Why I don't follow you (or unfollowed you) or twitter

Perhaps it's the new Grace Dent book or the great migration to Google +, but I have been thinking about my own social media practice, what makes it fun and rewarding, and which elements are stressful and need to be minimized.

I think every tweep has some twitter kryptonite -- that individual, esteemed in their field and a valuable contributor, who nonetheless cannot be followed. I am rethinking using twitter as an awareness technology, as its users real a critical mass and its norms shift and mature. There are lots of you I love in real life, ones whose blogs and articles I devour, but I might not be in step behind you on MY favorite social networking site. My kryptonite:

• Twitter as self-promotion, number one: The person who uses tweetdeck or hootsuite or some other software to send the exact same tweet three dozen times. And you can assume they're not reading anyone else's tweets, or they would get how useless and annoying that is... 
• Twitter as self-promotion, number two: The person who refers to their own projects using superlatives. You wouldn't describe your own work so enthusiastically if you were face-to-face, would you?
• Twitter as private conversation: People using the @ when it should be a dm. I can see how this is an easy habit to slip into, but really -- do go private.
• Over-tweeting, especially of non-original content. This is a sad one, because if those links or resources were packaged more judiciously -- perhaps as a blog entry-- you could scan it and pick up on the few new to you and feel gratified. Instead, you are forced to look at the same tweep again and again, for little reward.
• Twitter as a means to save yourself a little money. Once in a while, I might be interested in a Groupon, but is it worth spamming all your followers for a $5 Amazon video credit? Also applies to the "retweet this to enter" contests.  At what cost?
• Are more than half of your updates Foursquare checkins, paper.li dailies you have automated, or your auto-tweeted horoscope? So not interested. GoodReads I can just about bear...
• People who re-tweet the things our thought leaders say. I really don't get this one, since it logically follows that we all pay attention some of the same people. I really don't feel you get a lot out of someone RTing some XX,000-follower tweep who everyone is following. Too many of these tweeps, who I have decided not to follow, make their way into my stream in this way. I think it's finding those gems from tweeps with single and double-digit followers that proves real twitter acumen.

With those thorny issues in mind, I think I will either have to create lists to manage my tweeps, something I swore I'd never do, or just unfollow a particular dozen or so, mostly people I know in real life, who don't use microblogging the same way I do. I feel both are losing propositions.

I don't think my way of using twitter is better, just different, but it is better for me.

I get tricked by the Internet...

Since the late 1990s, I have used aldaily.com as my homepage. It's a wonderfully curated collection of articles of political, literary, and academic interest. But just last week, the filter bubble caught me there, to a potentially ruinous degree.

I returned an email from my dissertation advisor, and when I relaunched my browser, I saw an ad for some scientific research at UNT, where I am working on that degree. OMG, I thought, UNT is really spending money on advertisitng (and I am a donor as well as a student), but given that aldaily is now under the auspices of the Chronicle of Higher Ed, it seemed an audacious move for what is essentially a normal school.

Well, I only realized my folly much later, when I saw the same ad, but where North Texas had been earlier, it read Vanderbilt University. Just before, I had been looking up directions to Nashville's Kidlit drink night, a stone's throw from the Vanderbilt campus. I have tried to replicate this, and I mostly end up with ads for Bryant in Smithfield, RI (yes, the one from the NPR ads).

I gave a keynote speech just last month warning of the dangers of the increasingly customized web experience, and here it bites me, and I am none the wiser. It didn't help that that the ad was green and white, UNT colors. But think about our students -- suddenly, they see ads from the school they were considering. How does that reinforce its primacy in the world of academe? It MUST appear to be the best school, given that it keeps appearing everywhere they go...if it gave me the warm fuzzies, how might they react?

And now we are all jumping on the Google+ bandwagon, giving marketers even more information about ourselves and our associations to better target their products and services. Scary stuff, be careful out there.

ALA wrap-up: The conference just isn't complete without a little longer-form reflection

I have spent the last week physically recovering from whatever I picked up at ALA. What can I say? The sessions were terrific, the author events unparalleled (the Printz speeches were in turn hysterical and distressing, the Newbery/Caldecott left me in a puddle of tears), and I attended new councilor orientation (convincing me I won't ever have a spare minute at Annual, not for the next three years -- I will have to sneak off to Youth Media Awards events from here on out). Except for the Out of Print Nancy Drew tee and a signed copy of One Crazy Summer, I didn't do very well on the exhibit floor, emerging without the few ARCs I particularly coveted, but I need to be working on my dissertation for the rest of the summer anyway....and it was my most favorite American city, which made the (surprise!) drive a little bit more bearable

What I noticed: there was palpable anxiety about e-reading, which I wrote about for the AASL blog. I think dedicated e-readers have gone from being a novelty to being a point of either pioneer-type pride or abject derision for school librarians. I don't know how this will all shake out, because the emerging models don't take libraries into account and the new K12 etextbook model is based on per-student licensing.  I don't want this to be the hill we school librarians die upon...

Most exciting: meeting new school and youth services librarians, full of energy and idealism. There is a new attitude there, and I find it quite invigorating, but it does make me feel a bit of an elderly stateswoman, if one from a very small and insignificant country.

10!

Believe it or not, it has been just more than ten years since I graduated from library school at Tuscaloosa. I had several different careers before then, in production at a local television station, freelancing features for the newspaper, teaching community college English and three-year-olds at preschool, among other things.

I went to work at Sirsi ten years ago this month, and it was a wonderful education in networking and computing in general. It was really fascinating to see all the different types of library settings and hear about their practice, but I did want my own library laboratory.  I've been at Buckhorn for eight and a half years now, and it has been wonderful.

I'm celebrating this decade in myriad ways:

I was asked to present the keynote for the Alabama School Library Association annual conference on Monday, and a session on technology in the library that afternoon. I was really overwhelmed by the kindness of the board and the members, their engagement, and their interest in the topic, which was Future-Proofing Your Library.

I received the new Ann Marie Pipkin Technology award from that organization, our AASL affiliate. It is an honor named for one of Alabama's most influential school librarians. It was all the more wonderful because my assistant principal, Sarah Fanning, won the ASLA Distinguished Administrator award this year as well. She has been a tremendous professional inspiration and personal support. We owe Carolyn Starkey tremendously for her nominations!

I spoke four different times at the Alabama State Department of Education Technology Initiatives Library Media Symposium Tuesday -- first for the general session, twice on what I'm calling the Google reading suite (reader, news, scholar, and books) and once on Google searching (which was a pinch-hit).  Exhausting but such fun and important topics! I loved the circularity in talking about digital equity more than ten years after I wrote my first survey paper on the topic (and, as a huge bonus, my professor from that course was there to hear it!) The Symposium is part of the Alabama Educational Technology Conference, which is always terrific. I'll be back there presenting again Thursday...

The Library Symposium was really exciting. Everyone was buzzing about Eli Pariser's The Filter Bubble and RSS. So almost ten years after XML changed my life, I am finally selling it... Also, Cyndy Dunning and Charlotte Owen, two of the elementary librarians from my district, were in Birmingham for both the events. It made for a really powerful learning experience for all of us, because we were able to confer after the sessions and throw ideas about.

It was also terrific to hear and see the work of my PLN in every corner of the Symposium -- watching a recorded Skype interview with Shannon Miller about web 2.0 tools, a clip with Buffy Hamilton interviewing students about Evernote, or seeing Comic Life posters inspired by Gwyneth Jones' creative signage. These amazing women are changing the culture of school librarianship everywhere!

Anyway, I will continue the decadery celebration at ALA Annual -- again, my first ALA Annual was San Francisco in 2001! -- where I will attend AASL All-Committee, the Web Presence Advisory Committee meeting, and the Council orientation and Youth Caucus.

I am also presenting a few times:

• AASL: From Gutenberg to Google and Glogs panel Saturday June 25, 1:30 to 3:30.
• YALSA: Distance Issues in Teen Librarianship panel Sunday June 26, 1:30 to 3:30.
• YALSA: Pecha Kucha, Sunday June 26 at 10:30.

I hope to post more about the specifics of the programs, but, in the mean time, the latest incarnation of the ALA Conference Scheduler is really fab. 

I feel really fortunate to have found my way to such an invigorating and vital profession.

In the land of dreamy dreams, New Orleans

I haven't even begun to get my schedule together for ALA Annual in New Orleans later this month, but I can't wait to visit one of my favorite cities with my people. 

If you're headed to New Orleans for the first time, I hope you have lots of time to wander around. Don't miss the Odgen Museum of Southern Art. It's a Smithsonian affiliate, a great space with excellently curated exhibits. I saw their last Birney Imes photography exhibit, and it was incredible and how perfectly appropriate for a visit to the Deep South! And if I had never been to New Orleans, I would definitely take the streetcar, probably into the Garden District. A few more suggestions....

Everyone likes Cafe du Monde, but I really like CC's Community Coffee House on Royal Street. Royal Street is what you think of, all the wrought iron, crumbling plaster, and street signs in French. Someone asked about music. There's music everywhere. Try Frenchman Street any evening. The Avenue Pub over there is fun, too.  If worse comes to worse, there's always Preservation Hall.

I'm a teetotaler, but when in New Orleans I will have a Pimm's cup at Napoleon House, which was closed during the last ALA Annual in 2006, and a hurricane at Pat O'Brien's, where you have to sit in the courtyard. Whatever you do in New Orleans, it should involve ample sitting in courtyards. And, when I was there in February, there was a new Pinkberry near the conference center, but no courtyard.

New Orleans is NOT vegetarian-friendly. When I was there last, I was served a grilled cheese sandwich filled with bacon. So don't say I didn't warn you... If I were going to splurge on one meal, I'd eat at Bayona. You'll get all the Susan Spicer references in Treme. It's an incredible menu that melds all kinds of influences. I also really like the strawberry milkshakes at Stanley!  on Jackson Square, a stone's throw from the cathedral and all the street artists and performers. Also try Stella! and the Cafe Beignet, with its courtyard next door to the police station, where there are usually some cats.

For shopping, you will definitely want to hit the French Market for the best tat. There's Hemline, and some great stores in the Shops at Canal Place and at the Riverwalk, especially the store which sells repro folk art. Also, some of the stuff from Marie Lauveau's House of Voodoo is worth a look. Also, find Faulkner House Books in Pirate's Alley.