Week 11: Class Reflections & Twitter

Paul Courant, Dean of Libraries, joined us this past week in 643 class to talk and answer questions on DPLA, HCOD, the Google Books decision, and other 21^st century-library-related issues. Mr. Courant did a great job giving thoughtful answers to a whole host of questions. I really appreciated his insight into the future of librarianship, and I thought he made a number of interesting points:

• The Espresso Book Machine may be the answer to some of book (especially academic) publishing’s problems. Low demand, no problem! Just print when necessary.

• In the future, eBooks may be bundled together as yearly subscriptions, negating the current HCOD debate. 

• Finally, be optimistic in whatever endeavors you choose or nothing will get accomplished. I think this is important for librarians to keep in mind as they try to embrace new technologies and new ideas.

Mr. Courant also noted the difference between the aims of public versus academic libraries, which I thought was interesting. For the former, their collection is meant to be read; for the latter, to be known. In this way, the HCOD issues are not as dramatic for university and college libraries since circulation is comparatively lower. 

The rest of class was filled with discussion of embedded librarianship and webinars. Talking within my blog cohort about what embedded librarianship is and how it can be used in different settings was really interesting and thought-provoking. Issues of relevance, trust, and applicability were brought up, and I think all of these concerns are important to consider.

This week’s readings were a bit less traditional. Rather than reading a few professional articles, we were assigned to immerse ourselves in the world of Twitter. More specifically our job was to create a professional network of librarians and professionals.  While I created a Twitter account a few months ago in anticipation of someday needing it, I never did anything with it. This past week, then, I’ve pretty much started from scratch.

Reading the various tweets from professionals in the library world has been both entertaining and informative. Scrolling through my Twitter feed, I have found a lot of interesting library-related tweets and links. At the same time, I’ve noticed a lot of tweetin’ about personal/non-library/everyday type stuff. For instance, one of the bloggers I’ve followed (Meredith Farkas, Information Wants to Be Free) is moving across country this week to her new job in Oregon. I know this from her blog, and now from her Twitter updates, I know many more details of her trip. As I grow more accustomed to using Twitter, I’m still trying to decide how I feel about the overall usefulness of it. That being said, I’m curious to learn more about how Twitter and other forms of social media can be used in library settings—for self-promotion, networking, communication, etc. Because I don’t know much about this topic, I am excited about the possibilities, which I hope we might talk about in class tomorrow.

As a final note, I am excited to tune into some of my classmates’ webinars this week! Watching Bobbi Newman’s webinar a few weeks ago and the IMLS webinar last week has piqued my interest, and I am looking forward to learning more about copyright and serving the underserved!