, methinks, is for people who really love texting. Generally speaking, I am profoundly uninterested in texting. It serves its uses... a friend's father was terminally ill, and we didn't want to disturb the family with phone calls. So text updates were perfect. It was my Nevada nephew's first birthday and my sister sent a "wish you were here" note. Perfect. But generally speaking, I have yet to be convinced that I will be closer to the beloveds in my life by knowing the details of their days in minute detail.
You just can't share a good bottle of Chenin Blanc via texting or twitter. I'd rather be face to face, even if it means we catch up much more rarely.
That said, I did go into Twitter and I "followed" a few libraries, and from a professional perspective I can say that Twitter looks like it could be a great marketing tool. The Kansas City PL used Twitter to announce a rescheduling of an author event, and the Casa Grande Library in Arizona uses Twitter to promote new items in their collection. These both strike me as great uses for Twitter, and I'd love to see GRRL ~ in whole or by branch ~ jump on this bandwagon.
I like that there are so many avenues for people to connect with Twitter ~ IM, text message, or Internet.
However, I'm just not sure how well Twitter would work for tiny branches like mine. I serve a community of 1,000 or so people. We do get folks in from other communities, but the bulk of our patrons are from Royalton. Many of them don't have Internet at home (that's why they come to the library). Of those that do have Internet access from home, a significant number of them have dial-up because that is all they can get at their rural addresses.
I'm not sure how many have cell phones, either, or if they have the phones, whether they are in the "high texting" demographic that Twitter seems created for.
It makes me think of the whole big stimulus package/infrastructure debate going on right now. We really need broadband access everywhere. Not just in cities and large towns. And it's not just so that I could send out story hour notices via Twitter. As more and more social services and employers move to put all their paperwork online, huge swaths of our population are being excluded from the ability to go online to apply for jobs, update their medicare plans, apply for unemployment, etc. I'm not sure that libraries will be able to keep up with the demand when our funding is on the line during the economic downturn.
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1 comment:
You are so right about needing rural access to broadband and high speed connections. I see this as a growing digital divide issue for our rural communities as well.
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