Okay. Twitter set up (@clarelou100). No, I really didn't have a Twitter account until now. I'll stop for a moment to allow you to catch your breath. Recovered? Okay, good. Let's move on. I know how popular Twitter is, but I've never really got to grips with the idea of sharing my every move with, well, the world. Do people really care if I’m wearing my novelty 'Tuesday' socks on a - gasp - Thursday? No. I don't think they do. Or do they? I spent some time looking at friends’ Twitter accounts this week and suddenly I DID want to know how their morning run went, what they wore to their cousin’s wedding, that they ran out of washing up liquid just before the in-laws came round for dinner. Strange. Clearly, I’m easily swayed. So I had a go at posting a few tweets. I found myself addicted and suddenly almost every thought was Twitterfied in my mind to 140 or fewer characters. This is cause for alarm.
I can see the wider benefits of Twitter, though. It provides opportunities to connect with a broad network of people, to get our opinions out there, to link with others who share our interests or views (or not, as the case may be), to engage in professional debate etc. I could go down the social sciences route now and start talking about democracy, the younger generation, election voting, X-Factor, the London riots etc, but you’ve heard it all before and I’m already 6 weeks behind, so we’ll save that for another time.
We already have a School of Health Sciences Twitter account (@CitySHSLibrary) which is updated on a daily basis with health-related news, information on free e-resource trials, service updates, promotions etc and we currently have 145 followers. I don't know what that means in Twitter world. Are we the wildly popular head cheerleader or last to be picked for the netball team? I have no idea, but it does mean we're able to connect with 145 individuals/organisations that we wouldn't be able to in such an informal fashion/on such a regular basis otherwise. How many of our users actually have Twitter accounts is debatable, given that a high percentage of them are mature students with families and jobs to juggle, but we are constantly striving to promote social media, E-resources, online account access etc, and the stats tell us we’re making progress.
I've also set up a LinkedIn profile and have added some contacts. It was interesting catching up with old colleagues and it’ll be useful to be able to get in touch with them should I need to draw on their expertise (or vice-versa, of course!)
Anyway, 1.5 days to go. 11 Things to catch up on. #Stressed.
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