Walt Whitman would’ve loved Twitter, I think. All those voices lifted up over the rooftops of the world! We’re still trying to find our Twitter-voice here at CLP. The first people who try out a new technology set the bar; those of us who ruminate and come after try to either vault over the bar or limbo under it.
So there’s been a lot of oral and written brainstorming with my peers over the last few months, a lot of experimental refdesk Tweeting via my personal account (mostly to prove that it CAN be done without ignoring in-person patrons), and careful reading of various tutorials. The one that resonates most strongly is that last: “Give me content worthy of your institution.” Hear hear – which is why I’ve been trolling Twitter looking for interesting people who do interesting things.
One thing I noticed is that when I find a Twitter account that’s really cool, I often don’t want or need to comment on the tweets. This is primarily because the tweeter has said whatever s/he had to say brilliantly, that all I could possibly add is “I agree!” or “Wow!”
One excellent example of that particular phenomenon is Issa_haiku. Here you have a short, quality piece of writing, delivered on a dependable, yet not annoying, basis, for the purposes of both instruction and delight. That’s the gold standard (the fact that one of my peers just might agree with me is a bonus 
).
At any rate, one thing we’ve considered is a “book of the day” Tweet, but we’re still trying to work out the logistics on that one. If only one person’s doing it, even if it’s only once per day, it wouldn’t be nearly as diverse or interesting as if a bunch of people were doing it on a rotating basis. Then there’s the discovery I made late last week, that Encore’s links don’t resolve neatly to tinyURLs, the way the classic catalog links do. And do you just post the link, or write a short summary to go with?
Much to ponder there – thoughts? How are you using Twitter, personally or professionally?
We’ll give Ken Wagner the last word here:
Walking empty streets
under a full moon, even
Google can’t find me.
Don said,
February 3, 2009 at 4:35 pm
LAV: I seem to remember some sort of tool or widget that allows you to resolve long urls into short ones … or was I imagining it?
The entire haiku world should follow Mr. Lanoue’s Issa twitter project and take over cyberspace with cherry blossoms and ennui …
Walking with Google
under a full moon, even
empty streets can find me.
Don
PS We CAN make the book of the day idea Twitter-full. Let’s talk …
Don said,
February 3, 2009 at 4:41 pm
LAV:
Followup – look at Neil Gaiman’s post today – http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/02/hullo-world-its-me-neil.html – his twitter urls have all been shrunk.
I’m sure now I read about the shorter urls from Neil …
Don
Leigh Anne Vrabel said,
February 3, 2009 at 9:55 pm
Don – TinyURL rules!
We should have this on our toolbar…
And yes, definitely, let’s talk…after I recover from Neil Gaiman squee.
eleventh stack said,
February 3, 2009 at 10:57 pm
f&a would totally join your book a day twitter, if you could just lose that restrictive book mindset.
amy
Leigh Anne Vrabel said,
February 4, 2009 at 12:05 am
*headdesk* See how easy it is to get book-centric, even when you’re an alleged technomage? Thanks for the reminder, Amy. We will form Voltron and tweet!