From my comments on this post… try this on for a cool way to use Twitter. Here’s what the library is doing, to the best of my knowledge (Julie, correct me if I get it wrong, please!):
- posting real-time reference questions to twitter.com/askusnow
- using the Twitter feed to update “the ‘currently being asked’ section of our internal AskUsNow! staff website.”
Is that a cool use of twitter, or what? Going just a little further out from that, why not post those questions on the public website? They’d be anonymous, so that shouldn’t be an issue. But I’m thinking posting real-time questions in your library’s digital space is a great way to show real live conversations taking place. Those tweets might just start more conversation, etc etc.
Cool service – thanks Julie for mentioning it!
Julie says
Actually David, we haven’t figured a way to make it totally real time- I add the questions personally when i do my daily question review. (which also helps keep me on task, knowing that folks will be looking for updates).
I’d love to have the questions as they happen to be added (identifying info scrubbed of course) to a website or something, but we haven’t figured out a way to do that yet. We use QuestionPoint for our VRS- if anyone has any ideas on how to do this, please let me know!
Julie says
Actually David, we haven’t figured a way to make it totally real time- I add the questions personally when i do my daily question review. (which also helps keep me on task, knowing that folks will be looking for updates).
I’d love to have the questions as they happen to be added (identifying info scrubbed of course) to a website or something, but we haven’t figured out a way to do that yet. We use QuestionPoint for our VRS- if anyone has any ideas on how to do this, please let me know!
Linda Stevens says
We use Twitter to highlight cool quotes from the staff blogs on our Learning 2.0 program site.
Linda Stevens says
We use Twitter to highlight cool quotes from the staff blogs on our Learning 2.0 program site.
caleb says
No. It would be cool if patrons *opted in* to a Twitter feed or web page showing their questions.
Anonymity is not mutually exclusive to invasion of privacy. If you walk up to me and take my picture without asking and you don’t know my name, it doesn’t make it alright.
If I’m a patron and I have a question, and I can tell it’s going to be posted on a website for everyone else to see, I might not even ask. You would rob me of access to reference services.
It’s entirely possible that you’d attract more patrons than you’d turn away, and this is exciting. We love the zeitgeist. But no amount of cool factor is worth completely stripping reference service of its confidentiality.
Go ahead, show a feed on a password-protected site for reference staff. And publicly, it’s fine to post the text of some reference questions, but not all of them, and not unconditionally and without any other choice for patrons.
The burden is on us to get permission before publishing reference questions. Opting in could also give warning to patrons to exclude personal information so you won’t have to worry about scrubbing it out so much.
You’ll still want to watch out for naughty words and spammers – I love naughty words, but mindless, CIPA-compliant filtering software loaded on school and library computers does not.
It is worth making the effort to do this sort of thing right. And yeah, I have ways to do it 😉
caleb says
No. It would be cool if patrons *opted in* to a Twitter feed or web page showing their questions.
Anonymity is not mutually exclusive to invasion of privacy. If you walk up to me and take my picture without asking and you don’t know my name, it doesn’t make it alright.
If I’m a patron and I have a question, and I can tell it’s going to be posted on a website for everyone else to see, I might not even ask. You would rob me of access to reference services.
It’s entirely possible that you’d attract more patrons than you’d turn away, and this is exciting. We love the zeitgeist. But no amount of cool factor is worth completely stripping reference service of its confidentiality.
Go ahead, show a feed on a password-protected site for reference staff. And publicly, it’s fine to post the text of some reference questions, but not all of them, and not unconditionally and without any other choice for patrons.
The burden is on us to get permission before publishing reference questions. Opting in could also give warning to patrons to exclude personal information so you won’t have to worry about scrubbing it out so much.
You’ll still want to watch out for naughty words and spammers – I love naughty words, but mindless, CIPA-compliant filtering software loaded on school and library computers does not.
It is worth making the effort to do this sort of thing right. And yeah, I have ways to do it 😉
Grace Lillevig says
I’m piggybacking on Linda’s comment above and wanted to give a link to our Twitter feed of comments for iHCPL – http://twitter.com/ihcpl. This has been a great way for us to capture comments for our 23 Things program – http://ihcpl.blogspot.com/.
Grace Lillevig says
I’m piggybacking on Linda’s comment above and wanted to give a link to our Twitter feed of comments for iHCPL – http://twitter.com/ihcpl. This has been a great way for us to capture comments for our 23 Things program – http://ihcpl.blogspot.com/.