Mark Moran writes:

In the libraries of old, the Dewey Decimal System got you started on research. But there is no card catalog 2.0. To use the Internet as a library you need new research skills: the ability to pick out reliable sources from an overwhelming heap of misinformation, to find relevant material amid an infinite array of options, to navigate the shifting ethics of creative commons and intellectual property rights and to present conclusions in a manner that engages modern audiences.

This is another wonderfully well written piece about the challenges we face in teaching our students 21st century research skills. The bright side is that we have the ability to teach our students how to effectively evaluate resources and determine their authority (a.k.a. “crap detection“). While this seems like an uphill (and at times futile?) battle, school librarians are doing it every day, trying to reach kids when they’re young and before they can develop a dependency on Google. One school librarian in particular, Buffy Hamilton, is – in my humble opinion – a leader in this area. (To see what she is doing with her students, check out her blog, The Unquiet Library. She also writes at the blog, Libraries and Transliteracy).

This video is from a study on how undergraduates seek information for research. I came across it by way of The Participatory Library Starter Kit. University of Washington iSchool faculty Alison Head, Mike Eisenberg and David Nasatir did the study. All three lead Project Information Literacy, a large scale study about early adults and their research habits.

I also created a page on this blog and posted the same article there (ya know, just in case the wiki disappears — I don’t own the wiki, after all).

NOTE:  This is the third question of a 15-part questionnaire I sent out to over 90 libraries with Twitter accounts. 65 libraries responded. I used this information for a web 2.0 article for my LIS 5313 class at Florida State University. Once the article is finished, I will share it on the blog. In the meantime, I am sharing data collected of the responses from each question.

I asked librarians to describe what has been their experience with Twitter. While using Twitter for the library was a new experience for a handful of librarians, overall, the responses were positive regarding their experience with the service thus far. I informally divided answers by themes I saw throughout. Some of the comments:

GOOD/EASY

“I’ve really enjoyed it and I hope to continue it indefinitely. The library culture [at my library] is very laid-back, casual, and that’s allowed me to be myself in my updates. I like being able to try new things… like the reference live-blogging and seeing how our followers react to it. I’ve had no complaints from either library staff or other tweeters.”"

“For library – pretty much out of sight – almost everything that is posted to Twitter is automated, so it gets updated and kept fresh without much input from staff.”

“I don’t have feedback about whether our patrons are making use of our Twitter account, however it requires almost no staff time to maintain (our twits are automated with the Twitterfeed application). It’s easy to provide this service even if the usage is uncertain.”

“Beyond the reliability issues and some brief problems with our RSS feed, the experience has been positive.”

“Great! We tweet to tell people about programs, to ask for input and to direct them to our site and other 2.0 outlets, like our blog and Facebook pages.”

“Overall, our experience with Twitter has been good. Most of the experiment is automated. I dump the RSS feed of new books and movies into Twitter. It has created an increased interest in our new items.”

“It is a fun, fast way to communicate, to see what others are doing”

“I post at least one tweet per day that refers followers back to other online resources, like flickr, our blog, our website, MySpace page, etc. I tweet about library and community events.”

“It’s easy since it’s all automated (twitterfeed.com pulls the RSS form the library’s blog and flickr stream).”

“Positive, especially in the last 6 months since they have resolved many of their outage issues.”

“It’s been positive, overall. Generally speaking, when we can increase the number of communication media we use to reach various groups, it benefits everyone. You just have to be selective and back the right horse from the beginning. For example, Orkut and Friendster didn’t really get much traction in the social networking arena as compared to MySpace and Facebook. It would have been troubling to have put all of your resources into building a presence on one of those neglected sites.”

“Personally – a lot of fun and helpful. If I have questions about something or want opinions I can post them on Twitter and usually get an answer pretty quickly. It’s also great for keeping in touch with library friends I’ve met.”

“Very positive. It’s so easy that a few of our librarians, who aren’t comfortable with web2.0/library 2.0, pick up the Twitter interface in no time.”

“Simple and easy to use. Occasional service outages, but they don’t last very long. There have been times when I’ve tried to post a tweet and the Twitter servers are overloaded and I receive an error, but I just wait a minute or two and then I’m able to post the tweet without problems.”

“Generally positive, we have over 100 followers, now including the local newspaper.”

“It is easy to set up, quick to maintain and looks good for the library.”

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT/CONFERENCES/NETWORKING

“Especially like it for conferences – way to virtually attend a conference as people send tweets.”

“Way to “meet” a lot of people at my University; learned a lot about what they do and about new work-related items and issues.”

“Incredibly helpful in keeping in contact with other librarians around the world and keeping tabs on cool things that they’re doing.”

“We get to see how other libraries are using Web 2.0 – gives us wider peer-to-peer network than our local consortia offers.”

“I personally love Twitter. Professionally, I get a lot of tech support on Twitter that I don’t get at my library. There’s only one cataloger and we don’t have a programmer on staff, so when I work on some projects it’s good to have the help of my tweeps.”

FOR MARKETING

“We use the account for marketing purposes.”

“We mainly use for publicity/marketing.”

“Most of our postings promote imminent events (like library programs) or comment from those events.”

“One more way to get the updates out. Savvy users know how to get tweets on their phones, so I hope that followers will turn on that feature.”

FOLLOWERS

“As far as the library’s Twitter page goes, we have a lot of followers, but I don’t know how many follow through and go to the links we send out.”

“It is so encouraging to read from our follower’s responses after they discovered that we were Twittering.”

“We are getting a lot of followers so must be interesting to some folks.”

“Most following us are libraries, but we have also followed them back.”

“We have a bunch of followers (many libraries from around the country, but also some local organizations, radio stations, etc).”

“So far, we’re not being followed by a lot of our users. Most of the other people following our Tweets are other librarians, other libraries, etc.”

“The library is seen as hip and cool by keeping up with the latest technology. Local bloggers use our tweets to blog about happenings at the library.”

“I Started with a personal account… then I set up [our library] account with the intent of broadcasting updates the community about our struggling library. It turns out most of our followers are library professionals around the country and around the world, plus some [sic] who are not necessarily (a) in our neighborhood or (b) into libraries. We’ve become Twitter pals with numerous library people and local people who often offer advice and encouragement. One of our most interesting episodes in our Twitter life was Hurricane Gustav, when we gave and received pertinent updates via Twitter before, during and after the storm.”

“We try to follow everyone who follows us, but some of the tweets aren’t appropriate for a publicly-funded library.”

“It was slow going to get people to add us – we now have 103 followers which is interesting.”

OTHER

“Wish length of text could be more than 140 characters.”

“I have enjoyed using Twitter, but I’ve been frustrated with the lack of tech support or response to user suggestions and complaints, especially regarding the search function.”

“Seems to be a somewhat different kind of communication than anything else: not quite like email, IM, or blogs.”

“Over the past several months I’ve created three different accounts – one for our library, one for me and one for our new building project.”

“Not many staff members help change the content.”

“Initial use – keep in contact with coworkers in far away locations; now use personal account to stay up-to-date during conferences; use library account for promotional purposes.”

“First use was to use as a private notice board for reference desk news (making our tweets private and only allowing library staff to follow). When we found out that there was interest in following from the public, we decided to revamp our account and use it to publicize library workshops, collections, service, and events.”

“Original use was to provide an off-site mechanism for our administrative staff to alert the public (and staff) of Library weather related closings or emergencies. Unfortunately because of delayed lapses in posting, we have moved to another reliable service.”

“We stopped using it on our blog. If we served a very wired population, we would have continued.”

“Our library recently set up its Twitter account and we have yet to fully integrate it into our reference services. We really do not have information to share about using the tool with patrons. We are still determining who in our system will work with this.”

“Experience limited to only the library’s Twitter account.   We don’t use it the way it was intended – as real-time “what’s happening” or as a collaborative tool for work groups – but we seem to be reaching some people out there.”

“No experience outside of our library account … opening a Twitter account seemed like the next step (after creating a MySpace and Facebook account for the library).”

Note: This is the second (part b) question of a 15-part questionnaire I sent out to over 90 libraries with Twitter accounts. 65 libraries responded. I used this information for a web 2.0 article for my LIS5313 class at Florida State University. Once the article is finished, I will share it on the blog. In the meantime, I am sharing data collected of the responses for each question.

While most libraries say there are few negatives to using Twitter, they do share some problems with the service: its brevity, the fact it hasn’t caught on with patrons quite yet, it’s another thing to update, fellow staff members are hesitant to use it, and the fact that it can be a time-waster. A few librarians mentioned technological problems as well.

Brevity. Some librarians note it is difficult to keep their announcements brief and had to repackage messages to fit within the 140-character limit keystroke. Comments:

“The 140 character limit is sometimes too short to be adequate.”

“We have to repackage some of our entries to fit within the keystroke limits of Twitter.”

Lack of Support or Interest from Colleagues. Despite the ease of use of Twitter, not all librarians, libraries and administrative staff have warmed up to it yet. Some librarians are hesitant to try the service or are already overworked and not open to adding another thing to monitor on their plate.

“Some of us in the office enjoy it, but the rest of the office doesn’t quite embrace it – thus when only two people are tweeting, it’s pretty limited to what us two are specifically involved with.”

Twitter's famous Fail Whale

Technological Problems. While Twitter hasn’t had many technological problems recently, there was a time where the famous “Fail Whale” was a very familiar sight to see on the website. One library mentioned that recent lapses or delays in service made Twitter unreliable for them. (When using Twitter for announcements regarding climatic weather closings, the need for a reliable announcement and emergency service was especially important). There was a period of time when Twitter crashed often due to the increased overload on their servers. The addition of many third-party applications that enhance Twitter’s service has tapped its servers.

“Twitter filled the bill for posting emergency notices…Recent lapses or delays in the service (some of the accounts did not update for several days after posting was done) plus the length of characters limitation, have made us move to a more reliable service (WordPress) for most of our purpose.”

“Reliability issues – although Twitter service has improved recently, there was a period of time it wasn’t working too well.”

Reaches only a select audience/Not popular amongst patrons…yet. Twitter only reaches a select audience of tech-savvy patrons. Many librarians note that because Twitter hasn’t caught on yet with many of their patrons and clientele, their library’s reach with Twitter is limited. (This may be a challenge depending on a Library’s location. A library that is in a larger city will likely have a more tech-savvy clientele that they can connect with through Twitter. Another library, for example, that serves a high population of Amish will probably not rely as heavily on Twitter to connect with their clientele).

“I don’t think a lot of people in the real world are aware of it yet, so its reach is limited.”

“You may not have that many people online for your library. A majority of your patrons may not use it or care to use it.”

“The only con may be that not all our customers use twitter, but we have a printed newsletter, an email newsletter, our web site, printed flyers, a blog and word of mouth for those who do not follow us on Twitter.”

“Some patrons do not “get” Twitter… Oftentimes, social profiles such a Twitter and MySpace tend to only attract other libraries or librarians and not the target audience.”

Yet another thing to update. Remembering to do updates is a difficulty noted by some, especially when the librarian has many other duties to tend to while at work. Many of the libraries using Twitter also have blogs, Facebook/MySpace pages, and the website to continually update, thus making Twitter yet an additional responsibility to an already full workday.

“It’s another account we have to keep active.”

“Posting [to twitter] can get lost in the midst of busy days (just like with the blogs).”

“Requires somebody to update it (sometimes this is the hardest part).”

“I don’t think there are any cons if it is used appropriately, but the devil is in the details, as they say. The biggest problem with being present in any social media space lies in the time involved in the commitment to be present. It doesn’t’ work unless you keep it up to date and engage with a community.”

Time waster/Not necessary. Some librarians find Twitter time consuming and discovered other programs (e.g., IM between staff and Meebo for patrons) that serve their purposes better for communication.

“We found Twitter to not be useful for us. It was a little too intrusive and time consuming. We use Messenger IM between staff members and Meebo for answering questions from patrons.”

“It takes time away from other work.”

On the whole, of the 65 libraries that responded, a majority believe that Twitter has so much to offer their library: Twitter is easy, fun, free to use, is a great marketing and public relations tool, allows for collaboration amongst staff and community, provides opportunities for professional developing and networking, has strength in its brevity, and allows libraries to meet many of their patrons “where they’re at.”

Efficiency. Twitter is powerful in its ability to efficiently get the word out via a whole range of communications. The Library doesn’t have to memorize all their patrons’ contact information. Patrons that are interested can subscribe to the library’s Twitter feeds and get the information on the web or on their phone. Libraries can reach a massive amount of people in little time (and for free).

Twitter is easy to use, requires very little effort to reach multiple people at once, more immediacy than a blast email. We don’t have to remember to update Twitter, we just update the Calendar and the events are fed to Twitter; we update our blogs and those get sent to Twitter.”

Marketing/Public Relations. Twitter is an excellent way for libraries to grow their online presence and profile (or “brand”). Twitter gives libraries a chance to promote their content and it extends the Library’s audience by finding new users/patrons/readers. By using a third party application such as rss2Twitter or Twitterfeed, Libraries can drive traffic to their website or blog.

We reach a segment of our community using this communication tool. We keep up with the converstions going on locally and participate too. We use this too to advertise our events, blog entries and photos.

Brevity. Using 140 characters or less to write a post is a quick way to get the message out. It forces users to be brief and to the point, thus creating another way to communicate effectively. The short tweets are effective for concise messages and news items or links to longer messages and news items.

140 character posts is constraining but it’s ultimately a good thing. Keeps us focused.”

Instant Information & Active application. Twitter as an “always-on” micro publishing tool. Users can send and receive tweets in a variety of ways and third-party applications make it easy to quickly send out information from blogs, websites and other RSS feeds.

Twitter is a great way to inform lirary users and website visitors about up-to-the-minute goings on.”

Networking and Collaboration. Libraries can use Twitter to network with other Libraries, Librarians, bloggers and patrons. In doing this, they not only market their services, but they provide user-centered information. Furthermore, they create a community with the constant updates. Several librarians mentioned following others as they twittered at conferences – it was as if they were virtually attending.

It is a tool librarians can use to update each other on the newest programs or services.”

[It's an] equally great way to stay in the loop of what other libraries are doing.”

Customer Service. Twitter provides Libraries the opportunity to have another way to provide customer service, increase and open the lines of communication. Twitter can be used for patrons to provide information about what they really think about the library.

You can interact with people that are expecting you to talk to them. By people following our library on Twitter they are wiling and eager to listen to what the library has to say.

Cost. Although there is the cost of staff time, Twitter is free to use. Libraries can avoid using expensive software or hardware to communicate with their constituents. For patrons that have unlimited texting and for those that can access Twitter accounts through the internet, the cost is low for them as well.

…Ease of use and the fact it’s free – basically there’s no harm in trying. If you reach even one patron that wouldn’t otherwise have known about an event or something, it’s worth it.

Quick, Accessible and Easy to Use. Not only is it free, it is easy to sign up on the web and easy to use, whether one uses it on the web, via browser, email, instant messaging clients or the phone or through a third party application.

[Twitter] gives us a potential method to update portions of website without needing to know web skills.

Open API (application programming interface). Twitter publishes an API so applications are regularly being developed. These creative applications build upon Twitter, thus consistently improving its reach and type of service.

Twitter (with Twitterfeed) provides an easy, automated way for our library to provide our patrons with another “channel” to receive information abou tlibrary programs and service. no difficulties so far in using the service.

Forward-thinking. Several librarians note that using Twitter is positive in that it shows they are forward-thinking in using the technology.

It allows us to demonstrate a familiarity with web 2.0 applications, which I hope makes us look more relevant to younger patrons.