Okay, my little social experiment has run its short course. It was weird and creepy in a kind of stalker way. I also found Twitter a bit addictive. It is true that it is easy to update, but I often found that I either did not have the time, had no access to a computer or I would get busy and forget to update. I guess you have to really be committed to run this as a successful program or social experiment.
Apparently you can upload with a cell phone to really let the world know what you are doing while you are on the go, but I haven’t tried that yet. I’ll have to look into that more. Tiptoe around the concept. I don’t like extra expenses, I have enough of them, so I have to see whether my cell phone company will charge me for that and if so how much?
Further thoughts about libraries. I decided there are other uses for Twitter besides the micromanager. My ideas focus more around marketing. Staff could post letting the public know what they are up to. Say a new book is added, one could post, “Just added Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. Or posting funny or interesting things that just happened to the staff member in the library. One could also mention they are watching the current children’s program. These could all be an extension of the library and the way it presents itself to the public. Ways of making the library and its staff more personable and of creating another way of reaching out to the public.
To take this further, the library could create its own Twitter account. This would extend the library as an entity. Postings could be done by various staff members and could in the process extend what the library is doing. What items are being added, how many people are coming in or checking out items, interesting reference questions being answered, various programming that is going on at the moment or other interesing happenings. Followers could tune in to see what is going on in the library. The library could simply set up and embed Twitter on the library home page, so that users checking out the library have something else to tune in to and interact with. This could be a fun way of bringing the library into the community. Seems like a cool idea to me.