Week 3 - Reflect: Microblogging

I am only recently new to the Twitterverse and the idea of microblogging. As you will have worked out in the previous weeks reflection, I find myself quite conscious of what I put up on the internet and so Twitter never seemed like an appropriate avenue for myself. Due to class requirements, I had to bite the bullet and join earlier this year. Since then, I have tweeted 45 times, follow 43 people and have 23 followers. I won’t lie; I also read my Twitter feed practically every morning in a futile attempt to stay longer in bed.

In relation to the library and information science field, Twitter is a great way to find new ideas and connections. Twitter allows ‘individuals to network with professional peers, regardless of time and geographic constraints’ (Brown in Hall & Loudon, 2010, p.237) which in turn leads to librarians who have ‘more ideas to contribute for enhanced services provision’ (Hall & Loudon, 2010, p.237). Anne Weaver describes Twitter as ‘one of the most valuable avenues for professional learning’ (2010, p.16).

I agree with what those two articles point out – Twitter is a great way to network and connect with the professional world and will allow me to further my professional development options. In this matter, I do follow the relevant accounts which interest me in my future profession but I know that this is not enough. In order to take this seriously as “professional development, it is not enough to just follow the right accounts. I need to interact and actually read the articles they are pushing – not just the tweets. I’m a lazy person when it comes to Twitter, it’s not often that I follow the links!

I find that there is a lot out there, and it does make me feel quite exhausted ad lazy thinking I have to follow each and every link that ALIA or a university lecturer tweets. I try to remain organised by using Hootsuite – ‘a web-based application for managing your social media presence (Ekart, 2011, p.35). While I do not pay to access options like seeing how my Twitter presence is in the world, I find the ability to monitor hashtags on my dashboard a great way to keep up with my current classes.

I will continue to use Twitter after this course comes to a close. Hopefully I will learn over time to become more organised with using Twitter to my advantage.

Reference List

Ekart, D. F. (2011). Making twitter work for you. Computers in Libraries, 31(4), 34.

Hall, H., & Loudon, L. (2010). From triviality to business tool: The case of twitter in library and information services delivery. Business Information Review, 27(4), 236-241.

Weaver, A. (2010). Twitter for teachers, librarians and teacher librarians. Access, 24(2), 16-20.