Library twits

I blogged a while back about my use of twitter and how I find it a beneficial network to use both professionally and socially.  Twitter has become marketing tool number one for many libraries, a way to vocalise your presence and reinforce your service offer.

I follow a variety of different librarians and libraries.  Among the libraries are the internet phenomenon that is @OrkneyLibrary

OrkneyLibrary Orkney Library

Today the safeword is 'scullery'. If you get scared during the book issuing process, just utter the safeword and we will cease immediately.

as well as my friends at the Scottish Poetry Library: @ByLeavesWeLive and @SPLshop (among others).  I tend to find that although following individual libraries is interesting and can show you what other institutions are doing, there are other information professionals on twitter who are more useful to follow at my stage.  If I was head of information literacy, then seeing what other libraries are investing their time and money into would be extremely useful.  But that's not me.

@LISNPN, the twitter feed of the LIS New Professionals Network is a great feed, and has job adverts, interesting articles and links.  In preparation for Library School at UCL in September, @UCLDISStudents has had some interesting tweets to share too (the twitter feed for the UCL LIS student blog - though it's not the most active feed).  I follow a few other trainees who blog and enjoy reading about their traineeships.  The feeds from the British Library, CILIP and JISC are also excellent to follow for the links, articles, conferences and retweets they share.  

Twitter feeds are invaluable conference tools.  If you are not at a conference you can still follow the action from the hoards of library tweeters who are tweeting the main points from the conference hall.  For attendees, twitter provides an archive of notes from the conference by yourself and the other participants and a network of contacts to follow up information with.

I've really started to question whether my approach to twitter is benefitting me adequately.  23things has demonstrated to me the benefits of sharing as well as accessing the fruits of other people's sharing.  On twitter I sometimes have something to say that would add to the debate perhaps at a conference or event, or even just to enter the competition to win tetley tea for a year (@tetley_teafolk every Friday!)  Since I use twitter as a very social medium as well, I think I'll split my tweeting between social me and professional me, and not worry about some inevitable overlap in between.  While I don't think the world wants to know about my holiday plans and (occaisional) pub quiz wins, my friends do.  Likewise I want to share my thoughts on libraries, my course and conferences in the public sphere.  That way I can also keep my spam at zero on my personal feed.  Using tweetie for mac or twibble, managing two accounts is also simple, so all in all it seems like a good time to be doing this, particularly as I'll be balancing two different information related activities (work and uni) and continuing my training and development.  I'll share my new twitter persona when I create it, and it will likely correspond to my next blog (which will not be on blogger - how crap is this?) but more on that for thing 23.