Twitter and Medical Libraries

A colleague and I recently attended a webinar on Twitter in Hospitals. It provided a good background on the service itself, but we both came away with the sense that while the social network has flourished in terms of personal use, its role in institutions is not yet entirely clear. Some public institutions, including a number of both hospitals and libraries, use it to broadcast messages and disseminate information they think will be useful to their followers – upcoming events, breaking news, new materials or research findings. In institutions with a very specific focus, however, like medical libraries, Twitter’s usefulness is even less clearly defined.

There is a possibility that with the Library of Congress' decision to archive the entirety of Twitter's content, Twitter will become the purview of libraries. Treadwell does have its own twitter, which you can find here; so far, we primarily use it to broadcast upcoming classes and changes to electronic journal access. We do have a few topic-oriented lists set up (in neurology and cardiology, two of our most heavily researched fields), and we also plan on following many hospitals, libraries, and medical librarians in an effort to keep track of the role of Twitter as it pertains to us, our colleagues and our patrons.


If you're interested in Twitter in hospitals, libraries, or medical libraries, please feel free to get in touch. Also, follow us on Twitter, where you can subscribe to any of the lists we've set up.