Week 5 Twitter Champion: Reader Advisory Services

[Samantha Maddox]

This weeks’ activity saw me participating in the Twitter Champion event. I was apprehensive of my participation of this event as with the previous twitter chat I just sat back and watched how it evolved. The pace was fast and I came to the conclusion I am going to learn nothing if I sit back with a wallflower observance and I need to just get on and tweet. I had read all of the weeks readings and prepared answers for the questions that Kate was proposing for the evening. I settled in for the chat with a cup of tea and set up ichat.io. Our topic for this week is Readers’ Advisory Services and Kate had invited Jo Beazley (@jobeaz) and Alison Miles (@alisonwrote)  as our twitter chat guests, who had collaborated together writing a report on RA’s ‘Embedding readers’ advisory services in professional practice as a key collaborative strategy in Queensland public libraries’ in 2014.

The chat progressed quickly with everyone appearing online and answering the proposed questions and offering their own opinions of what they believed an RA entitled. Familiar names appeared and other industry professionals joined with why are readers’ advisory services important? The obvious reason being, it promotes literacy but it is also an integral element to the library. It connects people with librarians, whether it is behind the rec desk or whilst a librarian is shelving. It builds a rapport of trust and an unbiased confidence that is offered when asking for a professional opinion. In asking for advise a patron may be introduced to authors that they may have never heard of and the librarian is taking advantage of utilising the breadth of the library’s collection. All of these elements ultimately, encourage community development.

A librarian needs to be an exceptionally active listener, who demonstrates empathy to a patrons needs. You need to be able to unravel a patron’s request and have the confidence to utilise your search skills and knowledge of the collection you work with. A question that was raised in regards to the skills of a RA during the chat was, can you be a good RA with out being a reader? I don’t believe you can. I believe you could be a mediocre RA as there are other resources you could use to obtain the knowledge of books but believe you would be missing an integral and organic perspective that only a reader of diverse breadth can grasp. I believe you would be offering only topical information with out projecting a true authentic passion for the body of work you interact with.

It was also highlighted that an RA’s work is not just offering advise to patrons but making space for the fundamentals of reading, and as a librarian we are there to promote this. This can take form in many ways, such as themed displays, offering reading groups and book clubs and keeping track of bestseller lists. Behind the RA desk you could keep an index of what people have read and align it in context of themes and genres and use this as a tool for those human moments when we are genuinely stumped.

The conversation whilst it stayed firmly with in the sphere of the topic of RA’s there was also some other topics that branched from said topic due to peoples tastes in fiction and non-fiction. I found this to be an interesting element of the Twitter chat. Whilst my confidence to participate in the chat was firmly situated in answering the specified questions and trying to keep track of the pace of the tweets, I am hoping with further participation of these events I will feel more confident in participating further.

• This topic was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by Samantha Maddox.
• This topic was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by Samantha Maddox.

[Will Wood]

Hey Samantha,

I thought I would have a read of your twitter chat experience as I am one of the champions for the discussion next week. I’m glad I did stop by because your first paragraph expressed how I am feeling about it so clearly I could have written it myself! I also just sat back and watched the first twitter chat because I am in no way a twitter native and the tweets were flying thick and fast! Hopefully I can prepare enough and get my fingers limbered up to speed for my session on Monday. Unfortunately I couldn’t sit in on the readers advisory one as I was at work so it was great to read about it here from your perspective rather than go back through the storify. I definitely agree with you on your point about how a readers advisory service conducted by someone who is not themselves widely read makes for a limited service that lacks the depth and scope the user would expect. Its good that RA resources other than the librarian exist though as it would take a lot of dedication and an incredible memory to recall most of a collection! Cheers again for the confidence boost for my upcoming twitter chat, glad to know I wasn’t alone in my apprehension.

[Samantha Maddox]

Hey Will,
You will be fine tonight’s twitter chat! Just be prepared. I made sure I had completed all of the weeks readings and had written out the questions and answers and had more than one answer prepared or points that correlated to the topic of the question. I was pretty nervous, it moves really quickly (I’m not going to lie) but as soon as Kate tweeted the question I felt prepared to answer confidently. I really enjoyed the topic RA so I think that helped with the experience aswell.

[Leena Riethmuller]

Hi Samantha,

Thanks for writing about your Twitter Chat Champion experience! Mine isn’t scheduled for a few weeks yet, but I am starting to feel a little anxious about it. I have only user Twitter for this unit so it is a new way of communicating. The Tweets are very fast! Sometimes my brain can’t formulate answers quickly enough. I think this might come with practice!

I think the thing I like most about the Twitter Chats is how it is a casual discussion, participants are well informed and everyone offers their personal opinions. It is a nice way of getting an idea of the diversity of approaches to one particular topic.

[Samantha Maddox]

Hey Leena,

I know, it was really interesting to see the diversity of the conversation of the twitter chat. I was not feeling confident with my speed to keep up with the conversations as they moved so quickly! But it was great to see something like RA bring out really interesting correlating and common views on specific topics such as gender and the projection of women in the literacy world. These are topics I am quite passionate about but I was just trying to keep the pace of the specifics I knew I had to keep up with through out the chat. It is fast format to follow but you actually learn quite a bit. I am now actually looking forward to the next one.

[Caitlin .]

Hi Samantha,

I am twiterring next week! Tomorrow! Definitely a little apprehensive about it as its only my second time. How did you find the other tweeters engaged with your questions, did they respond in the way you expected so you could continue to add pre prepared responses and/or questions or did you find the chat was much more organic and flowing and thus you had to respond differently. Do you find the median a useful tool for furthering your knowledge in this area? i.e what did you learn?

I was also wondering how you found ichat.io as I have only used tweet deck before and found it had many limitations. I am trying to find a tool which pre adds the # as has been mentioned in previous forums as I believe this would help my speed a great deal.

I enjoyed your post though, nice to read your reflections.

Caitlin

[Samantha Maddox]

Hey Caitlin,

Good luck for tonight! Just be prepared with your answers before and have a few responses so you can contribute to the topic in regards to that specific question. Yep, people do respond to your tweets but it moves so quickly and I’m so slow that I felt that by the time I responded, it had disappeared into the netherland of the twitter-sphere never to be seen again… The topic runs quite organically and other topics evolve from the specified topic. I found it a really good learning platform and it is great that you can go back and read it on storify. I had set up tweet deck for the previous chat and was completely overwhelmed with it. I was so worried about typing the hashtag and trying to contribute that I just ended up observing and watching how others participated. The ichat.io was great, it had the hashtag ready to go for every tweet you make and you can set the speed of the flow of the tweets – I only figured this out half way through the chat. You can set it to fast, medium (I used this one) and slow. All the best for tonight – I will be there ☺

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