Is Twitter a useful communication tool for health librarians?

Dean Giustini and Mary-Doug Wright have published a useful article describing the potential benefits and possible pitfalls of using Twitter by health librarians. The article was published in last Winter's edition of the Journal of the Canadian Health Librarians Association. You can dowload the PDF here.

Twitter is representative of a new generation of information tools—including handhelds and mobiles like the iPhone and BlackBerry—that help to promote ambient information access and on-the-go communication through a phenomenon called "microblogging".

"School teachers are beginning to experiment with microblogging as are academics. Microblogging is starting to gain some currency in all kinds of educational contexts. As a professional development tool, we believe that Twitter can play a role in informal “on-the-fly” learning in the workplace, particularly for health librarians who work in isolation."

Medical library twitterers can join the group tweet MedLib Geeks (http://twitter.com/medlibs)and keep up with changes to PubMed, upcoming health care events, and news about biomedical and health databases. Further, health libraries share information about new programs and alert each other about new Web resources.

The Hyperlinked Library

Michael Stephens over at Tame the Web has posted slides from his latest presentation, "The Hyperlinked Library" and they resonate so strongly with me I had to post them here. As a member of a group of intrepid explorers of the information universe trying valiantly to bring innovation to a generally unreceptive audience, I am constantly encountering "gatekeepers" to information that simply don't realize that the walls have been torn down, the gates are completely irrelevant and no one wants to talk to the gatekeeper. His notes and slides are available at the links and are so very important to those who not only recognize the change that has engulfed us, but who are embracing the tide.

Short excerpt below and link to the post here, and to the slides here.

The Hyperlinked Library is an open, participatory institution that welcomes user input and creativity. It is built on human connections and conversations. The organizational chart is flatter and team-based. The collections grow and thrive via user and staff involvement. Librarians are tapped in to user spaces and places online to interact, have presence and point the way.

The hyperlinked library is human. Communication, externally and internally, is in a human voice. The librarians speak to users via open, transparent conversation.
The hyerlinked library provides spaces and places for users to interact, to collaborate and to create content. In an age of digital tools such as video editing stations, podcast studios and multimedia PCs, this library is a place to have access to all manner of new and emerging technologies. To test drive. To make something.
The hyperlinked library has flattened the organizational chart, breaking down the layers of “permission” and “channels” to get things done, and looks for ways to streamline processes, procedures, and dreaded policies.

The hyperlinked library has a plan for succession management and knowledge transfer— wikis, blogs and other tools maintain the knowledgebase and the “history” of how the library works and what procedures have been successful. No one is the keeper of individual knowledge, so if that person departs the knowledge does not leave with them.

The hyperlinked library is simply the Read/Write library, where conversations, connections, and community are born – in the words of Ranganathan, it is still a “living organism.”

Library services and organizational models are changing with the onset of emerging philosophies, Web 2.0 tools and user perceptions of libraries. Users are responding by creating content and may want to do it with library data and in library space. How should the library respond? In this presentation, Michael Stephens explores a range of important questions for the evolving Hyperlinked Library:

• What makes a library transparent?


• What do nimble organizations do?


• What does the Read/Write library look like?


• What trends are impacting library services


• How have libraries adopted a 2.0 philosophy?


• As new technologies and services become available, how do we effectively plan in libraries?


• How do we plan to optimize staff, money, and time?


• How do we determine what’s important and what’s not?

Michael's work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.