It's Academic

Library Twitter in its various forms is a great place to network and connect with other library workers and library organizations. I’ve discovered like minded individuals, new areas of interest, free/low-cost professional development and speaking opportunities, and had my questions answered by field experts. As an early career librarian, I’ve found like minded collaborators to bounce ideas off of, and mentors to affirm patterns and concerns I’ve noticed about our field. Calls for proposals, job announcements, and threads on certain topics abound. 

I have also used Twitter as a way to connect with my liaison areas. Faculty in my departments and divisions use Twitter to discuss with their colleagues and boost the visibility of their research. By following the faculty I work with, I can demonstrate my investment in their success as a researcher by retweeting their accomplishments and publicly celebrating with them. I’ve found Twitter to be a useful tool to build departmental engagement. 

As more and more academics leave Twitter to seek other social media experiences, most librarians I’ve talked to are waiting to see where their networks land before deciding where to invest. This makes sense given the important part social media plays in scholarly communications. I understand the desire to follow your people and learn one new platform instead of several. In my personal experience, I’m starting to see three platforms pop up repeatedly: 

• Mastodon is a decentralized social media platform as opposed to a single website. People choose a particular server to join based on their location, interests, or values, and can use this account to communicate with people within their own server and across the “Fediverse,” or all the servers. Several people have written about the move from Twitter to Mastodon, including this article from Nature. I joined Mastodon as @msjennmo@mindly.social in November of 2022, and have noticed an increase in librarians over time. 
• Discord is a place where you can join or build a community and communicate through voice, video, or text. Discord also allows private messages as well, if you choose to enable them for your account. Since joining Discord in November of 2022, I have joined three servers: one on health sciences librarianship, one on STEM librarianship, and one in conjunction with a conference. Personally I get more out of the medlibs-land Discord server than I did on #medlibs Twitter, probably due to this being a walled off community as opposed to the open web. 
• Substack is a place where independent writers and podcasters can publish their content with the option to get paid subscriptions. A recent Inside Higher Ed article reports that the number of academics on the platform increased over 100% in the last year, and Substack itself wrote an article on how academics are using the platform. I myself wrote a newsletter piece for Medlibs Miscellany, and am considering starting my own newsletter on the platform. 

With no consensus on a Twitter replacement yet, some are opting to stay on Twitter, at least for now. This group is large enough in my network that I still check my notifications periodically, though my time here is limited and I no longer post. It will be interesting to watch how everything moves forward. 

Do you now or did you ever use Twitter? Did you choose to leave in the Twitter migration? Where do you participate in online professional networks? I’m interested to hear from you. To read more about Twitter on the PaLA CRD blog, check out this post by Kelly Saffin.