Thing 16

More on Twitter. Trying to pursue this task. Have deleted one organisation I was following as I didn't understand the tweets and have started following a couple of others for the time being - at least for this exercise. Made more difficult when Twitter says it is over capacity. But did retweet one message.

Next day. System crashes every time I go onto Twitter. Have retweeted some messages and looked at all the #ox23 tweets but frankly am not getting on well and currently don't see the point of pursuing it. But am still open to persuasion from anyone out there who thinks it's the way ahead for all of us when we want to communicate with our readers.

Thing 15

Account on Twitter created. Initially finding it very confusing. Still thinking 'What for?' but must be open-minded. Very resistant to the vocabulary. And don't understand most of the tweets on the pages of people I'm choosing to follow. Of all the tasks so far I think this is the one with which I feel most out of kilter. But will keep b*****ing on with it in the hope that light will dawn. Am I the grumpiest old librarian in town....

Thing 14

Linkedin. Have heard of this before (always thought it sounds rather Scandinavian) but never explored. Signed up to see what happens. Immediately received messages to confirm acceptance from friends mostly in business, who must wonder what on earth I'm doing on it but are too polite to ask. And from one academic who when I met her last night expressed surprise that I found her on it as she could not remember joining it and doesn't use it. I can see that it might be very useful in the commercial world but am not convinced that we would use it much in a college library.

Thing 13

Am already a member of Facebook, as encouraged by offspring three years ago to use this for communicating and sharing photos with them. (We didn't know about Flickr). But have resisted using it for work purposes until now as it seemed inappropriate. Over the last year, however, I have appreciated getting messages from groups I belong to, e.g. notifications of music society events I might have overlooked otherwise. And this term I have heard an undergraduate say 'Oh, I don't look at emails or noticeboards, I just go onto Facebook for everything'.

So perhaps our library should have a presence there. I still think it's important that the library remain reasonably formal in its relationship with the body of junior members. It is fine to be friendly and informal when speaking to individuals in person but if the library is to retain its authority over rules and behaviour there has to be a recognised distance between staff and readers. Perhaps too old-fashioned a view? Are we now all meant to be the readers' new best friends?

What sort of library presence? What could we do for our readers and they for us? Possible advantages for readers:
Information about library where more convenient
Library appears more friendly and approachable
Readers can get more involved by commenting

and possible advantages for library:
Higher profile within college community
Can get feedback and monitor success or failure
Can establish closer relationship with readers

Much of this seems to to be PR but that of course is the name of the game nowadays. Food for thought anyway.

Helpful webpage re choosing between Facebook fan pages and Facebook group:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/facebook-group-vs-facebook-fan-page-whats-better/7761/

Thing 12

YouTube. So hard to sort the wheat from the chaff here. Such a lot of chaff too. But if you are specific about your search there are some extremely good videos, e.g. on bookbinding. So much of YouTube is meant to be non-serious but I think it does have a use in the library world if the videos are of high quality - and not done for laughs.

Thing 11

Podcasting. On 22 February went to drop in session at RSL where helped by endlessly patient e-whizz librarians. Have no headphones in our college library so useful to go and do these Things there. Had no idea how prevalent podcasting is. Just amazed at what is available for study as well as leisure purposes.

There are also some helpful pages about podcasts on the OUCS website: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/podcasts/

Have subscribed to some podcasts. But will I ever have time to listen to them?

Thing 10

Social bookmarking. Have imported into Delicious all my favourites but can't see myself having time to do the housekeeping: deleting links that don't work any longer, tagging them all properly and putting them into bundles. (Why does this make me think of kindling for the fire?) So I shall continue to feel that I am not spending enough time on the current Thing while finding it interesting, and will skitter on to the next task that pops up all too quickly. At least by the end maybe even I will have some sort of an overview of what happens in the parallel, electronic part of our library world. If there are enough rainy days I can come back to the various exercises.