Social Media Challenge #1: Twitter

The first website I challenged myself to use last week is Twitter. Twitter lovers beware, I'm going to trash talk it for a few sentences.

Now, Twitter is my most scoffed at social media website. I have never liked the basic premise of it or how people seem to use it: to be whiny little babies. To me, it had always been a website used to be really egotistical about yourself, and let everyone constantly know what you're doing (I'm looking at you "I'm going to the bathroom" people). I created an account a few years ago, during what I call my "obsessed with FOB, MCR, PATD" phase to see what musicians were posting. If you don't know what those acronyms mean, then you probably weren't as obsessed with emo bands as I was in my teen years, pat yourself on the back. Even then, I still had a problem seeing the validity of this website.

Well, I officially take my statements back after only a week of using it on a regular basis. I still have some problems seeing how it can be useful personally, as I don't really like to post a tonne of random shit about my life. Alternatively, I can see it's use for networking (business), keeping up with people you admire (celebrities) or getting news in a speedy format.

I actually regularity check my Twitter feed now to keep myself updated on the people I follow. I use this handy feature Twitter added in 2009 called "lists" so that I don't overwhelm my self with information, as some of the people I follow tend to constantly update (I'm talking live tweeting of conferences and such). As of now I follow 60 people and have 8 lists: Actors/Actresses, Comedy, Fransaskois, Law, Libraries, Music, News and my private list called Friends.

For the moment what I find really interesting is my Law, Libraries and Music lists, as those are the people who seem to post the most often. I have three people in my Law list: two law librarians and one in legal instruction. My library list has Regina Public Library and Saskatoon Public Library who both utilize their Twitter in great ways. Finally, my music list has all those acronyms I mentioned earlier plus a few more recent Canadian ones.

Twitter is simple, easy-to-use, doesn't have a huge learning curve to it and is a quite enjoyable way of connecting with people. I still have things to discover as I really haven't explored that much into my interests or more into libraries, which I what I would really like to use Twitter for. If anyone is interested I'm @sroussellewis, not that I'm particularly witty or funny, but whatever.

Social media, libraries and future of print

I'm sure this topic that has been done to death, just another rambling post about social media and libraries right? Probably, as I am quite capable of rambling, but it is something I'd like to write about and explore.

I'm not in any way an expert on social media, nor do I work in a public library, but I do realize the importance of library staff being able to understand and use social media to their advantage. Even from a law library point of view, we have to keep up with the quickly changing trends. Lawyers may  sometimes be seen as the old fogeys who don't adapt, but from what I've seen they are already way ahead of most of us, technology wise.

Although many people don't see it this way, libraries and their staff are the managers of our information and have to constantly update their knowledge on information management. This includes being able to keep the public informed on new media because of our role as teachers to our patrons. 

The most common use of social media in libraries, that I've found, is the use of Facebook. It's basically a ubiquitous tool. If libraries want an online presence (other than their website) that can reach more people, they have to use it. Consider the fact that even though most people say they hate Facebook, they still use it on a daily basis. It's a free service that anyone can learn to use, relatively speaking.

We have to start thinking about information differently, it's no longer static information on a piece of paper in the library. Information is dynamic, flexible and should meet the user's needs. I have always been a little iffy on the future of print material, mainly in the sense that I used to think print would be around forever and always argued with people that said books would be dead soon. I think, for historical purposes, print will be around a while longer because we do need primary sources for research. On the other hand, fiction and textbooks could have a vastly greater impact if they were more online and available to a wider audience.

To backtrack, I said library staff should keep up with current trends in social media. Guy's, I have been a bad library technician. I use Facebook, if only to keep in contact with old friends, but I haven't kept up with other social media websites. In the next few weeks I am challenging myself to learn more about these websites and technologies, and will be posting my thoughts about them. Hopefully some of you will find it interesting.

It's been a while

Obviously, I have no real commitment to keeping this blog up since I haven't posted in about a year. I kept telling myself that at one point I would either come back or delete it completely. I have decided to go with the former.

There are so many things I would like to talk about, but I never wanted to deviate from the "a blog should be about one subject" philosophy and I quickly got bored of solely posting about one subject. I've decided to widen my vision for this blog. I'm not too sure yet what direction I'll be going with, but I have some vague plans for future posts. 

Something I'll be focusing on in the immediate future is what I call my "social media challenge", which is just an excuse for me to try out all the social networking sites I've scoffed at in the past. I figure that before I complain about something or discredit it, I should probably test it out.

We'll see how long I keep this "challenge" up, I'm a very good procrastinator.