Twitter Group

Pros:

• 140 character limit
• Simple to use
• Open API (application programming interface) allows for creative third-party applications
• Social knowledge creation/contribution/dissemination (see David Kemper’s post on Twitter and Internet Librarian International 2008)
• Allows for private messages
• Free!

Cons:

• 140 character limit
• Tiny URLs – you don’t always know what you’re stepping into
• Diificult to convince patrons to follow you (see “Messaging in a 2.0 Word:  Twitter & SMS” and the below email from Jeff Scott, Library Director for the City of Casa Grande Public Library in Casa Grande, Arizona)

To give you some background, my library’s twitter experiment started with this post:
http://gathernodust.blogspot.com/2007/04/twitter-update-or-how-i-was-able-to.html

You can read more about the discussion regarding libraries interacting with other libraries on David Lee King’s Blog. http://www.davidleeking.com/

He’s rather annoyed by libraries friending other libraries.

Here is another post that will give you background on what we are doing now. http://gathernodust.blogspot.com/2008/11/whos-talking-about-your-library.html

That post will discuss Twitter, a year later and the problem with connecting to patrons on a social networking site.

Generally, the majority of people who follow the library on twitter are other libraries and librarians. My main focus is to follow patrons that are from Casa Grande or in Arizona. I will also follow back librarians and libraries that follow me. I also get a good deal of authors and poets follow the library as well.

Out of probably 250 followers for the library on twitter, there are probably three or four that are actually from Casa Grande. What’s difficult about that number is that it is hard to tell who is from where. People don’t always readily identify their location online for privacy reasons.

The same is true for local blogs. As I mentioned in my Talking post, there are probably 156 blogs from Casa Grande, but only 24 are active and many of those are private (family blogs).

Overall, I know more people are using either RSS, Twitter, or the new videos page because I get a huge reaction when something good hits the shelves. For instance, we added the DVD Kung Fu Panda last Thursday. Before the video even came down from Technical Services, we had a hoard of people asking for it and where it was. It shows “In” when Tech Serv prepares to bring it down. Within ten minutes, the time between Tech Serv putting the movie in the system and bringing it down and we already had people asking.

So for those using it, they have a great advantage. They can find out when we have something before anybody else does. Using twitter, they could also get that information on their cell phone via text.

Overall, people are noticing it, but they can follow twitter, RSS feeds, the new videos/books page, or follow via email, without being a twitter user. It’s difficult to tell unless we start doing surveys. They obviously can find out about our new stuff quickly, but there are many ways for them to find that information depending on their technical ability. If you are in the library, the fastest way is to go to a catalog computer, click on new books or new videos (http://cglibrary.org ), and ask for it. Outside the library, the public can sign up to receive emails whenever we have something new. Those seem to be the ways used the most to get our new stuff.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

Jeff