Just another dent in the damage…

The world’s greatest showman Phineas Taylor Barnum has come to Sheffield! Well considering he died in 1891 this isn’t exactly true but almost. Humbug is the first exhibition to make use of the new Exhibition Gallery at the University of Sheffield’s Western Bank Library and this past weekend I brought some of the family over to take a look.

Barnum, the showman, the circus proprietor, the impresario, famed for his traveling circus and hoaxes (humbugs) like the Feejee Mermaid and Tom Thumb was the first circus owner to move his circus by train and credited with being the pioneer of the modern entertainment industry. Whilst mainly associated with his circus sideshow and display of freaks Barnum also commissioned Jenny Lind’s American tour and set out to change attitudes about the theater from ‘dens of evil’ to palaces of edification and delight.

I was particularly interested in hearing what my grand-parents made of it all and they were suitably impressed with the exhibition on a whole. The celebration of 200 years of Barnum includes bannered artwork from Mark Copeland (of the Insect Circus Museum) and the most amazing/creepiest sculpture of all time by Anthony Bennett. Have a look at my Flickr photostream for a taster but better yet come down and have a look! The exhibition is on until May 30th 2010 and is open daily – Monday to Friday 9 til 9 and weekends 9 til 6.

I submitted a proposal for this year’s New Professionals Conference. It wasn’t accepted but I thought the process was worth saying something about. I’ve never really written a proposal for anything before, my last attempt was for a grant to attend the IATUL conference last year, but the powers that be encouraged me to submit a version that wasn’t really my own. I didn’t get the grant. I got one of those ‘the submissions were of such a high standard this year’ so thanks, but no.

I think what really made me what to take part in the New Professionals Conference this year is that it’s being hosted at Sheffield. Our library (in general) has a habit of not particularly interacting with the Information Studies department or even the wider CILIP community for that matter – correct me if I’m wrong, please – and I thought it’d be the perfect opportunity to showcase some of the work we’re doing.

Anyway, I decided to publish the proposal I wrote here hoping that someone could offer me some advice. I know the ideas were not particularly original or the proposal particularly well written so I’m after some tips on proposal writing in general, you know just in case I ever feel the urge to try again – although I’m not really sure how much longer I can call myself a ‘new professional’.

So, here’s the proposal, make of it what you will:

Because we’re worth it too – Beyond shushing and shelving in an academic library

Budget cuts and reduced funding are not new. Librarians have been coping with these for years – reviewing subscriptions, haggling with suppliers, devising strategies to manage impacts – it’s part of the job. But with the ubiquity of the Internet, electronic services and mobile technologies our users are claiming that they no longer use the library and thus our skills increasingly redundant. So with more cuts looming (following HEFCE’s announcement of a £600 million reduction in higher education funding) and a commitment to a ‘faster, better, cheaper’ work ethic we need to be proving our worth now more than ever by promoting services, marketing resources and communicating knowledge.

Today there’s a greater need for students to demonstrate their own skills in acquiring knowledge, judging sources and conducting research. The role of the academic librarian is transforming. New opportunities are arising for us to proactively engage with learning and teaching – conducting skills sessions, supporting workshops and offering practical solutions to complex enquiries. Transferable skills are a key attribute employers are looking for in our graduates and it’s therefore essential for us, as librarians, to proactively seek new ways to support, teach and develop information literacy in our users to carry with them into the workplace and their professional maturity.

In my discussion I’ll consider some of the ways in which the University of Sheffield is working to continually improve services and student satisfaction by meeting the demands of higher user expectations and the new learning environment, through our physical spaces (the collaboration of library and computing services in the Information Commons and Western Bank Library’s £3.4 million redevelopment); web 2.0 technologies (weblogs, Twitter, QR codes and social networking in uSpace – our online collaboration tool); mobile applications (the University’s iPhone app, CampusM); and online skills tutorials (the Information Skills Resource).

Hurray it’s almost time for the National Science and Engineering Week again. From March 12th until March 21st the University of Sheffield has once again teamed up with Sheffield Hallam University, local schools, industry, commerce and museums throughout South Yorkshire to celebrate the best in British research and innovation.

This year’s theme is Earth in support of the International Year of Biodiversity and the What on Earth project – an initiative ‘encouraging everyone to get outside into their gardens and local parks and take photos of the wildlife they don’t recognise’. If you come across something unusual (or not so unusual) head over to www.whatonearth.org.uk armed with your image and get it identified by a team of scientific experts. If anyone can help me out with the name of this flower I’d appreciate it:

I’ve also uploaded an image of some flowers to the site, which I grew last year. I’m desperate to know the name of them. If you have any suggestions please add an identification.

The program of events for the NSEW (mostly free and open to the public) includes a David Allen-Booth Memorial Lecture entitled Shapes and Patterns: Crystals, leaves, leopards and zebras by Professor Gillian Gehring, What on Earth… will we do about energy? by staff and students from the Mechanical Engineering Subject Group (Sheffield Hallam) and the return of Rock Around the General Cemetery.

The University Library in collaboration with the National Fairground Archive will also be taking part to celebrate the engineering feats of fairgrounds and roller coasters. I’m really excited about this one because we’ve been trying to think of ways to encourage our students to make use of this amazing resource for ages. Once the display is up I’ll get more details posted up here.

I’m a fan of technology… always have been. From my Dad’s first home-made ‘beeb’ computer I used to play what I consider to be some of the best computer games of all time on, to my first film-loading camera, to my first Walkman, to my first (and only) Playstation, to my first mobile phone, to my first iPod, to my first handheld games console, to my first laptop, to my first digital camera, to my first Mac, to my first iPhone, to my first ebook reader. Oh wait. It’s not actually my ebook reader. No no, it’s the library’s ebook reader. But still, there’s an ebook reader in my hand and for this week I’m calling it mine (it’s a pocket edition Sony eBook Reader)!

So why do I have one? Well, we’re looking into how we can make use of them in the library – whether ebook readers are an appropriate means to deliver content to our students, whether this is feasible or not and whether our users would even be interested in having access to electronic readers – and we have both the Amazon Kindle and the Sony eBook Reader to evaluate. I must admit, one comes in pretty handy when you’ve a load of PDFs to read – simple drag and drop them on and away you go (the Kindle even allows you to annotate, highlight and save clippings). It’s small and light enough to carry anywhere and everywhere and the long-life battery means you only need to charge every couple of thousand page turns. Now being used to charging my phone most days this actually blows my mind!

However, I’m not entirely sold. I found that rather than being as technologically advanced as expected the devices were actually rather painful from a usability perspective. They feel clunky, content is difficult to browse, page turns are slow and it does bother me that they don’t have backlights. Oh and did I mention that because we’re UK customers a lot of the Kindle functionality is not available – wireless access to Wikipedia/blogs etc – and we are unable to buy content for the Sony eBook Reader from the Sony eBook store. How bizarre.

What I will say is that when it came to reading I did rather enjoy using it. I don’t know much about this e-ink display thing but it’s not like reading from a mini computer screen (which to be honest is what I expected) and it was handy being able to just hold the reader and turn pages in one hand and eat my soup with the other.

As for the content, if you want to read classics fine but if not I’m afraid you’re rather limited. eBooks are expensive still and generally not particularly of interest to me (well of interest enough to warrant the initial expenditure) and in a library setting they’re not particular scholarly (unless we’re talking the study of classics). I’m definitely more sold on the idea of storing and reading PDFs or Word files on the device and being able to annotate documents is certainly useful. Princeton University for example went as far as handing out devices to students preloaded with content – but I don’t think this really went down so well either.

Generally I think I’m swaying more to the side of buying ebooks that are compatible with ebook readers to loan to students rather than loaning out the devices. But is this managable? Would we have the ability to remove content from a user’s device once the loan period had expired? Something worth looking into eh? I think what I’m really waiting for is the iPad! Now this looks like a handy piece of kit.

If you’re interested in finding out more about ebook readers there are seriously hundreds of review sites but some of the ones I looked at include: eBook Readers Review; eBook Readers and Wired.

The first couple of weeks of term are always the busiest for an academic librarian, mainly because it’s the god awful induction time of year. To be fair I got off quite lightly by only seeing about 300 students, but of the sessions I did a couple of those were to over 100 at a time! How scary is that! I’m not a teacher and never envisioned having to ‘teach’ but alas for your average librarian information literacy skill sessions are just a part of the job now. I think once over the nerves I’ll be cool with it and the more practice I get the better I’ll be…. right?

This year I mainly stuck to a traditional ‘I speak, you listen’ type format yet with inquiry-based learning on the rise I guess I’ll be expected to try new things soon. It seemed to work quite well and by keeping it short I hope I didn’t bore too many people. I can’t ever remember being told how to use a library catalogue but I guess I must have been at some point. Maybe I just used common sense, who knows, but for a lot of students this could be the first time they’ve ever used a library and we can’t assume that everyone is good at simple searching. Amazon wasn’t that popular when I was at university but I guess the majority of students these days are familiar with how to search that… and it’s not that different to searching a library catalogue. Is it?

It’s not until you have to prepare induction sessions that you realise how much there is to tell people. I kept my actual speaking time to about 30 minutes because I understand that new students have so much to take in during those first couple of weeks and most of what I say probably went in one ear and out the other anyway. I simply just covered the basics: how to find the library, how to use library systems and general house rules. I think the main thing is to give the library a face. Students need to know who I am and where they can find me.

I also ran a session for post-graduates. The difficulty with these is that you need to focus more on databases and how to access/search journals. Therefore you need to know what databases they’re likely to use and come up with good examples of things to search. Lucky for me these students were from Animal and Plant Sciences and given they’re my second favourite department I was quite comfortable with search terms and strategies.

This year is the first year we’ve had the new Liaison Librarians (i.e. myself and two others) in place as support for the Faculty Librarians and so it’s been the first year my equivalents have also done these induction sessions. One of my colleagues was a little braver than me and decided to introduce the Cephalonia (or Kefalonia) way of doing these. The ‘Cephalonian Method‘ is the brain child of Linda Davies (Cardiff University’s Science Librarian) and was introduced to ‘freshen things up and give induction some sparkle‘. I managed to sit in on one of these sessions and it definitely worked as a good ice-breaker. It made the session more interactive and students were very responsive… it even led to more questions at the end. I’m not sure if I’ll do something similar next year but at least its given me something to think about. If anyone wants to share any induction ideas with me then please… get in touch, I think I’m gonna need a lot of help.

When I began thinking about dissertation topics over two years ago I was met by one particular unenthusiastic criticism due to my lack of knowledge regarding the Persian language. I don’t think she ever really understood my subject or why it was important. it was either that or she was too busy playing around in Second Life to give it more than a second thought (maybe that’s another reason why I hate Second Life so much). But rather than let it drop I developed my ideas and took them elsewhere.

It was during the run up to dissertation proposals that I was becoming increasingly aware of Internet censorship in Iran and the growth of the Iranian blogosphere and decided that I’d like to explore this academically with the hope of encouraging further research or laying the foundations for a PhD later in life. I don’t necessarily think I ever achieved that or ever will, purely because I ran out of steam. It was my own doing. You know when you wrap yourself up in something so intensely for a long period of time that once it’s done you never want to look at it again? It was like that. I got my distinction and that was enough. But I’m beginning to realise that it wasn’t the end, it was only the beginning. The story continues and maybe I should be trying to tell it, in my own words?

I started with the concept of Internet censorship – how it was being censored, who was censoring it and why – and wanted to explore strategies being developed to smash down the system, to stick it to the man, to carry on regardless. But this was before Google Translate (although limited it seems to be serving a basic purpose right now) and with no Persian translator I was forced to restrict my exploration to a minority of weblogs written by Iranians in English. I specifically looked at weblogs because they were accessible and easy to document and analyse. All the data collection would be my own doing and analysed with my own criteria. But what exactly was I trying to find out? How would I use weblogs as an example of anti-censorship or more over a strategy to bypass censorship?

Having an idea about what you want your outcome to be always seems to cloud what you need to do to get there, to prove it let’s say. I wanted to look at the writing styles across a sample of Iranian weblogs to assess how people were saying things without really saying them – to look at the poetic metaphors Iranians so often use to describe all manners of life, love, feelings and even politics. To see whether the deep-rooted cultural norm of separating the private and public spheres applied to anonymous weblogs. But what would I compare these writing styles to? I decided that in order to assess how Internet filtering effects Iranian weblogs written inside Iran I’d need to sample Iranian weblogs written in the diaspora. Those written by the displaced, the deposed or even the die-hards who might be more likely to evade self-censorship given the lack of Internet filtering in the more moderate west.

And so I did and if you’re interested in actually reading the thing it’s available online. It’s called Looking for Freedom: An Exploration of the Iranian Blogosphere (and it’s also available in Google Scholar with a couple of spelling errors – doh). I also kept a wiki going whilst doing my research but I’m afraid my updates have lapsed a little. Some of the work I did here has come spilling back to me this week and become ever more relevant. given how Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, proxy services and weblogs are currently being used in the aftermath of Iran’s distuted election.

Read Write Web has a really interesting post about a Twitter experiment in which a University of Texas History Professor, Monica Rankin, uses Twitter in a classroom environment to discuss the class topics.

Rankin uses a weekly hashtag to organize comments, questions and feedback posted by students to Twitter during class. Some of the students have downloaded Tweetdeck to their computers, others post by SMS or by writing questions on a piece of paper. Rankin then projects a giant image of live Tweets in the front of the class for discussion and suggests that students refer back to the messages later when studying. The Professor’s results so far have been mixed but it is clear that more students are participating in classroom discussions than they used to.

I think this is a fantastic way of generating bigger discussions and it gives students the opportunity to refer back to what was said and continue to contribute after the session. This then builds up a really useful study aid for when students need to compile coursework or prepare for exams. As a rather quiet student I think I’d have been much more vocal on something like Twitter as I find it much easy to get my written point across than my vocal one.

At my organisation we have introduced an Echo 360 system in which lectures get recorded and published within a student’s virtual learning environment alongside all the teaching materials used in class to ‘rewind, relive and reconnect with the classroom experience’. Twitter could in fact be another great way for us to do this and something I would definitely encourage academics to get involved with.

In the space of a day I’ve gone from being super skeptical of quick response (QR) codes to super enthusiastic – which is a weird predicament for me anyhow. I’m usually pretty quick on embracing new technologies but I just didn’t get what the fuss was about with these things. Now that I’ve had a bit of a play about with them I’m kinda getting them and beginning to see their usefulness in the library setting/educational sector. It obviously helps having a good piece of reader software but I’ll get to that bit later.

So what are QR codes?

Hailing from Japan, these two-dimensional barcodes are a device used to store information that can be downloaded at high speed (hence the name ‘quick response) via mobile phones. Originally they were being used as a tracking device but these days you can pretty much use them for just about anything. They can store text, URLs, telephone numbers,  and even entire poems (The Walrus and the Carpenter).  Put simply they’re like the next generation barcode. Traditional barcodes (those that you see on your baked beans) are only able to hold about 20 digits whereas QR codes have the potential to contain 7000 digits and 4300 alpha-numeric characters. Now that’s cool!

What do they look like?

Generally, they look a little something like this:

These small squares are usually 2cm x 2cm and feature a pattern of black and white pixels, which encode its contents. This example above contains the URL for my weblog and should you want to test how it works you’ll find that you’ll be re-directed right back here – pretty clever huh?

How do they work?

To retrieve the information contained within a QR code you’ll need a) a mobile camera phone and b) some QR reader software to decode the information held within the image. I lacked this second part for a bit and couldn’t understand why I couldn’t read the darn thing, looking back it’s pretty obvious something was missing. Doh. Anyway, what you need to do is use your camera to first of all snap a picture and then as if by magic the software converts the information into something more familiar. I have an iPhone so decided to play around with some of the free apps available in the app store and come to the conclusion that I really like BeeTagg. Looking at their website you’ll see they support quite a range of phones but failing that try a few of these:

• Kaywa;
• Nokia Mobile;
• Upcode;
• Quickmark.

How do I make my own QR code?

To make the image above I used the Kaywa QR Generator but there are loads of others to choose from. I just found the simple layout easy to use and easy to copy. Just select what type of message you want to encode, enter the information you want in your image into the box and voila, your very own QR code.

But what’s so great about them?

Had I been asked this question yesterday I probably would of said “nothing, they’re just another useless fad that people who think they’re ahead of the times buzz about on”. Now however I’d probably said something like “they’re a really useful tool for retrieving and storing information on the go, which help to connect you to the information you need much quicker”.

In libraries there are (upon reflection) a number of ways to get using QR codes, especially if you can’t afford those amazing RFID systems (but even then I don’t think these are particularly useful for library users in terms of retriving information about the item in your hand). Barcodes are used within libraries mainly to link items to a catalogue record. Using the traditional barcode the information contained is very limited and only by scanning the barcode (at the library counter) are you able to find further information contained within the catalogue record.

Now stop and think for one moment. If instead we started to use QR codes to label books, journals, audio/visual, offprints etc and a user wanted to see further information about that resource all they’d need to do is scan the QR code. They’d be able to find descriptive information, images, useful URLs etc all at the touch of a button on their phone. And what if at that moment in time they have too many books out? Well, by saving the QR code as an image they’d have a record of the resource stored on their phone so they’d be able to easily find it when they’re ready to loan it. Brilliant.

As a student I lost many a good book by scribbling down the shelfmark on numerous scraps of paper, leaving off other vital information such as its title/author, which I later misplaced. I’ve even lost count of the amount of times I strawn something on my hand to remind me to go and pick up that book at 575.0162 (D), only to find I’ve gone and washed my hands and half of the flaming thing’s missing. I’ve also had a great deal of experience helping users to find books from laboriously typed out messages on their mobile phones. What if there was someway to get this information onto your phone directly from the computer screen? Well, there is and it also saves on paper! Bath University are working on their catalogue adding text as QR codes to the bibliographic record summerising the key information, the resource title, the author, and the shelf location. For example see Bath’s library catalogue result for Sloman. By scanning the code from the screen I’ll have my own record of  ‘Economics for business / Sloman, John, 1947- Level 5 330 SLO’ on my phone to take to the shelf with me. Perfect.

What else?

How about using QR codes on your promotional/marketing materials to link users directly to where information can be found on the Internet? Do you have a library weblog? Are you producing leaflets to inform readers where they can find it? Why not stick a QR code on there so that they’re able to link directly to you? Got some particularly good skills tutorials you want your users to know about? Stick a QR code on your promotional material and they’ll find it straight away! Got an extensive reading list you want your students to read? Why not put a QR code on there to link students directly to the library catalogue record or even the article itself!! Fantastic eh? Why didn’t I think of any of this earlier.

Other sources:

• Tech Tips: High Capacity Bar Codes;
• iPhone in Education: Using QR Code in the Classroom;
• Educational QR Codes;
• Phones are close to cracking the barcode;
• What you need to know about QR codes.

Last week I attended my second Teaching Commons 2.0 entitled ‘Social Bookmarking: What is it and how can it be used in Higher Education?’ The commons is quite an informal discussion for both staff and students to come together and talk about their experiences of using web 2.0 technologies and how they can be applied to learning and teaching. This time Jamie Wood from the Inquiry Based Learning department opened the session, describing an activity in which he asked a group of students to use the social bookmarking tool Delicious to ‘tag‘ reading related to the course material.

At a grass roots level, for those not in the know, Delicious is a web 2.0 application used to bookmark webpages so that you can record and store your journey around the web. The good thing about using Delicious in this sense, as opposed to the bookmarking feature in any web browser, is that your bookmarks are held centrally – available from anywhere at anytime (providing you’ve an Internet connection) – and not restricted to the machine on which you made the bookmark. And by applying descriptive tags (keywords) to your bookmarks they become much easier to manage and organise.

So in this particular exercise Jamie encouraged his students to add two to three bookmarks a week that included one primary (deep links to subscription databases are supported – provided users are signed into their accounts), one secondary and one ‘other’ source such as a podcast or non-academic paper that related to the week’s topic. To this bookmark his students were also asked to add a short summary and descriptive keyword ‘tags’ to essentially categorise the resources. But, what Jamie seemed to be missing in his discussion was the reasons why we should bother to tag at all – This came later.

There are many reasons why people tag but generally I think these fall into four categories:

• To organise information into meaningful terms;
• To enable quick search mechanisms;
• To discover other resources with similar descriptive keywords;
• To create a network of folksonomies (as opposed to hierarchical taxonomies).

This last point seemed to form a great debate during the session as it was argued out as to whether it was more useful to create tags from predetermined categories or to opt for unstructured descriptions that even allow for spelling mistakes. Personally I’m in favour of the folksonomy arguments in that I prefer to write my own tags to create a more meaningful picture of links that I’m in control of. After all, creating a hierarchical taxonomy in tagging behaviour does seem to be the exact opposite of the general agreement of web 2.0 applications being collaborative networks.

Rather than asking students to sign up for individual accounts (which can be problematic due to the acceptance of third party terms and conditions) they were given access to a designated account set up by Jamie and all encouraged to tag items with their names (to distinguish between participation in the exercise). Generally I’d agree that this was a good work around the terms and conditions thing but in real life it meant that the social aspect was somewhat redundant with no opportunity to use the network features in Delicious to monitor peers etc and with students more technically keen or able than others the free riders were likely to become alienated from the group.

In conclusion Jamie indicated that the exercise had been well received with positive feedback communicated to the group. During exam time in particular students were appreciative of a designated resource bringing useful information together in one place with a searchable topic index. He’s intending to run the exercise again next year but using Diigo instead of Delicious and so it’ll be useful to see how they compare and whether one is more suited to the user’s needs than the other.

Teachingcommons: Teaching 2.0 Circle & Blogging

Twitter and Microblogging:

The general theme of last week’s teaching commons was the discussion of blogging – what it is and how it can be used. It intended to offer ideas to both those new to blogging about how to start up and get writing and to those wanting to get more out of it, if they’ve been blogging for a while, by introducing widgets and RSS. One area of particular interest for me, after reading Boutin’s article in Wired Magazine, was the discussion surrounding microblogging and how services like Twitter can be used in higher education.

Twitter is one of the more well known examples of microblogging, along with Jaiku, which limit posts to 140 characters. It’s basically a ’status update’ application like that found on Facebook but without all the other stuff. Instead of friends you get ‘followers’ and in turn you’re able to ‘follow’ others and their activities quite easily by searching names or locations. The good thing about Twitter is that once you’re signed up you may never need to visit http://www.twitter.com again. Twitter clients such as Twhirl or Twitterific are downloadable for free and automatically alert you to updates in real time as well as providing a user-friendly interface to search and add feeds to your profile. Updating your own status has also never been easier as there’s an abundance of medium to choose from – SMS messaging, email, desktop clients, IM clients and the web, and there’s an option to receive text messages of updates from those you choose to follow (limited to O2). This makes it fast and super user-friendly when it comes to posting quick updates about what you’re doing, whose keynote your listening to, what amazing new product has just been released or even what you’re having for tea.

I have mini obsessions with it. Some weeks I’ll be posting my life story, in others I can’t quite get why anybody would be interested in what I’m doing, in others I think ‘I’m not sure I’m really making the most of this’, in others I think ‘I wish I actually knew more people using Twitter’ maybe I’d feel like less of a stalker and in others I give up completely. This week however has been a week of ’so how can we make use of Twitter in higher education?’ Well after a little thinking, a little discussion and a little searching I’ve come up with a short list to outline a few suggestions.

Twitter in Higher Education:

• Classroom communities - Students using Twitter as a way to collaborate about class work beyond the classroom may lead to more productive discussions in class.
• Class communication – Teachers/lecturers could be encouraged to use Twitter as a way to communicate with students about homework, room changes, time changes, class preparation, further reading etc.
• Conference news – Conference tags (#tags) can be added in posts to identify updates as conference news. In following a conference you’re able to receive live news from an event and gain ‘insider knowledge’ that only the insiders are getting.
• Q and A sessions – Stuck on your homework? Not sure what the next class is about? Was there any reading to do? What room is it being held in? Who’s the guest speaker? If in doubt ask your class mates, surely one of them will know the answer.
• Feedback - Rather than waiting until the end of the module to fill in a feedback form Twitter can be used as a means to generate immediate feedback about a class or event. It can be used to encourage particular teaching methods and offer advice about how to do things differently.
• Distance learners – Using Twitter to communicate with distance learners has the potential to offer students greater learning support and encouragement throughout their courses.
• Networking – As a social networking application Twitter also provides the perfect space to monitor new developments in your subject area on an international scale.

For more see:

• An interview with David Parry;
• Twitter at Penn State World Campus;
• Can we use Twitter for educational activities?

Twitter in Libraries:

There’s also a lot of talk circulating about the benefits of libraries introducing a Twitter service to communicate with its patrons. Librarians could be using Twitter as a platform to discuss conferences and events and keep up-to-date with developments in the field of information as well as to promote library services or alert library users to service downtimes etc. There are examples of libraries using Twitter as a reference service or to inform its ‘followers’ about new releases, library events and even when reservations come into stock but I’m just not sure how well it has all been received.

For more see:

• The Ultimate Guide for Librarians;
• Casa Grande Public Library;
• Missouri River Regional Library;
• Nebraska Library Commission.

So it’s all a great idea, right? Well yes, I think so but in practice you might encounter a few problems.

Potential Cons:

• Encouraging students to sign up to external services may not be such a good idea as there are terms and conditions which apply to these services that are outside agreements students have already signed to make use of university services;
• Information platform overload – There are already a variety of platforms students are encouraged to use such as virtual learning portals, which already have forum facilities etc and as Facebook is already deeply ingrained in student activities some may be reluctant to convert;
• Service management – Like instant messaging (’Ask the Librarian’ services) if Twitter was introduced as a library service there would need to be someone who can manage that service and provide frequent updates. That could mean more staff and more money and could in fact stop the service dead in its tracks even before it hits the mark.