"Nurture the Belbin plant"

This is a post on my personal blog about the CILIP in Hants and Wight AGM yesterday. Now that we have our own sub-branch blog I'll post a slightly different version on there also...

...but this one's about what I got out of it personally - so mostly it's about the excellent presentations from Linda Jones and Timothy Collinson.

The theme was the Darkside and the Brightside of the web, with Linda taking the former and Timothy the later. I liked that both presentations allowed audience to participate. Some quite dry topics (like copyright) were dealt with in an interesting and engaging way. As well as demonstrating an understanding of the topic, both presentations showed an understanding of how people learn.

Dark side

The  first of the two presentations was about the dark side. The session kicked-off with newspaper clippings of cautionary tales of the Internet (all from last month) handed out to all . Seeing such a massive folder of clippings about how the internet or public disclosure had somehow gone wrong for folks made quite an impact.
The first topic chosen by the audience was copyright  ("you can tell it's a room full of librarians!"). One example was a 10 minute movie on YouTube called "A Fair(y) Use Tale" - a mashup comprised of Disney clips that explains copyright (irony fans will love this).

Another topic was a Facebook T&C's activity (with sweets) - or perhaps more broadly, getting us to think about what we're signing up to on the web. Sometimes it does pay to read the T&C's! Other examples related to passwords - i.e. lists of commonly used passwords and public disclosure (Tony Blair itinerary being disclosed by his daughter on Facebook for e.g.).

Normally, I switch off to cautionary tales about using the Internet. In my early days as a librarian I heard lots of scaremongering born of fear of the unknown. I think the reason Linda's presentation was so good was she wasn't saying don't use the Internet, just that you should be a bit savvy when you do. One of the key messages was to use the Internet to evaluate the Internet  - if something looks a bit iffey - Google it!

Bright side

Timothy's presentation was about really positive uses of the Internet. About getting user participation - particularly in a HE setting. An interesting concept was his use of Analog -> Digital twitter. This was a fantastic way to get people engaged with Twitter without having to have everybody logged into a computer. At the start of the session the audience were given slips of paper and encouraged to write short messages or thoughts (tweets to the initiated) which were collected and entered to a twitter account through the session. For anyone who's been itching to use Twitter for collaboration in the classroom but has been struggling for a way to do it without everyone: a) having an account and knowing how to use it; and b) having to be logged in to their own computer - here's an answer.

Timothy illustrated a number of positive uses of the internet - especially good examples of web 2.0 usage at UoP.  Their Thing of the Day blog is definitely worth a look as it sneaks IL into posts among more esoteric entries such as Hats of Meat! The key message for me was that librarians need time to play and be creative! "Nurture the Belbin plant in your organisation" was Timothy's parting shot - definitely something to think on.

All in all, top notch. It's a day and several glasses of wine later, for somebody with a goldfish memory like mine to recall this much is testimony to the quality of the presentations.

I may never visit Twitter again! HootSuite does that for me.

I've been trying out HootSuite as a Twitter tool for the last couple of days and I have to say I'm really impressed.

A great feature of HootSuite is that you can use it to manage multiple Twitter accounts from a single place. You can also configure it to allow multiple people to be able to Tweet from a single Twitter account. Great if you're managing a group Twitter stream! These are what got me interested in HootSuite but what's kept me there is some of the other features.

Here's a bit more detail:

• Posting: In-line url shortening makes it much simpler to add links. Delayed posting is also useful. If you've got more that one Twitter account set up you can post the same tweet from multiple Twitter accounts - simply tick each account you want to post from.
  

• Stats: If you use the in-line ow.ly shortening HootSuite can keep stats on how many people follow your links. The ui is really good, you can see a breakdown of clicks on all of your links...

...or click on the little graph icons in the "sent" view to get a breakdown of how many hits a particular link has had. Good for working out what your followers are interested in!

• Searches: HootSuite saves each search you run as an icon in your "Searches" tab. Really handy if you want to keep track of some trending topics or particular people. Some of the search options are quite powerful too.

• User Management: Really simple to give others editing rights. Just add a users email address and name and select whether you want their password to be sent to you or them. You can also delete editors with a single click.

• Twitterfeed-like function: There is an option in "Account Settings" that enables you configure Tweets from RSS or ATOM feeds. It's not quite as fine grained as TwitterFeed but fine for most purposes.

I've really only skimmed the surface here. It does lack follower management and the grouping functionality of say Tweetdeck right now. Another thing to be wary of is that account confirmations seem to end up in your email spam folder! In short though, I'm really impressed. The site is fast and simple and provides a great user interface for becoming a more advanced Twitter user.

Well played HCC!!!

I'm referring of course to Hampshire County Council's live Twittering of the Local Authorities Transforming Public Libraries conference. Regardless of the content of the conference I think we all have to stand up and give a round of applause to HCC for making it accessible to the broader community. As well as a Twitter stream there is also a conference website and slides from the speaker's presentations are available. Video clips of the presentations should be added by the end of the week.

Here are some things I liked about the Twitter coverage:

• The Twitter account was set up in advance of the conference and by this morning had almost 50 followers. Posting about the purpose of the event gave folks enough info to follow it if they wanted. I probably wouldn't have ever heard of it if it wasn't on Twitter.
  
• The stream now exists as a persistent record of the event - almost like minutes. The links to the speaker's presentations were neat as well and by looking up @libconf (and reply's to @libconf) we can reflect on the speakers, revisit the topics and add our own responses. I for one will be thinking hard about Tim Coates pitch (possibly another post on that later!).
• Hampshire R&HIT web team (behind the Twittering) explained that it was experimental and a new venture. Which set the expectation. That said, they did very well in reporting what was going on and even managed to respond to some replies. There were about 100 tweets from libconf on the day - no mean feat I'm sure with everything else going on.
  

I really hope they do this for future events and that other organisations follow their lead (mentioning no names *cough*CILIP*cough*). It shows a willingness to engage with the broader profession and allowed about 50 information professionals to get the inside scoop on something which, otherwise, may have appearred to be a very top-down conference. Yes, it's a shame that the speakers didn't field questions from Twitter and also that the backchannel from delegates appeared to be pretty poor but it's definitely a step in the right direction.

Well done Hampshire!

RT @DarthVader "Come to the dark side - we have cake"

Just how, you might ask, is the statement above of any use to an information professional? And you'd have a point. Personally, it made me laugh, so that is good in itself but I can see that to justify using Twitter in the work place a lot of folks will need more business justification than just getting a chuckle every now and then.

I've been using Twitter for a couple of weeks now and it's made quite an impression on me. This post is an attempt to clarify how I've found it so far and work out some of the pro's and con's as I see them.

Email, instant messaging, phone, visitors blog comments - why on earth would I want another distraction from my "job"?

So, how did I come to Twitter? Well, I'm finding that if you using one Web2.0 application tends to expose you to others. In my case I've been blogging about new resources inside the firewall at work for about 2 years now. Inevitably, I was exposed to other blogs and some I now read regularly (as well as browsing recently published posts every now and then). I feel I've received far, far more useful information than I've published but that's one of the benefits of Web2.0. When you get a group of active users adding content there is soon going to be a massive store of information that everyone has the potential to benefit from. Recently I've seen quite an increase in the number of blog posts about our internal version of Twitter, to the point where I decided to check it out, again as a means to publicise new library resources. Initially, I just wanted to scope out the scene so I posted a "hello world" and sat back to observe the etiquette and norms. Alot of the chat was very technical but every now and then someone would post a question that I was able to answer. This felt kind of good. One of my favourite bits about being a librarian is answering questions. Wheras my initial interest was about promoting new books through microblogging I soon found that it had the potential to be another channel for users to communicate with the library. To answer the question above: put simply, the distractions are my job.

Joining Twitter outside the firewall was sort of serendipitous. I'd posted a comment on librarything and one of the responses (from @jmgold) led to my first dipping my toe into Twitter. I still maintain that he'll be contacted by my lawyers re: the rehabilitation costs.

Effect on connecting with new users, good. Effect on workflow, stress levels and time management, v. bad!

This might just be me but I've found that opening any new channel of communication is very stressful and disruptive. I won't lie, the last couple of weeks have not been my most productive. BUT, I have stuck with it for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I went through exactly the same when I first tried Second Life at work, and when I first started blogging. With the blog, I've found that as you get more experienced with the medium you work out how to manage it. With Twitter there is a very strong compulsion to check for new messages every five minutes. This kind of wears off after a while and learning to manage who you follow and getting a good sidebar viewer helps alot. I've even found that posting a sentence about what I'm doing every now and then helps me to focus on the task. My second reason for sticking with it is that I have proof that it is generating new library users. At first it was hard to guage the effectiveness in promoting new resources until the other day, literally seconds after tweeting about a new ebook I got an IM requesting an ebooks login. They said they love the book tweets and often follow the links to the library blog. 1 new user seems like a small payoff but I've been in this game just long enough to know that if 1 library user contacts you, there are probably another 10 who are accessing your resources without making themselves known. Sure enough, when I checked ebook usage today, it's well above average. If you manage it correctly the overhead is low. Posting a 140 character message takes what? A minute?

Who cares what you had for breakfast?

Talking to users and other librarians, I've heard quite a few objections to using Twitter. One is the shear amount of rubbish information on there. And to be fair, this is true. However, the point is that it is very easy to filter the information. At work, the user base is low enough to follow comment on the tool. Outside the firewall, you don't really want noise from a population equivalent to a medium to large country. Particularly, if you are using it in a professional capacity, you soon learn to only follow Twitterers who give good value. Everyone posts the odd whimsical post but most of the Twitterers that I continue to follow also post useful links, provoke discussion or raise awareness of important issues (or just have a different take on things). As a solo librarian, I have to say one of the main benefits of Twitter is that I now feel just that little bit more connected to my profession.

Social Media - the clue is in the name!

Another, criticism that I've heard is that it's hard to get the right kind of people following your Twitters. This can happen - for example, I seem to have collected a moderate following of spammers and life coaches!?! I think there are some ways to minimise this though. Firstly, get over the concept of using the Internet as a broadcast medium. The social web is just that - "social". Think quiet chat down the pub rather than standing on a soapbox with a megaphone. In practical terms I think this means following the sort of people that you want to follow you. If you complain about getting the wrong "types" of followers but make no attempt to connect with your library users (or potential users) then I think you're kind of missing the point. If you find it hard to justify spending work time "friending" people on the net just think of it as customer research. The penny pinchers love terms like "customer research" and who knows, you might learn something new about your users!

The second thing is to tweet. If you tweet about your field (i.e. library stuff) you will find relevant followers. More accurately, they will find you as one of the techniques for finding people to follow is to search entries for keywords. If your tweets contain relevant keywords and hashtags then people interested in the #library will find you. I guess relating to this, use your existing network. People who already follow you are likely to have contacts who would also be interested in following you.

To summarise in 140 characters or less...

Well, to be honest I can't, but here (as briefly as I can) are my pro's and con's:

I love Twitter because of...
Reaching new library users;
Finding out more about library users interests/ needs;
Professional awareness/ networking;
Useful sources of information, links, etc.;
Promoting resources

Twitter sometimes does my head in because...

Checking in with it can become addictive;
It's another channel of communication to "learn";
The spammers and life-coaches are sometimes annoying

Can you think of any other pro's and con's? I'd love to hear them if you can.

p.s. I rarely eat breakfast as I'm not a morning person :-)