Thing 31 - More Twitter

Twitter is one of those things for which I've had a hard time seeing a library application, but I guess I'm finally finding some interesting library uses for it. Luria Library (is that right?) used their feed to tell their students that first, the Internet was down in the library and then that it was back up. Hennepin County uses theirs to give reminders about programs. (I can only wish that we'd have programs to promote!!)

I've read a lot of the articles linked in the Thing instructions and signed up to follow several more people/organizations. (I've seen somewhere that Queen Elizabeth is on Twitter but haven't found her there yet. That would be fun!) Some of the techie tweeters put out so much that it's just too overwhelming to try to actually follow.

If my library had one or more Facebook pages - and I'd really like to see this happen - then automating a feed into Twitter would be great.

Some of the fun things - I started following the Mac v. PC tweets, looked at the Twittergami bird (very cool) and took the "what punctuation mark are you" quiz (I'm a comma). I didn't post it to either Twitter or Facebook - I've been seeing sooooo many "What (insert noun[s] here) are you" quizzes in the past few days that I just don't feel like extending it! (But I *have* posted results from some others on Facebook. As a children's writer, I'm Beverly Cleary!)

David Lee King's articles were very interesting, and particularly the one about who not to friend on Twitter or Facebook. While it can be interesting and idea-sparking to see what other libraries are doing with these media, I agree that the primary purpose of a library's presence on Twitter/Facebook should be to connect with their patrons.

So right now I guess I'm at the "kinda doubtful but willing to be convinced" stage of Twitter. I'll keep plugging away...