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Commentary from Radical Patron: Learning from LC's Twitter Deal

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By Jean Costello Jun 3, 2010

On April 14, the Library of Congress (LC) announced an agreement with Twitter to archive the contents of its microblogging service. To this library patron, the clamorous response reflected the value libraries have delivered as stewards of tangible knowledge artifacts. It also provided examples of the expertise required to maintain their role in the digital realm.

For the past 18 months, news outlets and blogs have focused on Twitter's novelty, ubiquity, and (as yet unproven) financial value to investors and businesses. With the acquisition, discussion shifted abruptly to the value of Twitter content and vital questions about content ownership and user privacy. And the public at large joined the conversation.Surely these were important considerations prior to the deal, but they were brought into sharp relief by the attention of LC and Americans' shared image of the library as a durable repository for society's most important and meaningful information.

The scope and tenor of the commentary reveals how much we still look to our libraries to help discern the value of information and establish best practices for how it is preserved, organized, and accessed. Based on the range and volume of comments, my sense is that the public felt LC let us down. So, what was missing?

Concise communications
Today, organizational viability requires concise communications that effectively address constituents and continually promote value. Libraries have been insulated from this requirement for decades and are still struggling to get the hang of it. LC's communications consistently lacked sophistication and substance and did little to inspire confidence in the institution.

Matt Raymond's initial announcement on the LC blog was...well, giddy. Two days later, his responses during an interview for the Wall Street Journal Digits blog often conveyed irrelevant data that did not answer the questions. When asked, "Why Twitter?" all he could say was, "Twitter came to us. They asked us and said, 'Is this the type of thing that might have value?' and we said yes." While his April 28 LC blog post provided a bit more context, it came too late for news cycles and still exuded the giddiness and irrelevance of his earlier efforts.

In various interviews, LC's Martha Anderson was also ill prepared. In an April 15 interview with the Ars Technica blog, the collection's genealogical value was noted though the correlation between Twitter and Facebook content appeared lost on her. Speaking with the American Prospect the next day, she was unable to say whether users could opt-out of having their content maintained in the repository. "I think that's a question for Twitter," she said. "We asked them to deal with the users; the library doesn't want to mediate that." These statements hint at a disconcerting lack of clarity within LC about curating digital content.

As digital curation approaches a maturation point, we'll likely see a final scramble among established players to secure a seat when the music stops playing. Positions like "we'll store the collection because someone gave it to us" and "we'll store the collection but don't want to engage with matters of its composition or creation" won't get a chair to sit on. Players that move to the next round will be those that exert reasonable structure and boundaries in the virtual world and adroitly facilitate their navigation and ongoing development.

Leading on information literacy

LC also missed out on an opportunity to educate the public about data exchanged online and how it is used. For example, most of us think of tweets as simple 140-character messages, when in fact each is a packet of rich data far exceeding the explicit content. Imagine the impact on information literacy if LC's communications had included this type of insight: "This collection is valuable because each tweet is a treasure trove of information. For example, in addition to capturing the message and time it was sent, each tweet also transmits the user's city and preferred language, their biography, when they signed up for the service, how many users they're following and how many are following them, and more. Researchers can use sophisticated search and analysis tools to mine this data for [fill in statement of scholarly benefit]."

And what if they took the lead on preserving the public good? Imagine the potential of this statement: "LC responded quickly when Twitter reached out to us to make this donation. We worked with it to ensure the data was consistent with our policies to honor content ownership rights and protect user privacy."

For more than 100 years, our libraries have promoted American prosperity by making information available to those who did not have the means to acquire it. The body of knowledge may have expanded and the media have changed, but the need for libraries has not. The question in my mind is whether the library profession can equip itself to meet these needs in an age of abundant digital information. The LC/Twitter episode has kept me wondering.

Jean Costello, a technical project manager for a prominent STM publisher, is a passionate library advocate and blogs regularly as the Radical Patron




Reader Comments (28)


What do you think of the Archivist of the United States' comments on LC's Twitter deal? http://blogs.archives.gov/aotus/?p=172

Posted by on June 4, 2010 11:34:54AM

What do you think of the Archivist of the United States' comments on LC's Twitter deal? http://blogs.archives.gov/aotus/?p=172

Posted by Kevin Cherry on June 4, 2010 09:35:07AM

What do you think of the Archivist of the United States' comments on LC's Twitter deal? http://blogs.archives.gov/aotus/?p=172

Posted by Kevin Cherry on June 4, 2010 09:35:14AM

Hi Kevin - I saw the National Archivist's post, <a href="http://blogs.archives.gov/aotus/?p=172">Tweets: What We Might Learn From Mundane Details</a>. In fact, I called it out in a <a href="http://www.radicalpatron.com/library-of-congress-and-twitter-the-horror/">Radical Patron blog post about LC-Twitter</a> as a beacon of light in an otherwise discouraging landscape of library communications about the acquisition. <p>David Ferriero's AOTUS post had it all. It was erudite &amp; well-written <b>as well as</b> interesting &amp; engaging. The post provided rich, concise information about the National Archive and LC. It helped me better understand the process of historic preservation and discovery. And by comparing tweets to Martha Ballard&#8217;s 18th century diary entries, Ferriero provided the context I expect from libaries &amp; archives.</p> <p>Thanks for highlighting this fine piece of work to sit alongside my commentary. Jean

Posted by Jean Costello on June 5, 2010 12:02:19PM

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