Twitter & Libraries

1.)
I have already looked at Wellington City Libraries twitter and can see that this is another useful way to advertise events/ service/books well anything really, we all know how important it is to market our libraries and services. Using twitter will help us to reach a different group of library users.

I liked the way Red Deer Public Library (loved the name of the library too) recently twittered about their Monthly Midweek mezz Movie
http://bit.ly/ILbYC
but they also used twitter messages as a effective communication tool from offering congratulations to providing information on events, music etc.

2.)
We could twitter about a whole range of things

Information about the Summer reading Programme http://.....

or

If you can't find a title in our catalogue send a suggestion that we buy it for the libraries http://.......

Searching Twitter

Searching twitter for the first time was an interesting and frustrating experience.
It certainly confirmed that 140 characters can only convey minimal information and that only seeing snippets of conversations 'tweets' meant that results certainly lacked context.

Lacking any brillant subjects I simply searched 'New Zealand libraries' and discovered there were no results doing a basic Twitter search. Using the 3rd party search engine TweepSearch I returned 42 hits and it was interesting to see Wellington City Library and other libraries using twitter to advertise services.

Next I repeated the Twitter search using 'library' and had success. In fact I also returned similar results when searched using 3rd party search engine Twazzup. Twazzup did however include a list on the right hand side of the most popular links which I believe could be useful.

So far though I probably will not become a regular user of twitter. Useful to have some knowledge of this social net working environment but probably too time consuming for me.

Twitter an Introduction

I have had a look at several twitters but the two I have selected to comment on are:

NASA: I found this organisations twitter really interesting as many of the tweets included links that take you through to more comprehensive information on what is happening in different areas at NASA. The disadvantage of course is that it is time consuming, but the advantage is that it links to some really interesting information.

Cookbook via twitter: I checked this out and can see that it must be a real challenge to be able to put a recipe on using only 140 characters. The latest recipe listed when I visited was for Pumpkin Pie -- I thought that Pumpkin Pie was traditional in USA around Halloween and not for Thanksgiving!
I found some of the tweets were difficult to interpret -- I guess the proof would be in the pudding as they say. I wasn't really tempted to dash to the kitchen and start baking and think that for me I prefer cookbooks with beautiful pictures / illustrations.

Creative commons

CC licence conditions of
(a) this Web 2.0 learning programme
You are free to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
You are free to Remix — to adapt the work
Under the following conditions
Attribution - you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work.)
Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

CC licence conditions of
The image I looked at on Flicker
You are free to to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
You are free to to Remix — to adapt the work
Under the following conditions
Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

The link to Flicker search
http://www.flickr.com/photos/catherinetodd/3322717857/sizes/o/

Open ID

I had issues with the video -- no sound so really had to guess at some of the content. I consider the idea of consolidating with one password fits all for most accounts has great practical and logistic implications; so yes I can see the benefits of OpenID for accounts where privacy and security are not important, but would still be very cautious about the more secure sensitive accounts where security is very important.

Will be interesting to see if in the future we can have something more personal to us i.e. finger image?? That would remove the need for passwords wouldn't it?

Online Privacy and Security

I thought the resources identified were very useful.
I recently went to a presentation on keeping kiwikids safe in cyberspace given by Netsafe. I will definitely be sharing resources with family, friends etc. It is a real concern that we all, but in particular our young people, maybe cyberbullied by text, instant messaging, email etc. It is also so important that everyone takes care with both information and images that are posted online as it is so easy to lose control it.
Advice to patrons should include taking care with what personal information they submit about themselves and their friends, advise them to read the site policies, advise them to take care with passwords.