Chrissy Johnson
Jennifer Kanter
LIBR 246
Social Software Tool - Twitter
I. Proposed technology
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service. Users are allotted up to 140 characters to “tweet,” and relay their message out to the world. Accounts are free, and users can “follow” other ‘twitterers’ or have “followers” to their own posts. Posts may either appear on the Twitter home page for public display, or they may be made private to groups of friends. As users update their tweets, they are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users (also known as "followers") who have signed up to receive them. You can use the small character limit to embedded media, which provides additional information to your followers beyond the headline tweet. Twitter.com (2010) describes their service as “a real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about what you find interesting. Simply find the public streams you find most compelling and follow the conversations.” Since Twitter mimics the functionality and mobility of instant messaging, SMS texting, and blogging, it has the ability to reach many individuals at once. Since it was first created in 2006, it has morphed from a tool to keep in touch with friends and relatives, to an instant communication network during shared events like earthquakes, conferences, and festivals. Now, many businesses reap the benefits from using Twitter. It provides businesses the opportunity to communicate with customers on their terms, in a friendly, casual manner.
II. Purpose
As stated in our mission statement, the Evergreen Public Library believes it is critical that all of our citizens are technologically literate. To help facilitate this, the library is responsible for offering up to date software designed for both education and for entertainment, as well as knowledgeable on-staff instructors. To that end, it is imperative that the library be available outside of our physical space, where our patrons are located. We cannot assume that our patrons know we exist, know of our services, or how we can assist them in their information seeking needs. It is imperative that we use Twitter primarily as a promotion and marketing tool of the library and the services we offer online and in house.
Teens and adults nowadays spend an inordinate amount of time communicating to one another through IM chat, text messaging, email, and social networking sites. Demographics show we are a young city, composed of mostly young families and single people mostly under the age of 40. The EPL lies within the city limits of Evergreen, California. Evergreen is situated just outside the north eastern border of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, and according to the 2007 update to the US Census Bureau information, it has an estimated population of 105,940. This is an increase of almost 29,000 persons over a five-year period. Additionally, the 2005 population is over twice the area’s population from the 1990 census, listed as 44,685 (US Census Bureau, 2007b). This dramatic community expansion shows there may be a need to promote our services to an influx of recent residents who may not be aware of our existence.
Of the total Evergreen population in 2007, 15,271 persons were estimated to be attending grades preschool through grade 8. Of those persons age 5 to 9, one hundred percent are enrolled in school. This is compared to 69.5% of children ages 3 and 4, and 97.6% of children ages 10 to 14. (US Census Bureau, 2007c) Such data indicates the strong need for our library to reach out to these young people through social networking. With young adults and teens becoming a dominant demographic group in our city’s population, it is imperative that the library attempt to reach a generation through the communication tools they use in order to serve their needs, and maintain the library as a community presence in the future.
Figure 1:
III. Who Benefits?
A. Patrons
1. Teachers: We attempt to offer materials which relate to and support the local elementary school curricula. Our local school district has publically made a commitment to teaching technology and computer skills to all students, particularly middle and high school students. In our 2009 survey response from local children, parents, and teachers, many teachers responded that they would like the library to assist with ensuring that enough materials were available for students trying to complete major projects. Librarians could make Twitter posts directing students to online resources. For example, a children’s librarian could Tweet about online resources pertinent to 4th Grade students completing their California Mission Projects. This would help teachers ensure that all their students are able to find appropriate resources once the print sources in the library are checked out and unavailable. We could also provide a ‘sound board’ for local schools and tweet about school holiday closures, or events.
2. Parents: Evergreen has a rather large population of young families, with parents that are at least high school graduates or college educated. Most are quite tech savvy, at least compared with surrounding populations. The library could market itself as a trusted resource by providing tweets pertinent to issues surrounding children and parenthood. Tweets could provide links to websites about recent CDC updates on vaccines, peer reviewed resources on autism, how screen childcare providers, ideas for rainy day activities or science lessons in the kitchen, etc. In addition, one of the survey responses from parents was that they wanted their local school or library to teach their children how to use the internet for research. Having a Twitter account that offers this service would keep the library in line with parental and school expectations – making Twitter and the online library a learning tool for kids.
3. Adults: Evergreen’s general adult population would be serviced by Twitter in many ways. They would receive Twitter updates on library events such as classes, author talks, book club updates, general community news/events, additions to library holdings, and interesting resource sharing. For example, before April 15th, the library could tweet about any free tax return services offered in the area, or a quick tutorial on how to get the most relevant results out an internet search engine like Google.
B. Staff
1. Twitter will make the staff more accessible to the public by making more meaningful and more widespread connections in our community. It is no longer possible to assume the public knows the value of library..
2. Cost free
3. Efficient – for users and librarians
4. Cost free marketing and public relations tool to promote services and brand
5. This is a great collaboration tool among librarians, and also provides an opportunity to network with other libraries. Twitter is a commonly used professional and educational tool to advertise library programs and services.
6. Provides an opportunity to provide and improve customer service.
7. Use demonstrates relevancy to younger patrons. Our survival depends on reminding our community, by becoming nearly omnipresent and available on social networking sites.
IV. Evidence of utility –libraries and/or articles
Due to the popularity of social networking sites general, many libraries have already created Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace accounts in order to reach out to those in their communities that are already participating online. The original intent may have been to network with members of their community, but nowadays many libraries are successfully marketing their services and their ‘brand’.
A. The Ada Community Library, Boise, ID (twitter.com/adalib), does a great job of keeping patrons up-to-date, twittering on everything from Archaeology and Historic Preservation Month, book sales, and other library events to announcing new library cards.
B. Yale Science Libraries posts about upcoming Endnote workshops, its IM reference service, and access to Science Direct journal, all in an effort to inform patrons of the services available to them on campus (twitter.com/yalescilib).
C. Denver Public Library has a great teen site called eVolver DPL teens (twitter.com/denver_evolver). The site does a great job of marketing to a teen audience by posting links to Denver fashion festivals, GLTB resources for National Coming Out day, in house competitions with prizes for teens that post their book reviews or participate in book clubs, teen library programs, release dates for new holdings, and voting information. This site has a larger fan following than many more populous American cities.
D. Kroski, E. (July, 2008). All a Twitter. School Library Journal, 54(7), p.31-35
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. Kroski notes that Twitter is a great way for librarians to connect at conferences and/or as a way to stay engaged with the library community at large.
V. Challenges to proposal/implementation
A. Staff knowledge and training
1. Most librarians are comfortable with the technology since it is fairly simple, but are concerned about keeping up page maintenance and posting. On the flip side, some librarians may have some difficulty keeping their announcements brief, within the 140 character limit.
B. Getting ‘buy in’ from patrons and staff
2. While Twitter has gained recognition and popularity, it is also a source for disparaging humor on the comedy circuit due to the banal nature of some tweets. Some may argue that Twitter is just the latest 2.0 fad, and its use is gimmicky for a library.
3. Lack of support/interest from colleagues, due to additional work incurred
4. Remembering to update the site, along with the static website and blogs.
5. Twitter only reaches a select audience of tech-savvy patrons
C. Technology issues
1. Technological Problems: If the library uses Twitter for announcements regarding major weather closings or for emergency service, then it must be reliable. There is a slim possibility that the site may crash due to an increased overload of traffic on their servers. This does not seem to be a current issue.
D. Support of the technology
In our 2009 surveys, parents and teachers bemoaned the fact that their children were not avid library patrons. The main reason cited for this is a lack of relevancy to for their children who are accustomed to receiving instant information via the internet. Many of the older students reported that they viewed their local library as a space to meet friends, take advantage of free wifi and check out fiction books. Our patrons need us to be more accessible, and we need to market the library. Twitter is the best way to achieve this, and it does not cost the library or the tax payer a cent.
VI. Overcoming challenges
A. Staff ‘buy in’
1. While Twitter can be used to relay simple greetings between friends, there is no doubt that it can open up the lines of communication between librarian and patron. It is a simply a great educational tool.
2. It is understandable that staff may feel this is another burden placed on their already full plates. In order to lessen the load, just a few applications could be added to our Twitter account which would make the process of posting more palatable to most:
b. Rss2Twitter: Takes any RSS feed and posts the items to Twitter. www.pivari.com/rss2twitter.html Open API. Twitter publishes an open API (application programming interface) so applications are regularly being developed. These creative applications build upon Twitter, thus consistently improving its scope and type of service. A wonderful blog post on Tame the Web extols the virtues of this service, especially for those who are somewhat familiar with API and want to make the library essentially tweet on its own: “I had created a custom report for our SIRSI Unicorn system that automatically tweets once an hour if a book on our new book shelf gets checked out. (I figured check in would be pretty hit or miss as we are an academic library and most things stay out until the end of the semester anyway…) Once that was working, I brain stormed some more, and decided to link twitter to our Wordpress blog, a simple process. From there I tied it into our room scheduling program, so that now a tweet is automatically posted when a Library instruction is coming up. After that, I decided it needed something a bit more, and now every night at closing the library will automatically tweet about how much paper was used in our electronic research area. I hope that in the weeks to come I will be able to add on some more automated tweets. During the wait for all the updates to download, I added another twitter feature. There is now a “Tweet This!” feature on each record in our online catalog. Click the link, and it presents you with a login box for twitter, fill in your username and password, and click “tweet” and the current item you are viewing is automatically tweeted complete with short URL to link to the catalog record. I can personally see this working well for a reading list, or even a quick and dirty method for making a list of items for a bibliography” (Stephens).
E. Learning to use Twitter
a. A Newbie’s Guide to Twitter tinyurl.com/2gchre
b. David Lee King: Twitter Explained for Librarians, or 10 ways to use Twitter tinyurl.com/2ljtmr
c. Twitter in Plain English (video) www.commoncraft.com/Twitter
VII. Impact Assessment
1. We will determine if we’re having the desired impact on our community primarily by looking at how many ‘followers’ we have online compared to how many people reside in our community.
2. We will also conduct another round of surveys within six months of implementation to judge our effectiveness among teachers, parents, and students.
3. There are numerous applications available for Twitter to monitor traffic to the site, and monitor how engaged ‘followers’ are. Here are just a few of the more intriguing applications:
a. Summize: A real-time Twitter search engine that allows for keyword searches of tweets. summize.com
b. TweetScan: A real-time Twitter search engine that lets you track keywords and sign up for email alerts. tweetscan.com
c. Twitstat: A mobile Twitter client that lets you post updates and view replies and the 10 latest’ tweets from friends. www.twitstat.com/m
d. Twitt(url)y: Aggregates all of the URLs that Twitterers are talking about and displays how many tweets each one received. twitturly.com
Implementing Twitter would truly be a win-win venture for libraries, librarians, patrons, and educators. It costs the staff a minimal time investment to reclaim a potentially lost generation of patrons, over haul our image, and solidify our library’s future.
References
Kroski, E. (July, 2008). All a Twitter. School Library Journal, 54(7), p.31-35
Stephens, M. (2010). Librarian, library and catalog tweets revealed!. Retrieved November 22, 2010, from http://tametheweb.com/2008/11/25/librarian-library-and-catalog-tweets-revealed/
Twitter.com. (2010). About. Retrieved November 21st, 2010 from http://twitter.com/about
US Census Bureau. (2007b). Roseville city, California – Population Finder – American FactFinder. Retrieved November 20th ,2010, from http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/SAFFPopulation?_event=&geo_id=16000US0662938&_geoContext=01000US%7C04000US06%7C16000US0662938&_street=&_county=roseville&_cityTown=roseville&_state=04000US06&_zip=&_lang=en&_sse=on&ActiveGeoDiv=&_useEV=&pctxt=fph&pgsl=160&_submenuId=population_0&ds_name=DEC_2000_SAFF&_ci_nbr=null&qr_name=null®=null%3Anull&_keyword=&_industry=
US Census Bureau. (2007c). Roseville city, California – School Enrollment. Retrieved November 20th, 2010 from http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/STTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=16000US0662938&-qr_name=ACS_2005_EST_G00_S1401&-ds_name=ACS_2005_EST_G00_&-redoLog=false
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