What I think of Twitter

Twitter is an interesting concept to me. I understand the usefulness in some fashion. It certainly gives one a greater opportunity to be creative and mass communicate with many people at the same time. Its an interesting way to keep up on any particular person or company if they have a running twitter account.
My problem with twitter comes when trying to understand its usefulness long term. I have a hard time keeping a running track of what I am doing all the time. And when someone isn't posting all the time, then I am not sure of the usefulness of twitter. But who wants to hear every couple of hours all day. from someone else. Who would have the ability to keep up with it all the time. Its not like a blog where you can kind of peruse through topics to find something of interest that someone you like has wrote. You have a running commentary of lots of different things with no specific subject topics. Also, how does a company keep the interest of what is going on. Or as a librarian, outside of some things specifically of interest at the branch, would you be able to keep messaging every couple of hours to keep your avid readers interested? And as a reader I am not sure I want to know what's going on at any moment, all the time.

Reflections on RSS

Thinking back to the first class of my school i LIBR 203 I remember being in there as they introduced the use of RSS feeds. Of course I had limited experience with programming, let alone some XML programming experience where I had a reasonable understand about what the capabilities of XML were. At that point in time it helped me connect with the school feeds so that I could get updates via RSS feed to find out what was going on at school.

Unfortunately, the understanding of the benefits of one at that point did not take. I just knew that I did not see the point in maintaining an RSS feed when I could get all of the info off of emails that came to me. What I failed to realize was the benefit of RSS when it came to the blogs. Not because I had never heard about blogs, but because I did not see the benefits of blogging in general. I did not understand their practical use, or how they could be used to mass communicate to loads of patrons one message.

While I do find now how it could be a very useful tool, getting patrons to see the same thing can be as difficult as anything. With teens it shouldn't be as hard because they have been growing up in a world where blogs are exploding. So seeing why you should have a feed to allow you to view all of your blogs in one place would be natural. But to an older generation, who blogs very little, who frequently make up the vast majority of the library population, this can be a struggle. And to market to an older population is not the usual branding of the marketplace. Almost all things now are marketed for people between the ages of 12 and 30. When the average age of the person entering the library is 40 + this is different. And then their reticence to getting into new technology also makes it more difficult.

Its going to be interesting to see how the library is going to reach out to these people, or are they merely going to wait and hope that future generations will want to use the library and their new technology.

Exercise 2

I admit that I started off this exercise with a great degree of skepticism. I know that there is value to the idea of blogging as a way of interconnecting both people and ideas. And that building bridges so that these ideas can be spread among different communities is of great importance. All of this made a great deal of sense from a theoretical perspective. I was interested in blogging and what made it such a fascinating medium. In fact, I suppose as I do find certain authors interesting in syndication, it is a form of blog that I appreciate. But trying to author my own blog and then to try to find what was useful about other librarians blogging was much something I questioned a great deal. What makes a good blog? Furthermore, what do I think makes a good blog? It is the architecture of the successful blog that I am interested in.

My research began with the addition of the five blogs that we were required to add for the assignment as well as the reading of the material in the book on blogging. It was certainly interesting to find that there were several different types of blogs. David Lee King could be placed as either a short article blogger or as a series blogger. Occasionally he would take the time to write a series of blogs on what he found important at that moment. Currently he was interested in getting his fellow librarians to see the desirability of maintaining a regular blog. He did report on other library topics as well.

In the Library with the Lead pipe was of great interest as it was a series of essays. Aside from the amusing obvious "Clue" reference, the person was interested in getting a whole lot of guest authors to discuss in long essays subjects of interest to them. There was no particular one theme, but I found all of the Long Article forms fascinating. I think it went well with my desire to read some long essays by some of my favorite syndicated columnists.

Librarian By Day was more interested in presenting links with small blurbs to be able to discuss areas of interest on particular topics in the library. They were not interested in writing much in the way of essays on anything. But rather, they were more interested in presenting articles that could be linked to and looked up on any various topics. Also the site occasionally posted lists of interesting places without actually linking the places up for the people reading their blog.

The Distant Librarian was either link blurb or link only. They presented links with a bare minimum of discussion about those links. From an aesthetic viewpoint it was not a very appealing place to visit. However, it may be something that I would want to skim through every now and then trying to pick up some tidbit of information through the links they posted on the topic that was being discussed in the blog.

The Librarians commute was a series of short article blogs about an academic library and what is going on in their area. I found these short articles interesting, although maybe not as interesting as the long article format from a person preference. However there were some areas of interest that I found in some of the articles from time to time. You might consider it a series blog as the sole goal is to discuss academic libraries, but I wouldn't call it that as its efforts in discussing the libraries seem broad and its application far exceeds that of merely an academic library.

Finally I went to view three other blogs that I subscribed to from the list of blogs that there were given. I chose primarily from the public library forum as I am currently working in a public library and wanted to see what they did with their blogs. As a result I chose the Brooklyn Book Talk blog and the Dover Public Library Blog. The first blog, as its title suggests is about books. I would imagine that this would be a very useful blog for setting up a book chat with people from the library. One could use this blog as a starting off point, to get ideas for discussion about the coming book that that is going to be had, or it could be used to carry on the discussion after the book chat on any particular area of interest. I believe if marketed properly, it would be a very useful tool for enhancing the program of the book chat at the library.

The Dover Public Library was a much more broad blogging tool. It was used to discuss all about the goings on in the community of Dover. It listed things from events that were going on at the library to different events in the community. Furthermore it did a good job of trying to tie back any personal reflections that were placed in the blog to items at the library. One such blog discussed the belief that the community was going through a very "twilight zone" moment, relating what was going on in the community to a particularly twilight episode. They then listed where the library held the episode so that people could do further research on the topic discussed.

Finally I went to one of the "successful" blogs to get an idea of what went into what was considered a successful blog. For this one I chose Librarian in Black. I must admit that a large fascination with literature and the fact that Librarian in Black could have multiple allusions. Either one could go with Men in Black the movie, or one could go with the Man in Black as a reference to Johnny Cash. There might be even further allusions in this one brief title, but it certainly was an auspicious beginning for an interesting blog. When I got there I was a bit surprised on what I found. While there were a very few long essays that covered interesting topics such as libraries and dealing with music and digital rights management issues, the vast majority of the blog is library recommends. And while they certainly had a large amount of links to peruse at my own time, the links did not seem to have any particular order or theme. So it wasn't like I could go and find a list with several links on a topic that I was interested in. I had to go through each reading and see if there was anything of interest to me today. I admit that I was a little disappointed.

I think the one thing that my blog searching has taught me through all of this is that when I begin my own blog, there should be an audience that I am seeking to present my items to, and I should have a consistent and ordered way of presenting my information such that someone who is interested in my blog may easily find the information that I would be presenting them. I also learned that there are multiple ways of blogging in a public library that would be useful to the library and the marketing of the things that the library does.

How Blogging Contributes to the class

I have started and stopped at blogging for quite some time. My first initial efforts at blogging came with my meager attempts to post some of my poetry to my facebook page. While not exactly a blog and certainly not enough space to post long rants onto a space it was the beginnings of learning how to carry on a running conversation with people. What I did not realize then was the usefullness of such a tool. And eventually my blogging days on facebook went by the wayside.

Later on I attempted to post blogs for my work. There were several of us trying to use a blog post at our work to communicate more globally with the people that were in our office. The problem with this blog posting was that no one really wanted to do it on a regular basis. Besides, trying to communicate with a local community that you are face to face with everyday seemed a little ridiculous when all you had to do was to walk 10 feet to tell the other person what you were thinking or what was going on. So our blog postings eventually fizzled.

With this class, however, I can see the usefulness of such a posting mechanism. While not constrained by the limits of any size posting, we can communicate more globally between people who are at quite a distance from one another. It is fascinating to be able to have a running conversation about different topics, especially ones that are of interest. Furthermore, with having each member of the class participate, you get the depth of experience from every member of the class on every topic discussed. And while I may not have anything to contribute to every discussion, it is worthwhile to be able to have the information at my fingertips to peruse through and use. I believe this kind of running conversation is worthwhile having and communicating in. Hopefully it will help me to establish this kind of communication with other members of the library community to discuss and contribute more globally as we are a more interconnected society, yet the libraries goals are primarily uniform: to provide free access to as much information, to as many people who are seeking it.

Excercise 1

I decided to use Target to analyze because I had worked for the company for a year while I was between jobs and was somewhat familiar with the organization. Its been more of interest to me of late because not only is it a place I continue to frequent but because the store model they use has changed greatly of late. When I was there a few years ago they would not allow produce in the store as a result of the fact that they would have to pay their employees a higher union wage. Somehow things have changed drastically recently, and I am certain that they are not paying their employees higher wages. Both Walmart and Target have taken to adding large produce and food sections in their stores and have not raised the wages of their staff. I was very curious to see what people were saying.
Primarily Target has used its own website to keep in contact with the people who are using the store. I started to do further research on the store to see if I could find their presence in other places. I did find a few blogs for people who were highly appreciative of Target though blogspot and other blogging sites. One was slavetotarget and yet another was target-addict. Their blogs were designed with not only giving Target a boost as they love the store but for avid shoppers who were interested in learning what a great weekly special might be. And as any good Target shopper knows, their best deals are not in the ad, but found on the back of the aisles in the clearance areas. Target stores release items for clearance simulataneously so if you cannot find an item on a clearance aisle at your local store there might be one farther away that has an incredible deal.
Target does maintain a facebook presence where they publish all of the in store sales that they have each week. They also have other various tabs set up in facebook including a facebook discussion tab for Target stores. What I did find in the tabs were a lot of people who were discussing topics back and forth with very little input from a Target representative. They did, however, discuss emails that they did receive back from Target to queries that they had.
One such complaint found on the discussion board had to do with Target's support of some Republican candidate for the Minnesota governor's race. While being largely diplomatic throughout the email response that this one person received, Target defended its decision to support a candidate by saying that they give equal money to both Democrats and Republicans. I found the answer fascinating as it was likely to please absolutely no one. If someone is displeased that you gave money or support to one side, saying that you gave money to their side too is unlikely to assuage their disappointment in your company.
I believe ultimately that while Target is on the social media sites of note, that their presence is more of a way to increase their advertising of their poduct and has very little to do with actually communicating with the people who use their products.

blogpostwk2

The libraries attempt to enter the virtual world has definitely been a work in progress. Given that I work in circulation my experience of what the library has done on the web has been minimal. But what I have seen has given me rise for concern in the libraries ability to effectively maintain a web presence. First of all, there is just a lot of bureaucracy involved in setting up anything. I work at a medium sized branch in a larger county system. We can and have set up blogs for some social contact with the outside world but have found it difficult to maintain. First of all there has been the problem of changing staff and maintaining the blog, second, in my short five years in the library the dominant social sites have varied greatly. There was myspace which was really hot for a while and has cooled down. We have now moved onto facebook, but even that could change with the advent of Google trying to enter the social networking fray.

Outside of the social networking sphere there has been the problem of merely the libraries presence on the web. While the individual site itself has remained fairly consistent, as we have had little turnover in the IT department, we have been linked with other county agencies in the short time I have been there. As a result, our web page has been plugged in more directly to the county site. The web address has changed, although people can still be able to access us through our old web page. Our county name has changed slightly as a result of linking up with other agencies. By doubling and quadrupling the bureaucracy, it has been hard to maintain a consistent and static presence, which is what one would need to build up a solid following on the web. It may be fairly easy now-a-days to be a "flash in the pan," as web videos have gone viral practically overnight. But to develop a following takes time and consistency, very little of what the library has had in the past five years.