Saturday, October 25, 2008

Tweet Tweet

I decided it was time for me to explore Twitter, the free "microblog" application. If you're not familiar with it already, it's kind of like a blog and kind of like IM. You post quick updates on what you're doing. "Quick" is the operative word here: you're limited to 140 characters. Some people post a couple times a week. Other people post multiple times an hour.

School Library Journal and Wired have a couple of articles to look at if you're interested.

I wanted to try it out to see how we might use it with kids (who probably aren't Twitter-ers yet) and their families (who could be). I'll let you know in a few weeks what occurs to me!

Right now, I'm using Twitter to record what I'm reading. I've just posted a few times, but already I can see that the short-short form will be a real help in focussing my thoughts on what I've read.

I've also been trying to Google around and find other Colorado children's librarians on Twitter, but I haven't had much luck yet.

Are YOU on Twitter? Let us know what you think about it, and if you have any children's library ideas.

PS. You can follow me at MelissaZD

4 comments:

Allison said...

Melissa,

I checked out your Twitter blog. I think it looks cool. Although I don't know what other people think, sometimes I feel that we have so many different blogs and things to keep track of.

What I would really like is for one centralized place where I can find everything. Is this even possible?!

Hope you have fun with Twitter...and find other children's librarians in CO!

MelissaZD said...

Yes, I know there's so much out there to keep track of. Thanks for taking a little time to check out Twitter!

I wonder how this "information overload" reality impacts how we reach our patrons. What do they make time in their daily lives to check? Email? RSS feeds? Snail mail? Our website? The newspaper?

I would love to do a survey of all our families with kids and teens and ask them about the best way to provide information to them. You know it's going to be different for each family & each community. How can we have the biggest impact with the least cost and time?

Hannah said...

Sounds like an interesting concept. I'm Hannah, by the way, and just became apart of the youth blog. I had been apart of the RA group prior to this, but because of my involvement in storytime, I thought it best I be apart of this group instead. I look forward to meeting you all in person when our next meeting takes place.

Jill Corrente said...

We have this conversation amongst the web team all the time. How do we use our resources to expand our web presence? Sometimes, it's just trial and error (we tried Eons, but that didn't seem as if anyone was very interested). Sometimes it's a combination of timeliness (is this hot right now and with who) and enthusiasm from the person maintaining the format or presence. I know I did not have huge enthusiasm for Twitter :-P, but some people do! (jillybeancc)