When Twitter first appeared on the virtual scene in 2006, I thought it was utterly frivolous and inanely obsessed with what someone ate for breakfast. It turned out that I was so wrong. Last week’s webinar on Twitter for Job Seekers further illuminated the substantial uses that have evolved wielding the power of the Twitter tool.

The webinar divided neatly into two segments:

• In the first half, Andrea Snyder focused on how a library can use Twitter to amplify the job and career services they provide;
• In the second half, Brooke Roegge focused on how users can find jobs through Twitter.

Andrea Snyder, manager of the Job & Career Information Center at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, has made active use of @JobCenter_Pratt Twitter stream to share job-seeker news, events and resources that the library has to offer. The tweets reach people on a different level, getting the word out to those who don’t often come in to the physical library. Andrea thinks the Twitter presence promotes her library as more of a person than an organization. She also makes the keen observation that the library’s use of Twitter is as much about listening as it is about broadcasting. She follows job-related hashtags (#jobs, #careers, #libs4jobs) to stay tuned in to the Twittersphere.

Brooke Roegge, digital information specialist at the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (@PositivelyMN), revealed that thousands of job opportunities are posted on Twitter every day. Third-party Twitter job search tools have contracts with big employers, like Kaiser-Permanente, Starbucks, Wendy’s, the list goes on. Brooke described a number of strategies and tools job seekers can use to search for jobs and target their searches to specific industries and geographic locations. There are even smartphone apps for on-the-go job seekers.

Listen to the archive to:

• Hear more from Andrea about tools for tracking tweets, managing your tweeting time, and promoting your Twitter feed;
• Get the details from Brooke about Twitter job search tools;
• Read the chat log, in which the audience was actively engaged, sharing tools, insights, and answering each other’s questions.

Way back in September, Janie Hermann (she’s moderating Track E at CiL btw) suggested I connect with Susan Conlon, based on my idea for a proposal. Susan has demonstrated her engaging leadership in the Princeton community through projects like the Princeton Environmental Film Festival where she leverages creative technologies to welcome all in the library community to engage and learn together.

Throughout the past 6 months, Susan and I have utilized technologies of all sorts to connect and share in the creation of this presentation. We exchanged slides, concepts and lists on email (via both work and gmail), IM and on the phone. We had to overcome technology barriers, like file size limits or Internet connectivity challenges when traveling. But every time we connected we were struck by the learning we were doing in the process of exploring together, the topic of engagement. We celebrated when the light bulbs were going off at the same time, when we discovered synergy in our experiences and when we uncovered solutions to some of the engagement barriers we had encountered in our respective work environments.

But that’s not where the story ends. Leveraging an additional technology, I uploaded our final presentation deck yesterday to WJ’s Conference Presentations page. This morning I received an email from Sheila Kearns, one of my favorite “WJ engagers,” mentioning the presentation deck. Sheila told me recently that she has one of her browsers’ homepages set to her “My WebJunction,” which is probably how she noticed I had created a new document on the site (I’m one of her WJ “friends” and so my activity on the site shows up in her “updates”). She kindly pointed out a typo and also gave me props for the deck and the concept of “community resource stewards”. But most importantly, she directed me to a new resource related to the topic of our presentation. She said she had first seen the concept of “community technology stewards” in the book project called Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White, and John D. Smith. This work is new to me, so I was very excited she mentioned it before CiL so I could add it to the presentation!

I’m sure there are many other stories “behind the presentation” for all the sessions on the CiL program. I think it’s truly exciting to be collaborating with such an enormous knowledge base within our profession, and hope we can be good “conference stewards” both as presenters and as attendees, and share back all our learning with colleagues who aren’t able to attend.

If you are heading to CiL, please be sure to add Michael Porter‘s and my sessions to your calendar and track us down. For those who will not be attending, stay tuned to BlogJunction for updates on our learning!

I also wanted to take a second to personally thank every single one of you that have tried the site out during its first week. We have seen huge amounts of activity this week and are so happy to see folks diving in. We are also very pleased to get your feedback as well. Most things are working well on the site, but please know that we are working very hard to respond to and address any question, concerns and bugs that have come up. And we thank you very much for your patience in those instances. This is truly a library community resource and you telling us what you think, how to make it better and what you would like to see in the future will be what helps make that future happen. So please keep contacting us, keep kicking the tires and continue to dive in. See you on Your, Mine and OUR “My WebJunction”!

The spotlight article showcases efforts to connect with a student population that has grown up with the web. Del.ico.us tagging, online courses, Flickr accounts, digital “Read” posters, a blog, and a vodcasts are all part of the mix.

The Web 2.0 recipe du jour seems to demand online video. Depending on the site, that can be a blessing or a curse. Over the past year, I’ve worked through a number of hit and miss library-specific YouTube offerings. But this fun effort by Harper College definitely hits—it’s amusing, informative, and well produced, without seeming over-the-top or slick. If your library is thinking about trying out video, Harper is a good example to emulate.There’s much more in the spotlight article, so be sure to give it a read.

“Camaraderie” defined by Merriam-Websters Online Dictionary is “a spirit of friendly good-fellowship”. When power fails, computers crash, and the lights go dim, the human element still works, and camaraderie is the circuit along which knowledge will continue to travel.

To develop that among the variety of age groups and intellects that work in a library is no easy task. Sharing two things, food and humor, are excellent methods to develop this. Food I’ll leave to individual tastes (pardon the pun) but relevant humor can be trickier to find.

Castles’ del.icio.us resources include Unshelved, from Overduemedia.com (saved by 108 members), has hundreds of funny cartoon strips about librarianship. Librarians have unique opportunities to observe the human condition, and have a good laugh over it. Unshelved does that without being mean. Today’s page has a photo sent in by a fan with a great librarian quote on her T-shirt, “Will work for books”. Love it!

I would imagine there have to be more strips like this. Feel free to comment if you know of any others!

This brings me to a final point about the del.icio.us collection software. Unlike the Librarything various display options, del.icio.us only offers chronological sequencing at this point in time. The last link you put in is the first link the visitor will see. I edited mine in chapter sequence, and found that the first chapters are at the back of the list! I’d forgotten the Unshelved link, and put it in after I added an introduction link. Unshelved appears as my first link!

You could use an introduction link like I have just below the Unshelved link. It doesn’t offer much writing space, but it compensates for the fact that the site doesn’t offer as many descriptive capabilities as the Librarything profiles do. An introductory link can help visitors use your collection better.

Plan if you want your links in specific order. I could delete my current intro link, and reenter it so it would be the top one. However it’s more useful to demonstrate this concept for this blog the way it is now.

A new book also takes a interesting look working in a library. The title says it “all”: Free for All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library by Don Borchert. If you and your staff ever feel inundated by the public, especially middle-schoolers, this book is for you. It was published after Castles Against Ignorance so I couldn’t use it in my book. One book I do mention is the Whole Library Handbook 4 by George M. Eberhart, which is a great compilation of library facts and trivia. This resource has grown the most since I put my books resources online; it now has 160 members sharing it, up from 45 last summer!

Another outlet and way to build up your understanding of staff issues is to join listservs or monitor blogs like this one. Librarything has a very active web site with chat areas as well as message boards for specialized groups. And who has the largest group on Librarything? Librarians! Librarians who librarything has over 3700 members. They have a very well put together page. I’m enjoying reading the “Books that just never seem to be returned” thread.

To summarize, here are my 10 ways to make your library great in 2008, using the Web 2.0 tips and tricks in this blog and in my presentation:

1. Use Technology

2. Continuously Train

3. Polish your Comportment

4. Reduce Clutter

5. Handle Noise

6. Handle Conflict

7. Have a Plan

8. Develop Partnerships

9. Create Great Programming

10. Build Staff Camaraderie

Remember, you are not working in a warehouse, or an assembly line, or a bar.

You are librarians, who preserve and help propel our civilization forward!

I hope this has been helpful. Please leave comments or get back to me personally at erossman@shakerlibrary.org

Good luck on your resolutions. Here’s to a great 2008!

-Ed Rossman, Interim Branch Manager for the Bertram Woods branch of the Shaker Heights Public Library and author of Castles Against Ignorance: How to Make Libraries Great Educational Environments

Click here to access an archive of Ed’s webinar and a PDF of the slides he used.