Multnomah County Library’s Timely Twittering
Multnomah County Library (MultCoLib) is the main library system in Portland, Oregon and it has really embraced the use of Web 2.0 technologies. They have blogs, they’re on facebook, they publish rss feeds, they podcast, they make videos and upload them to Youtube and Blip.tv. The library has various links to their accounts on these services from their homepage, plus they have a centralized technology page with links to all their web 2.0 efforts.
In this post I want to look at their use specifically of the microblogging platform twitter (I hope to look at their use of other social media technologies in later posts).
I must admit that I’m slightly suspicious of twitter because I’ve never seen the advantages of limiting the amount of information one can publish. This goes doubly for libraries and other organizations. So with that in mind, I wanted to see what sort of information the MultCoLib is actually getting out there via twitter. Here’s what I found when I informally surveyed the Multnomah County Library’s last 40 tweets (using the format “general description: number of tweets”):
- Promotion of upcoming library event or program: 14
- Promotion of specific items in library catalogue: 6
- Promotion of other library resources: 7
- General library news: 4
- External news items focusing on the library: 4
- Links to local events/news: 2
- Links to non-local events: 4
So, it seems to me that the MultCoLib is really using twitter to promote services and resources that are timely in nature. Almost all tweets about upcoming events were for something, such as an author reading, happening a day or two after the tweet was made. The promotion of specific items in the library catalogue were likewise tied to current events. For example, one of my favorite tweets mentions that Charles Schulz’s birthday is on November 26th and links to all the Schulz and Peanut items in their collection. General news items were almost all about library closures and holiday hours. The micro nature of microblogging seems perfect for a quick notice about an event and a link to more info.
The MultCoLib’s use of twitter enables the library to broadcast and promote their services and resources as well as put out timely news. It has 643 followers on twitter at this time. I can imagine subscribing to their twitter feed if I lived in Portland and wanted to be reminded about their various upcoming events. I’d also enjoy learning about stuff in their catalogue and how it relates to any given day. However, if I wasn’t on twitter or following twitter feeds already, I doubt that I’d go out of my way to read what MultCoLib is publishing on twitter.
And this, I think, is one of the dilemmas of using Web 2.0 technologies. You reach the communities of people already using a particular social media service, but your efforts might not reach into the “general public”. Still, as in the case of the Library of Congress using Flickr, reaching specific communities can be enough. It would be interesting to see how many people are following MultCoLib’s twitter stream in a year or two.
(Image: Screen shot of MultCoLib Twitter Logo)
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