Thing 4

Well I was on my hols last week hence the late post. Lucky for me this week's topic is something I'm a bit more clued up about than other topics on the programme. I thought it might be useful to share my experience of using Twitter and RSS.

I set up an institutional Twitter account for the library and information service that I work for last year. I have been tweeting for 10 months now and found it a positive experience. I wanted our information service to reach more people in a way that suited them. We already have a few institutional Twitter accounts within the charity I work for so the use of this medium was established. There were some concerns about time but they proved unfounded as I think Twitter is something that you can do quite quickly once you get the hang of it. The fact that you are limited to 140 characters really helps with focus - you simply have to get to the point! It is fair to say that I could, and some would argue should, spend longer on Twitter. I only post on average once a week and use Twitter to let our 'followers' now about new information that may be of interest to them, e.g. new and updated information sheets, current awareness services, journal and newspaper articles, online conferences and Q&A sessions, etc. We have around 100 'followers' now which is small compared to others but I am very excited by the range of people following us including those with a personal interest in our charity's work and its focus, campaigners, writers, and publishers. I have also found Twitter very useful as a 'follower'. I only follow a few people to keep it manageable but have certainly learnt stuff through Twitter before, for example, coming across the information on a website or in a newspaper.

This brings me neatly on to RSS. I attended a cilip course on Social networking and user-generated content last year run by the excellent Phil Bradley I had previously been aware of RSS and had a nagging feeling that I should be using it for my work but hadn't got round to it. Phil showed course participants how to set up RSS feeds. I set up a Google reader account for my library and have never looked back. I showed my colleagues how to use it. Some have liked it others not, preferring to visit websites instead. I however have found it has really changed the way I work. I am responsible for an electronic newsletter for colleagues which updates them on relevant news, publications and websites in our area of work. Previously I visited several websites each week through my favourites as well as subscribing to several electronic newsletters. All but one of the websites I regularly visited offered updates by RSS so it was easy to make the move to receiving information in this way. I can now check my Google Reader at a time convenient to me and scan the headlines for relevant stories. My email overload has greatly reduced as I have been able to unsubscribe from email updates and electronic newsletters. Since starting cpd23 I have set up RSS feeds for the blogs I am following. The blog posts are helpfully displayed separately to my news feeds.

So in summary, for busy library and information workers who need to keep up with lots of news and information, and disseminate this to their users I think Twitter and RSS are invaluable. I obviously wouldn't suggest using these mediums alone but as an addition to other ways of keeping abreast of information and reaching current and potential library users they can be incredibly useful.

Last bit of homework this week was Pushnote which I had never heard of before so I'm really pleased to have learnt something new again on cpd23. We're restricted on browser here at work but I note that IE users will soon be able to use Pushnote so I will be sure to check it out in the future as well as letting colleagues who develop our charity's web resources now about it. Hurrah for cpd23!