I just learned two things.
- Library Secrets ranks 9th among libraries with Twitter accounts by followers, according to Twitter League.
- TwitterLeague is a thing.
The ranking is an interesting bit of trivia. With my current 1081 followers of @LibrarySecrets, I have significantly less than 1/7th the number of followers that the current no. 1 ranking champion, @Library of Congress has. And I’m not sure how complete this list of Twittering libraries is or what criteria the creator, @aarontay, is using to determine what qualifies as an “official library Twitter account”. Technically, LS isn’t our Library’s official Twitter account. I hope this doesn’t disqualify us– via @LeagueLibrary, Aaron Tay is tweeting ranking libraries to point them toward the list and probably generating interest in his project, in TwitterLeague and in twittering libraries. Will this lead to stepped up efforts to boost followers? Bribes and unsavory acts? A Twitter-off frenzy to rival that of @aplusk vs. @cnn?
Twitter, for me and my Library Secrets purposes, isn’t a contest, though a steadily increasing follower count is undeniably satisfying. If it weren’t I wouldn’t have included a graph in my ACRL poster presentation and I wouldn’t keep a weekly tally of followers on my desk calendar. It’s flattering to have 1097 followers (yes, it’s gone up by 16 since I started writing this post), and it’s thrilling to get retweeted– but I’d rather do well by my standards, not pit myself against @yalescilib.
Though I only need 223 more followers to tie them.
I actually started out with lists from http://lindyjb.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/libraries-on-twitter-updated-list/ and http://www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Twitter .
As these two lists are self nominated, “Libraries on twitter” (as opposed to librarians on twitter, which tends to be personal accounts), I assumed they were official accounts.
I’m quite surprised that your account which I believe is listed there isn’t considered an official library account?
I later supplemented it with searches for “library”, “lib”, “ref”
For these cases, I indeed had to use some judgment, though in most cases it was quite clear from the Bio which were official accounts.
When it comes down to it, I think whether the twitter account should be included or not is whether it is mainly followed by library users, or if is used it for other purposes say as a personal account to do networking with other librarians.
I must admit, I wasn’t particularly sure your account was official at the time (I noticed the high number of followers) even though it was listed as the name wasn’t in the form of X Library, but it was listed and the link to the library webpage was suggestive.
The line isn’t particularly clear of course, I can remove your account if you want.
I recently added then removed http://twitter.com/yalsa because it was I think meant mainly for librarians.
As for how comprehensive the list is, I think it is probably the most comprehensive list out there, but every day new accounts are added, and I’m sure there are lots out there I’m not aware of.
You are right, I don’t think it should come down to just looking at number of followers. While it is fun to see who is #5 on the list, the main purpose is to see what libraries in aggregate are doing rather than looking at specific accounts.
Now for example I know that about half the library accounts have more than 168 followers, which probably means hitting that target is not unreasonable etc.
And no, I don’t think that this will lead to a frenzy of competition.
I also hope to be able to analyze other statistics, for instance, I notice some libraries are following pretty much everyone are following them with follower/following ratios of roughly 1, while others are hardly following anyone. Seems to suggest different strategies, policies at play.,,
One could also analyse signal to noise ratios (% of twits that have links, hash tags, are @s) , whether the twitter account is being asked questions (% of @s to account) etc..
I suspect libraries are using twitter in many differ ways and this might show up in the statistics.
I blogged a bit on what I was trying to do at http://musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot.com/2009/05/library-twitter-league-official-library.html