# 6: Twitter

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others' updates, known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to other users - known as followers - who have subscribed to them.
Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The service is free over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider fees. (From Wikipedia).

Watch this movie about Twitter from CommonCraft:


There are good examples about the use of Twitter for Libraries, and even Medical & Health Information Services, including Medical Libraries.
Please have a look at this presentation from Patricia F. Anderson, a medical librarian to follow!

Twitter for health and healthcare

View more OpenOffice presentations from Health sciences Libraries.

A great overview of Libraries on Twitter can be found on the wiki "Library Success"
More info on Twitter:

• Twitter Fan Wiki An unofficial wiki dedicated to all things Twitter.
• Twitter Support: FAQ
• Twittering Libraries article written fall 2008 LIS 5313 course by Lindy Brown, a MLIS student at Florida State University's College of Information
• a Listing of Librarians out there (one of many): http://justtweetit.com/education/librarians/

Discovery Exercise:

1. Sign up for an account at http://www.twitter.com
   
   
2. Search for people you know. Use The Find People option.
   (Guus = @Digicmb, Karen = @karenbuset).
   Start to Follow People. The number of people that will follow you will grow that way too
   
   
3. The hashtag for this Workshop is: #NBAMHI, use it in tweets about our classes.
4. Who to Follow?
5. Search for Topics that interest you. Use Twitter Search
6. Find people from your library, hospital or university and follow them.
7. Make use of Lists (read this help)
8. Twitter Directories, like Twellow, the Twitter Yellow Pages
9. Find more Twitter directories out there and try them.
10. What is your Klout Score? http://klout.com
11. Find out via http://socialmention.com what is been said IN SOCIAL MEDIA about your library, hospital or university.

Use for or by Medical Libraries (examples):

• Medlibs on Twitter: http://twitter.com/medlibs
• PubMed by NCBI on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ncbi_pubmed
• Search Pubmed by twitter: Send : @pubmed your search term(s) You will then get a reply with the first, most relevant result and a link to the article at PubMed.