This week's assignment to explore Twitter, combined with the (almost) promise of spring, of course has me thinking of the lovable, animated wildlife of the Disney classic Bambi. Not familiar with that particular nugget of prior knowledge? Check it out:
Prior to this week I was not a Twitter user. Sure, I knew what it was, understood its language (srlsly, #si643 rocks!), and from time-to-time checked in to see what some of my favorite bloggers or celebrities had to say. I just never felt the need to join myself.
After almost a full week on Twitter, I am not exactly "twitterpated." While I see its value in promoting quick and fluid communication with a wide variety of people, I have not found it adding much to my intake of news or knowledge. It probably does not help that my "real world" shyness leaks into online interactions - I really prefer to observe social situations before diving in (whether they occur face-to-face or tweet-to-tweet), which made it nerve-wracking to randomly "follow" several people I do not know and even more frightening to consider "retweeting" or addressing them directly. While I know those types of interactions are just part of the Twitter culture and promote professional networking, I think it is going to take me longer than a week to adjust.
I do, however, understand the need for libraries and librarians to establish their presence on these types of popular social networking sites. First, as I said, I completely see the value in communicating with a wide number of people at once. It makes for dynamic and quick-developing conversations, and it's a great way to get a message out. Also, if this is where our users are, then this is where we should be! Once again social networking proves to be a great resource to make librarians visible outside of the library. And of course we've all heard this one - today, if you don't exist online, you simply don't exist.
For these reasons I will probably stick with Twitter for a while longer before making my final decision. I assume an adjustment period is necessary to become fully comfortable with the platform, just as it took time to gain confidence blogging.
Won't you follow me on my Twitter journey? @kmiller0128
I cannot wait to see what everyone comes up with for webinars! Be sure to join my team Wednesday, April 6th at 7:00pm for "From Let-Go to In-the-Know: Libraries Helping the Unemployed." Check the class wiki for a link to our session!
I thought Twitter was completely stupid when I started. And then all of a sudden, I was amazed at what I was learning. It did take some fine-tuning to adjust who I followed. And still, about every 3 or 4 months I seem to do another round of weeding. Still, it has really helped me quickly keep a bird's-eye view of the many areas I'm trying to keep on top of!
ReplyDeleteI'm also on a self-imposed social networking hiatus for the rest of the semester (it just eats away my productivity!), after which I will hopefully devote more time to figuring it out.
ReplyDeleteI also felt a little weird about following people in the library world that I didn't know or that didn't know me, but I've found that I really enjoy what they have to say, aside from the library "superstars" like Buffy Hamilton or Agnostic, Maybe. There are a few instructional librarians I'm following who aren't big names but they talk about things that I'm specifically interested in, and while I wasn't planning on continuing to follow them after class, I definitely will now. I think I will need to downsize who I follow though because I'm a bit overwhelmed by how often I get tweets!
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