Tweeting While You Work – SLA Europe event

On 16 March I attended SLA Europe’s seminar ‘Tweeting While You Work.’
Dr Hazel Hall (@hazelh; @LISResearch; @CentSocInfo) of Napier University in Edinburgh, Julie Hall (@juliehall) of Women Unlimited and Julie Lewis (@judithlewis; @MostlyAboutChocolate; @Seshet) of Seshet Consulting gave their perspective on using Twitter at work and as part of our work.

All had multiple Twitter identities for multiple purposes. Hazel Hall also emphasised that her Facebook profile was the place where her non-work social networking took place, thus creating clear boundaries between Twitter as a work tool and as a social tool. To an extent this is what I have done too. My Twitter community for @Batty_Towers is now a mix of PhD-related people and work colleagues. Only some of these are interested in the football score or the trains I have taken, so I need to share carefully when using Tweetdeck: is this for Twitter and Facebook or just one service?

Hazel’s presentations is available here. So far the event’s been covered by VIP, WoodsieGirl and will feature on the SLA Europe blog. Photos are available too though thankfully none of me.

I have chosen to follow people who post work-related information. I use it as a kind of current awareness service – if there’s an interesting new paper or article it will be tweeted about by one if not more of the accounts I follow. This approach was challenged a bit by the Digital Researcher event I attended: this is probably not the way to fully exploit the advantages of social media within the research community. Julie Lewis took us through some of the interfaces for using Twitter. Julie Hall also emphasised the ways that Twitter had improved their business and opened doors to new opportunities. All clearly pointed out that the way to think about Twitter is as a public conversation; not just a mindless broadcast.

Bob De Laney, News & Business Director at Lexis Nexis chaired the event and asked a key question: Would you pay for Twitter access? Participants felt that on the whole, they would not – if Twitter started charging, users would migrate to another service that was free.

We have a library Twitter account; I set it up to track for political parties’ announcements during the party conferences when accessing other broadcast would have been difficult. Another colleague uses it to check conversations around a different topic. And we, excitingly, follow the BBA’s Libor rate. I cannot see us tweeting on behalf of the library just yet, I think that’s a little advanced: how would that fit with the firm’s social media strategy?. And there are plenty of other people tweeting the kind of library current awareness we would have access to. But it’s good to be in a position to contribute where we can, and know that we are not too far behind should opportunities arise to fully Twitter While We Work.

Filed under: Event report, SLA Europe, #twyw, Batty_Towers, event, SLA Europe, Twitter

Twitter: Work tool and research tool

Yesterday I attended the pilot Digital Researcher event at the British Library, jointly presented with Vitae. Vitae is a body that promotes good practice within academic research communities. Apologies for the flood of #DR10 tagged tweets yesterday.

My immediate and key thought is that we in the library world seem to be far ahead of other disciplines in our adoption of social media. I was surprised by this. I think, on reflection, it is because I have heard so much about how libraries have been promoting mobile and social tools. So I had naturally assumed they were common throughout all academia.

Over at PhDinProgress I am going to be summarising and reflecting on how I can use what was discussed yesterday more effectively in my PhD. Over the next day or so I will post here on Uncooked Data my thoughts about the differences between academic and commercial practice. This will be further informed after hearing what’s discussed at this evening’s SLA Europe event around Twitter in the workplace. And a useful and related Business Week article for homework reading…

Filed under: Event report, Training, British Library, PhD, research, Twitter, Vitae

#DR10: Digital Researcher

I’m cheating and getting two blog posts for the price of one, as I am posting this here and on my Other Blog. On Monday I shall be 1% of a crowd of research students at the British Library for an event run by Vitae: Digital Researcher – Managing your networks and building your profile.

I’m looking forward to this for three reasons. Firstly, it will be interesting to find out how another tribe of people are using Web 2.0 tools. I’ve read, and heard, and done a lot of law-librarian things collaboratively online. But I have not really exploited these tools for my PhD.

Secondly, it comes a handy 24 hours before the next SLA Europe event – about Twitter, and how we use it at work. A good opportunity to compare and contrast the two approaches: corporate life and research student life.

And finally, as a part-time, distance student I don’t spend a great deal of time in the company of my research student peer group – I would probably struggle to even identify a peer group – so spending a day with 99 other PhDs-in-waiting should be a brilliant boost to the motivation levels.

The organisers set up and emailed us all with the hashtag #dr10 for the event. It caused me mild amusement that this is also being used by a Dutch community somewhere, as a bunch of other tweets are in our search feed.

Filed under: research, Training, British Library, Part-Time study, research, Twitter

Twenty Questions to a fellow blogger – Part III

Part three of an occasional series of mildy interesting questions posed to Other People who Have Blogs. Today’s answers are provided by James Mullan:  social media pundit, KM Manager, runner and blogger at The Running Librarian. 

What’s your all-time favourite blog?

 That’s a really difficult question to answer as I have a lot of subscriptions in my RSS reader. For fun I really enjoy reading Unshelved; the 3 Geeks and a Law Blog  is another favourite, as is Above and Beyond KM  for Knowledge Management insights, but my favourite blog has to be the iLibrarian: just filled with wonderful tips and tricks 

As a blogger, what’s your proudest blog moment, all-time favourite or most commented post?

I don’t get a huge amount of comments on my blog, but I don’t let this discourage me. There are several proudest moments. I won’t include the time someone offered me a free pair of running shoes on my blog if I gave them some advice on Social Media. Being included in lists of “best blogs” is always nice and I always get a nice feeling inside when someone retweets or comments on something I’ve blogged about. 

What is your day job? Is your blog linked to, tangential or completely separate from what you do? 

 I’m Knowledge Management Systems Manager at a Law Firm. My blog is linked to what I do although I also blog about running and Law Librarian stuff, which I don’t really do anymore. 

 In the future of the internet and information, which will win: speed or accuracy?

 Definitely speed.  

What is your favourite journey?  

I’d like to say my journey from home to work but sadly I’d be lying. I’m not sure I have a favourite journey. I really enjoy a particular run, does that count as journey? The run in question is the Whitstable 10k beautiful coastline views most of the way.  

What one thing (material, spiritual or emotional) would change your life for the better?

More time, please.  

If you were stranded on a desert island, which book would you wish you had with you? (you can choose one fiction and one non-fiction)  

Fiction – The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien read it as a child many times and still love it now many years later.  

Non-fiction – Blogging and other Social Media which is a great introduction to these tools for law firms or Social Software in Libraries   

What’s your must-see film?  

Any of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy  

Which song sums up your life?  

I don’t really do music – sorry!  

Marmite: Love it or hate it?  

Love it!  

How do you relax?

 Running  

Who is your greatest inspiration?  

Good question…I’ve had some great bosses one of whom continued working when she had MS. They encouraged me to charter and to move on when the time was right so I’d have to say them.  

Where would you most like to visit? And where do you never want to have to go again?  

I’d love to go to Italy, anywhere would do. Newquay is somewhere I’ve been once and never want to set eyes on ever again.  

Do you have a favourite website/ tool for work? Or for leisure purposes?  

I think that would have to be Google as I seem to use most of their products. I enjoy using Blogger as well for my Blog and Tweetdeck when I have the time to send Tweets.  

Do you read a newspaper? Is that online, or in paper form or both?  

Not usually If I do read newspaper articles it will always usually be online.  

What’s the best piece of advice you have been given? And what’s the worst?  

Worst – just hit it.  

Best – To buy some olive oil when my daughter was born, don’t ask.

Filed under: Uncategorized

What do users think of what you do?

Reed Smith’s experience of changing circumstances was recently presented at the Ark Group conference on managing law firm libraries in challenging times. One of the projects undertaken was a review of the research and current awareness services provided. This is how we did it.

To begin with, I wrote a formal proposal for discussion by the team. Every single service was listed – from major research enquries to circulating journals. This produced rather a long list, so similar services were grouped together. However, there were a few specific services that we felt definitely needed to be reviewed as there was a suspicion they had been inherited at the merger without further investigation. So these were left alone. Categories and items were organised via Zoomerang into an online survey. The survey was subject to much scrutiny in team meetings.

One of the key objectives was to be , well, objective, and to try to find out what the lawyers who don’t purposely use the library thought about our offerings. That is, those who still have journals arrive on their desk, or database access from their desktop, but who do not place research enquiries or request current awareness services. It is, after all, easy to ask a library-friendly partner what they think of us, but that will only give a very biased view.

I used the same randomising technique I had employed for my PhD to choose fee-earners to invite to take part in the survey. With no rewards on offer I knew that participation would be minimal, but felt this approach would help target people we didn’t know. As a researcher, I felt eliminating bias and having a robust survey was important. So I aimed to ask a representative number of lawyers – trainees, associates and partners – based on the randomised lists.

This was a partially successful project. Whilst participation was at the expected level at partner level (virtually nil) we did gain some useful insights into how our perception of the value of services differed from the lawyers’ – and we were able to drop one or two of the services that were time-intensive but not widely needed.

If you would like more information about the review, about conducting survey research or other research tools in the workplace Uncookeddata is happy to help.

Filed under: research, bias, online surveys, workplace research, zoomerang