashland University and at my current position at Stark State College. I love the simplicity of creating guides for my patrons and the fact that I can update or change information in the blink of an eye. Along with the ease and enjoyment of creating LibGuides I'm finding there is an added bonus feature, so to speak.
LibGuides are a great way for librarians of all walks, to network and share ideas. I know I am always looking to my colleagues for ideas and I'm finding that LibGuides is wonderful for this! One way to gather ideas is to use the LibGuides Community Site. The Community Site is set up as a database of its own. You can search for guides by subject, school, author or keyword. I not only get ideas about guide design and layout but I find great links to online tools and resources. But this isn't the best part. If you find a guide that you would like to re-create but you don't know how or you find a tutorial created by another librarian you can contact them! Each guide has the author prominently displayed along with their contact information.
In the past three years of using LibGuides I have been contacted by four librarians from all regions of the country, asking me how I created something or asking if they could use a particular activity I posted. On the flip side, I myself have contacted numerous librarians asking them similar questions and never once has a librarian ever said "no".
So many of us are working on similar projects or putting together similar courses for our students and faculty without much time to get them done. Why reinvent the wheel when we can work as a community and share are ideas. The networking options through LibGuides and other social media tools are endless for librarians!

Millennials & Social Networks

A new Pew Internet Report discusses how millenials, or digital natives, will use social networks, technology, and issues such as privacy in the future.

Millennials will make online sharing in networks a lifelong habit

In a survey about the future impact of the Internet, a solid majority of technology experts and stakeholders said the Millennial generation will lead society into a new world of personal disclosure and information-sharing using new media. These experts said the communications patterns “digital natives” have already embraced through their use of social networking technology and other social technology tools will carry forward even as Millennials age, form families, and move up the economic ladder.

I found the respondents thoughts accompanying this report interesting; for instance the following quote from Stowe Boyd, "“Publicy will replace privacy. Privacy will appear quaint, like wearing gloves and veils in church.”

Worth another look

It's Friday and while "patiently" waiting for the Internet to catch up with my goals today (YouTube is taking forever to load an instructional video), I decided it was time for another edition of ... posts from my Bloglines account:

• Is there such a thing as social media elitism?
  "We’re developing a tunnel vision as social media is becoming the most important pillar of the online world." - Jay Dolan, Social Media Today
  
  
• Google Kills Background Images on Home Page
  "Fourteen hours into a 24-hour experiment with background imagery, Google's home page is once again stark white." --Tom Krazit, Cnet News
  
  
• Internet Procrastination at it's absolute finest. This is you, really YOU
  A cartoon originally from comics.com on The Next Web Sharables.
  
  
• Blogger Template Designer Now Available to Everyone
  "we’re excited to announce that the Blogger Template Designer is now available to everyone." -- Blogger Buzz
  
  
• City of New York Blankets Times Square with Giant QR Codes
  "To celebrate Internet Week 2010, the City of New York outfitted Times Square with giant QR codes earlier today. It’s called “The City at Your Fingerprints” and eleven New York agencies participated in the interactive billboard initiative." -- Jennifer Van Grove, Mashable.com
  
  
• PewResearch Report: The Future of Cloud Computing
  "Technology experts and stakeholders say they expect they will ‘live mostly in the cloud’ in 2020 and not on the desktop, working mostly through cyberspace-based applications accessed through networked devices." -- Future of the Internet
  
  
• This last entry features a Plagiarism Video (subtitles in English) from the University of Bergen's YouTube Channel. I found it via iLibrarian who in turn found it via Librarians Matter.
  
  
  

Pew Internet Report: Reputation Management and Social Media

A new Pew Internet report focuses upon privacy, social media, and managing your profile; have you Googled yourself lately (Icerocket has interesting blog returns)?

Reputation management has now become a defining feature of online life for many Internet users, especially the young. While some Internet users are careful to project themselves online in a way that suits specific audiences, other Internet users embrace an open approach to sharing information about themselves and do not take steps to restrict what they share. -- Reputation Management & Social Media

This report follows an interesting post by the Distant Librarian earlier this week that featured links to a Facebook Privacy Scanner available from Reclaim Privacy.org.

Reports, studies, and a blog post

The Washington Post's, Campus Overload Blog published an intriguing post yesterday. In Fighting a Social Media Addiction, author Jenna Johnson highlights a study done by the University of Maryland in which 200 students were challenged to go without social media for 24 hours. To say they were distressed is a kind understatement.

"But just read the blogs these students wrote after the traumatic experience -- it's very easy to confuse these students with crack addicts who went cold-turkey, smokers not given the comfort of a patch while quitting, alcoholics forced to dry up. The university's new release on the study last week reported that some descriptions popped up over and over: "In withdrawal. Frantically craving. Very anxious. Extremely antsy. Miserable. Jittery. Crazy."' -- Campus Overload, 4/26/10

The study, A Day Without Media, was conducted by ICMPA and students at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland.

"What is is like to go without media? What if you had to give up your cell phone, iPod, television, car radio, magazines, newspapers and computer (i.e. no texting, no Facebook or IM-ing)?" -- A Day Without Media

It's not as simple as it sounds, I hesitate to divulge how many times a day I check email, Bloglines, Facebook, watch Hulu, or .... regardless, students were significantly impacted by the loss of their social media tools. This study was interesting following on two Pew Internet reports this spring: Social Media and Young Adults and Teens and Mobile Phones.

Is it any wonder libraries are exploring viable ways to use these tools to reach and teach students?

Update: 4/28/10 See also ...

• Students Denied Social Media Go Through Withdrawal, U. of Maryland Researchers Say
  Wired Campus, The Chronicle
• Students Addicted to Social Media
  New UM Study, Press Release, UM