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Computers in Libraries Wrap Up in Tweets #cil2010

Bobbi Newman — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 13:57:02 +0000

As always conferneces are amazing and intense and I’m left with huge amounts to process when I get home. Here is what I’m thinking about (in bold) & the tweets that inspired it.

Team Work - RT @jlborgerding: Three things needed in order for the team approach to work – Flexibility (Key!), Creativity, Innovation #cil2010
Leading from the Middle – RT @lisacarlucci: “Gen X Librarians: Leading From the Middle”http://bit.ly/cil2010genx #cil2010 #genx
Staff time costs, especially right now. Nothing happens by magic – RT @purlibrarian: Note to self: remember to count staff time costs when planning to adopt new technologies (invisible costs). #cil2010
Easy is relative. Don’t make others feel bad by saying its easy. – rt @strng_dichotomy Don’t say it’s easy make it easy! Not everyone is comfortable with tech #LMS #CiL2010
We really need a better catalog. Really. RT @quinnrosie: “As soon as the user clicks the link to the catalog, they’re in the ghetto.” – John Blyberg. Um, yes. #cil2010 & The Library Catalog Ghetto – Why Apple & Google Win – And Libraries Don’t #CIL2010 - http://bit.ly/ZZMnX
Innovation doesn’t happen by accident, we must create an environment where it can flourish. – RT @sarah_pants: RT @tminchew: Innovative staff members need to be given positions in the library where they can be change agents. #CIL2010
Keep on eye on the other hand, ignoring it wont make it go away or less of a threat. – Technology is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.” -C.P. Snow #CIL2010

I love the visualization you get from putting data into wordle.net, so I put in the tweets from the first day to see how transliteracy faired. Not bad if I do say so myself. :-) Many thanks to Matt & Buffy for helping create such a wonderful session.

Then for the whole conference

Orginals can be found at:

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Put Down the Phone and Pay Attention

Bobbi Newman — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:50:20 +0000

CC image courtesy of Lights Out Photos on flickr

Last week I (and many others) spent a lot of time documenting the Internet Librarian conference, photos, tweets, blog posts, facebook updates. Did the act of digitally documenting the events change anything? Did the process of lifestreaming change my (and others) behavior, perception of what was happening and memories of it. Will we remember it better or worse?

A recent article from CNN Do digital diaries mess up your brain? looks at the effects of lifestreaming. Just knowing others are watching you may change the types of experiences you choose to have, from books to movies to where you eat and what you wear.

“If we have experiences with an eye toward the expectation that in the next five minutes, we’re going to tweet them, we may choose difference experiences to have, ones that we can talk about rather than ones we have an interest in,” he said.

It also detaches you from what’s happening at the moment. If you’re focused on tweeting what’s happening, you’re not fully engage in what’s happening.

But recording everything you do takes people out of the “here and now,” psychologists say. Constant documenting may make people less thoughtful about and engaged in what they’re doing because they are focused on the recording process, Schwartz said.

What does that do to our actual memories of events? Memories are shaky at best even when you’re completely focused. If you’re only half there, will you remember it later without the aid of digital documentation? What would I rather have a memory of something or documentation of it to prove I was there? What if that documentation goes away?

It makes me think, I do want to be living and experiencing life to the fullest. Does this mean I’ll put down the camera, the cell phone, the laptop? I don’t know. Probably not at conferences, but I’ll be thinking hard about doing it in other areas of my life. What good is lifestreaming an experience if I’m not fully enjoying it?Similar Posts:

Why I’m over people Twittering Conferences, Meetings

Bobbi Newman — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:45:31 +0000

and anywhere else two Twitter users happen to run into each other.

Its seems like a day doesn’t go by without signing into my Twitter account to see a stream of tweets from someone going by with a #hashtag I don’t recognize. I’m not talking about a couple of tweets, I mean the full-on stream. I’m begging you, please stop!

I’m all for the idea of sending a Tweet when you hear something remarkable, moving, or innovative, but based on the number of Tweets I see flying by every other sentence is worth exclaiming over, somehow I doubt this.

What it really looks like is too many people are using Twitter as their personal note taking system. Get a notebook, a netbook, or a pen and paper, whatever, just stop Tweeting!

If you’re Twittering:

You’re not paying attention – mulitasking is a myth – you can not text as fast as you type, so whatever you are texting likely happened 30 seconds or more ago, meaning you are not paying attention to what is being said now. Stop texting and pay attention, its what you’re there for. Even if you’re tweeting from a computer…
You’re not contributing. Yes, I know there are a few cases where some awesome back channel conversations* happen, and someone rushes off to write an article or a post about it, but most likely you’re not.
You’re crying wolf – If you’re sending 20 tweets an hour, the really awesome super duper things got lost in the crowd of the bagillion others you sent you sent. Pick and choose the really exceptional things to Tweet.
Someone else is saying the SAME thing at the SAME time (most likely). Instead say something new, say something of value, pick the one or two really good pieces and Tweet those, it is much more useful for your followers.
You’re loosing your followers, I don’t mean unfollowing, I mean they aren’t paying attention to you. Sure one or two might love to here a play by play of whats happening right now, but the others don’t care. They don’t care because they don’t want to spend the energy chasing down what the heck your hashtag means, they don’t care because they just popped on so see what their friends are up to and instead all they see is one person, you, filling up their screen. They dont’ care, not because they don’t care what you’re tweeting about, they do, but because they don’t have the time and energy to focus on it right now. They don’t care because they just don’t care.
You’re making it hard for people to find the information later. Sure you can search the hashtag and read through thousands of 140 character snippets of information, many of which say the same thing because everyone else was tweeting the conversation.
You’re not blogging. Yes I know some have declared blogs dead, but f I want real information about a session I missed I’d so much rather find a blog post. Yes a blog post, with everything nicely typed out, not abbreviated in weird formats to fit in to 140 characters, not scattered across tens or hundreds of tweets. I can bookmark one page, not 20.

If you find you absolutely must conference/meeting tweet prodigiously, take a page from my smart friend Maruice’s book and get a seperate account just for conferences.

*I’m not sure how I feel about these back channel conversations, everyone thinks they are so awesome, but arent’ they really just the equivalent of two people talking to each other in the back of the class? It might go unnoticed in a large audience, but in a small group its just rude.

I’m not advocating never Twitter anything from a conference, meeting or pow-wow again, but show some discretion man, moderation in all things, even Twitter.Similar Posts: