HootSuite

HootSuite is definitely not as intuitive to set up as some of the other services. It also requires you to remember all of our social media passwords, which I definitely have a hard time doing.

I did manage to set up both my personal Facebook and Twitter account and post a message. I might actually post more to Twitter if I can do it simultaneously with Facebook. I also think I will like reading my Facebook news stream in HootSuite ... it looks like it is a bit cleaner ... maybe even without ads?

Too bad Blogger isn't one of the options in HootSuite ... or am I missing it? If I could post LIS Collection blog entries to Facebook, Twitter, and the blog at the same time, that would be a huge time savings!

YouTube

After Katie mentioned she learned how to create playlists in YourTube, I really wanted to learn how to do this as well. It really is pretty easy, although I wish some of the commands were labeled a bit better on the screen.

Anyway, here is one I did for fun:
Library Pop Music Parodies

And here is one I did that is a bit more work related:
Government Documents Videos

Twitter

I've had a Twitter account for awhile: @ArleneWeible. I'm not an active user. The times I have used it the most is when I attend conferences .... they usually have a hashtag and attendees post what they are hearing about. For example, I'm going to Online Northwest on Friday: @OnlineNW

I follow a few library folks, but since I don't regularly check my feed, I don't get a lot of benefit from it. If there is a conference that you would like to attend but are not able to, following the twitter feed from the conference can be a good way to keep up with what happened. If you follow while a specific session is taking place, it can kind of seem like your are virtually attending the meeting.

While it is kind of fun to tweet about what you are learning at a conference, it really difficult to get much thoughtful information into a short post. Breaking news seems to be the best use of Twitter. If I hear any at Online Northwest, I'll be sure to tweet about it!

Blogging

It certainly couldn't be any easier to create a basic blog using Blogger. I think what took me the longest was deciding which template to use! I already contribute to the LIS Collection blog, and was involved in setting up the Reports to the Oregon State Legislature blog in WordPress. I think the key to any successful blog is making sure you keep the content fresh. That means a serious commitment to keeping it up to date. I'm not sure I would want to create a blog for the library services I support until I was sure I could make the commitment to keeping it up to date. The concept of curation, or developing a thoughtful approach to  building content, is something I think should be essential for any OSL blog.