Whose got talent? or linkedIn = professional Facebook!

Having looked at what LinkedIn has to offer by looking for people already using it and perusing their profiles, it does seem like Facebook but for professionals.  Instead of finding your friends, you find work colleagues and like minded professionals.  This is no bad idea, as it helps to create another network and work related community, through which to share ideas, keep up to date and keep in contact with useful people, who may help you to further your career on a professional level.  This however is maybe where it falls down as not all of us are used to putting ourselves "out there" on a professional level and saying "look what I can do"!

Where do go from here?

This is also where I wonder what relevance it has for librarians and providing services for students.  Its useful for librarians, yes on a personal level, but surely the advocacy of using LinkedIn by students whilst at University, would be better coming from Careers advisers.  I'm not saying that it isn't useful for students to join and start creating useful contacts, just that it isn't necessarily a Librarians role to point students to it.  Although I realise as librarians we need to be aware of professional skills, where to find information and helping to equip students for when they leave.

This leads me to pose the question about our role in the library. There does seem to be more blurring of our boundaries and what we do.  We've certainly taken on larger teaching/training remits in academic libraries, providing search skills and use of resources workshops. Is LinkedIn something we should be inputting into training sessions for 2nd and 3rd year students as part of a "professional themed" workshop session in collusion with the Careers services?  The information world is certainly growing and we need to be part of it, but how much?

Titter ye not! (To quote Frankie Howerd) I've been converted to Twitter

There's been lots of musings about Twitter and whether it has any any value.  Is it just a social networking site where people post what they are doing and keep in touch with friends, similar to Facebook, or something more?

I used to think it had no value at all, why would you want to "follow people" on twitter.  It sounded slightly stalker-ish but with the difference of the cyperspace medium.  A place where you could legitimately "stalk" your favourite celebrities, such as Stephen Fry, Lilly Allen, Demi Moore, etc, to name but a few.  However I couldn't quite grasp the concept, that I would want to be interested in what Lilly Allen was up to, or know what Stephen Fry ate for breakfast that morning!  I feel the same about Facebook status updates, even though I'm a Facebook fan.

So before the advent of Cam23, I decided I should see what Twitter was all about, even if only for my Continued Professional Development, and possibly to say ok, been there, looked and didn't buy the T-Shirt, as it were.  After attending the University Libraries course on Twitter, I thought maybe I should give it a go, even though I thought I would de-activate my account within a month.  Trying to use Twitter, I found "tweeting" quite hard at first, as I still couldn't grasp its "reason to be". The language and posting was very confusing in the first instant, ie. "tweet", "re-tweet", the mystifying "tweeple", "following", and the incessant use of # and @

symbols.  I have to say, I still find it confusing but perseverance seems to be paying off.

So what makes people use twitter?  Stephen Fry is quoted as saying, "It's not called social change or heavy debate, it's called twitter. I mean the clue is in the name." Which  leads me to believe he uses it for social networking.  This community aspect is obviously important to alot of people, for example, Demi Moore said, “...Don’t know how this community of positivity was created but I’m grateful to have found you and thrilled to be a part of this."

For me, it's this "community" idea that makes Twitter very useful and valuable.  Its great for intereacting with other people, especially other librarians, information providers, or organisations.  For my Continuing Professional Development, its becoming the key place I look for news, strategies, what other librarians are doing, networking, training courses via CILIP lists, asking advice, etc, where as Facebook I use for keeping in touch with friends. The more I personally used Twitter over the last 3 months, the more I find I'm coming around to using it for the library and the possibility of setting up a library Twitter account.  I certainly never thought I would say that about Twitter.  So watch this space.... 

Setting up a library account on Twitter would be another method of getting news and information out to the students, and retweeting useful messages from the UL and ebooks@cambridge will save me time, emailing them.  I did wonder about the need for having both Twitter and Facebook accounts in a library setting, and was reminded about what I said in my first blog post, that if people work in different ways and use different media, then we need to move with the times and be proactive at getting our information out to our users in the medium they find most accessibile.  In that case, all I need to do in future is find out how to link the library Facebook page and Twitter account together and bingo! just wait for them to be used.