Using Twitter at the Library Conference

It was decided to experiment with Twitter to provide a live-blogging channel for the one day ‘Transforming Libraries’ conference in Winchester. Hampshire County Council had not used Twitter before.

A Twitter account was set up and publicised via Tim Coates Good Library Blog and in an email to delegates. By the day of the conference there were 58 followers almost exclusively from the library sector including Sir Roy Clare. We believe one delegate may also have been following in the conference room, but otherwise all followers were elsewhere. A couple of spammers who attempted to follow were blocked.

We decided not to use it as a backchannel to engage in dialogue within the conference room, just to record the day.

Tweets were written by Ian Edelman, Web Manager for Recreation and Heritage. As the presentations and discussions were predominently strategic, it was felt that a specialist library knowledge was unnecessary to provide an ongoing commentary.

So how did it go?

Between 10.30am and 3.30pm there were 107 seperate tweets which was one every few minutes. The opening address was straightforward as the text was available and the key phrases marked up in advance and copy/pasted as the speech was progressed. After that it was on a wing and a prayer.

Having to both listen, write and keep up with the flow, whilst confining the tweet to 140 characters was not always easy. Presentations rich in sound bites were the ideal, but John Holden’s more erudite piece proved impossible to record.

It also became a quite tiring process, not only in trying to capture the moment in words but getting it quickly down, reducing the word count, making sense and avoiding typos… a missing ‘l’ from public was spotted just as I was about to update. There were no more or less typos during the day, just that the number that got through a quick proofing began to increase towards the end.

There was little time to scan incoming tweets, let alone respond.

What was being recorded as tweets appeared more to be what was easiest to express quickly rather than many of the more complex arguments being made by the speakers. Perhaps the essence of the conference was not truly captured.

What next?

Videos of each presentation will be published early next week so twitter followers will be able to see whether the twitter stream in anway reflected the actual conference proceedings. If we do it again, I think I’d like to steam the conference video and use twitter to offer a direct route into the hall for remote followers.

Nice comments about the conference from Random Letters blog… thanks Neil.