Library Twitter Chats Collection

I’ve been trying to keep an eye out for the various library-oriented Twitter chats, and recently what I’ve noticed is that some of the resources I’ve previously depended on for this are disappearing. It’s kind of frustrating, so I’m making this post as a placeholder to make it easier for me to find them. Chances are I may not be able to keep this updated myself, and personally, I think we really need a wiki for collaboration on this. There is a Padlet I link to at the end, so perhaps that will do the job?

Because this is going to be archival in nature (and kind of a dumping ground), there may be chats that aren’t actually active anymore, or which have irregular schedules, and I may (when possible) substitute Archive.org links for links that have gone dark. While most of these do have a regularly scheduled time, I’m also throwing in links where people regularly ask for help or share solutions.

Oh, and the “Core” group is the ones I personally tend to use the most, so they are all up at the top, easy to find. This is not a recommendation, but just personal. I can’t try them all out, you know?

Links will be spelled out, again because of the archival nature of the post. Who knows? I might want to print it out and post it in my office for quick reference or as a conversation starter.

You’ll also notice that most of the hashtags are being provided in mixed upper and lower case. This is called “CamelCase” and is an accessibility best practice to make it easier for screenreaders to read the hashtag aloud as something pronounceable. This may not actually be the standard practice of the community using that hashtag.

Many of the resource lists I collected on this include various educational Twitter chats as well. I’m not including those here unless I see an explicit library focus. I was sorely tempted by the various book chats, but I didn’t want to do the work of multiple codings for them. Some of them are organized by and for librarians (they are included), while others are broader in scope and origin. So I’m just going to leave those here (#1book140, #FridayReads, #gayYA, #KidLitChat, #LitChat, #pblitchat (picture books), #Poetry, #SciFi, #SciFiChat, #SciFiFriday, #SciFiSaturday, #SciFiSunday, #StoryAppChat, #TechnoRead, #YALitChat).

Last but not least, as of today (August 9, 2018) I have not made live links for the tags. This is a vacation day for me, and I have other things to do. I hope to later, but no promises. In the meantime, you can search the hashtags in either Twitter or Google to find tweets using them or to get to more information about them.

Go to:
Core | Alphabetical | Location or Geographical | Topic or Theme | Resources

---

CORE

#canmedlibs
#critlib
#libchat
#medlibs

---

ALPHABETICAL

#AisleChat
#ArkTLChat
#AslaChat
#AusLibChat
#BibChatDE
#CanMedLibs
#CritLib
#ePubChat
#InalJChat (“I Need a Library Job”)
#LibChat
#LibFaves
#LibLeadGender
#LibraryLife
#LibrarianProblems
#LisProChat
#MashCat
#MedLibs
#MNItem
#MWLibChat
#NDLibChat
#NJLibChat
#PubLibChat
#SchSDSLP
#SnapRT (archives)
#TASLChat
#TitleTalk
#TLChat
#TXLChat
#UKLCChat
#UKLibChat
#UKMedLibs
#VaslChat

---

BY LOCATION/LANGUAGE

Library in popular languages

#Library
#Biblioteca
#Bibliothek
#Bibliothèque

Unspecified (Usually North America)

#medlibs
#critlib
#libchat
#LisProChat

Australia

#AusLibChat

Canada

#canmedlibs

Deutschland / Germany

#BibChatDE

United Kingdom (UK)

#UKMedLibs
#UKLibChat

United States

* Regional

Midwest – #MWLibChat

* States

Alabama – #AslaChat
Arkansas – #ArkTLChat
Minnesota – #MNItem
New Jersey – #NJLibChat
North Dakota – #NDLibChat
Texas – #TXLChat
Virginia – #VaslChat

---

BY THEME

Critical Librarianship & Library Activism

#critlib

General Librarianship

#libchat
#uklibchat

Medical Librarians & Librarianship

#medlibs
#canmedlibs
#ukmedlibs

School Librarians & Librarianship

#AisleChat
#ArkTLChat
#MNItem
#MWLibChat
#NDLibChat
#NJLibChat
#SchSDSLP
#TASLChat
#TLChat
#TXLChat
#VaslChat

---

RESOURCES

Included in this resources section, links and posts, a calendar, infographic, librarians & other.

Links & Posts

20 Essential Twitter Chats for the Library Crowd http://newsonrelevantscience.blogspot.com/2012/06/20-essential-twitter-chats-for-library.html

Library Twitter Chats: Part One https://www.hklibconnect.org/blog/2016/7/6/library-twitter-chats-part-one Library Twitter Chats: Part Two https://www.hklibconnect.org/blog/2016/7/8/library-twitter-chats-part-two

School Library Live Twitter Chats Are Cropping Up All Over! (2017) http://www.nikkidrobertson.com/2017/04/school-library-live-twitter-chats-are.html

Top Twitter Hashtags for Librarians https://hacklibraryschool.com/2014/05/27/hashtags/

Twitter For Librarians: Getting Your Library on Twitter! https://www.smore.com/9t6zp-twitter-for-librarians

Calendar

Dead Link: https://christianlauersen.net/library-twitter-chats-calendar/
Archive.org copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20180129054601/https://christianlauersen.net/library-twitter-chats-calendar/
About: https://rbfirehose.com/2017/06/17/library-lab-library-twitter-chats-calendar/

Infographic

Librarian Twitter Chats [infographic] by EasyBib:
dead link at Piktochart: https://create.piktochart.com/output/2617218-library-twitter-chats-2
Archive.org link (but doesn’t display the image): https://web.archive.org/web/20171003153032/https://create.piktochart.com/output/2617218-library-twitter-chats-2
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/144537469267409110/?lp=true
Content transferred to a Padlet for archiving and updating by Ashley Cooksey: http://agingerlibrarian.blogspot.com/2018/03/curation-teacher-librarian-twitter-chats.html
Direct link to the Padlet: https://padlet.com/ashley_cooksey2/2wvpnbjn28pu

And, in case that disappears, here are screenshots of the bits and pieces of the historic (and outdated) infographic.

#TLChat, #EdTechChat, #TLNewsNight, #CollabEd, #PubPriBridge, #INALJChat

#SMedChat, #EdChat, #MakerEd, #Patue, #PBLChat, #CritLib

#LibChat, #YALitChat, #EduCoach, #Web20Tools, #EdTechBridge, #LitChat

#ALSCChat, #BYOTChat, #FlippedPD, #DENChat, #WhatIsSchool

#EdBookTalk, #ConnectedPD, #ePubChat, #FridayReads

#SatChat, #SaturdayLibrarian

#TechEducator, #YALove, #TitleTalk, #21stEdChat, #CCSSChat, #1to1Chat

#VASLChat (Virginia), #TxLChat (Texas), #IAEdChat (Iowa), #CAEdChat (California), #NCTLChat (North Carolina)

“Want to use Twitter as a teaching tool? Find out how: http://hubs.ly/y071Kt0 For a full list of educational hashtags, visit http://bit.ly/officialchatlist compiled by Thomas Murray, Chad Evans and Jerry Blumgarten.

Librarians & Other Links

2016: 19 AWESOME LIBRARIANS TO FOLLOW ON TWITTER https://www.quirkbooks.com/post/19-awesome-librarians-follow-twitter
2014: 200 Librarians To Follow On Twitter http://www.mattanderson.org/blog/2014/12/13/200-librarians-to-follow-on-twitter/
2013: 75 Of The Coolest Librarians To Follow On Twitter http://librarysciencelist.com/75-of-the-coolest-librarians-to-follow-on-twitter/

---

KUDOS

Thanks to Andrew Spencer and Leigh-Anne Yacovelli.

Advertisements

On Facebook and Uncomfortable Ideas

I’m going to say something unpopular and uncomfortable. Mark Zuckerberg is getting a lot of flack for his comment in the Recode interview about Holocaust deniers. As a librarian, I see that what he’s really talking about is CENSORSHIP.

“I also think that going to someone who is a victim of Sandy Hook and telling them, “Hey, no, you’re a liar” — that is harassment, and we actually will take that down. But overall, let’s take this whole closer to home…

I’m Jewish, and there’s a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened.

I find that deeply offensive. But at the end of the day, I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong, but I think-… It’s hard to impugn intent and to understand the intent.” Mark Zuckerberg, Recode Interview

People are latching onto the small concept and missing the big picture. It was an example, not necessarily a specific. It was an example of something that deeply offends him, but which he is refusing to censor. It was about trying to create a place for unpopular and uncomfortable ideas and conversations, about embracing differences. Ideally, that would be a safe place, an open space, a respectful place, but there’s a lot of people in the world, and I don’t know that very many of them are consistently able to have conversations that are safe, open, and respectful on topics that connect to their fears and wounds.

Think for a minute about ideas that each of us hold which are problematic for others, and what would happen if we applied the same criteria for exclusion to our ideas and voices as we do to the ideas of others that make us feel bad. I have friends who are right wing, and left wing; LGBT, and conservative Christians; scientists, and astrologers; kink aficionados, and asexual survivors of child sexual abuse; highly educated researchers & writers, and people with learning disabilities or from underprivileged and under-resourced backgrounds and communities. My hope is this diversity of people will encourage conversation and awareness across the divides, that we can and will LEARN from people whose thoughts and experiences are different from our own, that we can encourage flexibility and examination and questioning of what is or is not a good trusted information source and why.

So, Facebook isn’t perfect, and people aren’t perfect, and Mark Zuckerberg isn’t perfect, and I’m not perfect. I respect that Zuke is trying. I respect that it is basically impossible to define a conceptual boundary, a line in the sand, for what can and can’t be posted here, without causing harm. There is harm if the line is too loose or too tight. It needs to be a blurry boundary. We need to give people the benefit of a doubt. We need to assume that most people are at heart good people with good intentions, and create opportunities to inform them and ourselves, hopefully creating opportunities to change minds and hearts.

If we tell people they can’t be here, they’ll go somewhere else, and we won’t know who they are, or what they think, or why they think that. We won’t know what they are doing, or what they are planning. We will be creating additional darkness, for unwelcome ideas to fester and turn dangerous.

Zuckerberg had a great response that isn’t getting as much attention as the original remark.

“Our goal with fake news is not to prevent anyone from saying something untrue — but to stop fake news and misinformation spreading across our services. If something is spreading and is rated false by fact checkers, it would lose the vast majority of its distribution in News Feed. And of course if a post crossed line into advocating for violence or hate against a particular group, it would be removed. These issues are very challenging but I believe that often the best way to fight offensive bad speech is with good speech.” Mark Zuckerberg Clarifies, Recode

I don’t know about you, but I’m on Zuckerberg’s side with this.

On Plastic, Straws, Food, Climate, and Culture — Impacts of Technology Change on Individuals and Communities

This is not a new topic. We know plastic is bad. Bad for us, bad for animals. Bad for the environment. And then there is the whole deal with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, comprised primarily of plastic waste. So, bad. However, we’ve spent a couple generations now creating a culture that revolves around bad things like plastic and gasoline, and more. You can’t turn it over in a heartbeat. Because we know it’s bad, we want to fix it RIGHT NOW, but if we try to do that we really need to ask who is going to be impacted and how. This is part of how we need to be thinking about bringing in new technologies, and about replacing old technologies, and the whole spectrum of what are we doing with tech.

If we get rid of plastic straws (as some cities and even countries are doing, along with other single use plastics), who does it help, how does it help them, does anyone get hurt, again how, what are the alternatives, … we need to ask all these questions. We also need to ask what arrangements or substitutions are being put in place BEFORE the change is made, and what are the low hanging fruit with the biggest impact that we should be targeting first. I’m not sure these questions are being asked. It turns out that getting rid of plastic straws has a really big impact on the quality of life and the safety of people with a variety of disabilities. Here’s a wonderful infographic that is getting a lot praise on Twitter.

Types of reusable straws and risks they pose for a variety of disabled people. #strawban

[Image description in thread.] pic.twitter.com/g40RPk4LRo

— Sarah Breanne (@sarahbreannep) May 21, 2018

There are a lot of people who tweet about plastic waste, and the hot new hashtag for this is #WarOnWaste. Several people I know, including several with disabilities, have been responding to these. One in particular has been getting attention lately, a tweet by Elysse Morgan, an Australian news anchor.

Loving the supermarket’s commitment to reducing plastic. Please don’t buy this – don’t encourage it. #waronwaste pic.twitter.com/n2T92tX22K

— Elysse Morgan (@ElysseMorgan) June 1, 2018

I did not read through all the replies to her tweet, which has kind of gone viral in a bad way, but I read a lot of them. They bring up so many issues about how pre-cut foods help to prevent food waste and empower people with disabilities broadly, people in food deserts, amputees, single parents, the elderly, those with fine motor control, reduced upper limb strength, and on and on. A great many issues were brought up, a great many personal stories were told. I collected several of these in a Wakelet collection (Wakelet is the best replacement I’ve found for Storify, but that’s a different blogpost). Here they are if you’d like to scan through them.

Seeking a Middle Ground Between #WarOnWaste and Accessibility (#a11y / #SpoonieLife)

@sarahbreannep @coffeespoonie @PhillipCWDE @newdowner @seastarbatita @GilmerHealthLaw @JessHealyWalton You’ve been quoted in my #Wakelet collection "Seeking a Middle Ground Between #WarOnWaste and Accessibility (#a11y / #SpoonieLife)". Check it out: https://t.co/EfKYUvYfaT

— P. F. Anderson (@pfanderson) June 11, 2018

Are systematic reviews and meta-analyses still useful research?

If you haven’t already seen this trio of articles on the validity of the systematic review methodology, these are a must read. Each of the three articles (Yes, No, and Not Sure) are short – three pages. This is a topic that has been frustrating an awful lot of librarians for a really long time. Basically, from my own point of view, it isn’t that the systematic review methodology is bad, but that it’s been over-hyped, mis-used, applied in ways that never should have happened; that peer reviewers don’t know how to review these, don’t know what a good systematic review should look like or should include, and that means a lot of published articles called systematic reviews AREN’T (and should never have been published. In the words of my colleague, Whitney Townsend, they’ve been watered down. I think she’s being overly gentle and diplomatic.

For now, take a look at these, read them, and in a few weeks (if I’m lucky, and can find time to blog!) I’ll come back to this with a few more cogent thoughts. Who knows? I might go out and collect reactions from some of the librarians around here! (I said I’d have to be lucky!)

Are systematic reviews and meta-analyses still useful research? We are not sure
Morten Hylander Møller; John P. A. Ioannidis; Michael Darmon
Intensive Care Medicine
April 2018, Volume 44, Issue 4, pp 518–520
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00134-017-5039-y

Are systematic reviews and meta-analyses still useful research? No
Sylvie Chevret; Niall D. Ferguson; Rinaldo Bellomo
Intensive Care Medicine
April 2018, Volume 44, Issue 4, pp 515–517
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00134-018-5066-3

Are systematic reviews and meta-analyses still useful research? Yes
Djillali Annane; Roman Jaeschke; Gordon Guyatt
Intensive Care Medicine
April 2018, Volume 44, Issue 4, pp 512–514 | Cite as
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00134-018-5102-3

Coding and tech comics & coloring books

First posted at https://michigan.it.umich.edu/news/2017/12/19/comics-coloring-books/

---

We are coming up quickly on the winter break, with families gathered and children out of school. With that in mind, it might be fun to have some some (slightly eccentric?) options for family activities and young folk distractions. Even better if these are options that promote learning, or just understanding more about what the old folks do with their days, eh? Here are a few highlights from my collections of (mostly free) comics, coloring books, and games around the world of geekery, coding, and tech. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find something that tickles your own funny bone!

Coloring Books

The first coding coloring book I could find dates from 1978 — Roger Kaufman’s FORTRAN Coloring Book, actually published by MIT Press and used as a textbook, back in the day. I was tickled pink when I found it, in part because I remember by Dad coding in FORTRAN when I was a young thing. (Yes, I have a copy on paper in my office. Honest!) It is robustly humorous for actual coders, and probably not as much fun for kids today. It is, however, available in the fabulous Internet Archive (but you might have to wait your turn to get access, since it is still under copyright).

Another rather amusing tongue-in-cheek (optionally NSFW) geek coloring book comes from the infamous Oatmeal. Check out 404 Not Found (and 404 Not Found NSFW). Not free.

With coloring books about coding going back so many decades, I thought there must be more, and oh my, there are.

ABC++ [PDF] (free)

The Coder’s Coloring Book [PDF] (free)

Kevin’s Python Coding Coloring Book (usually around $7)

Lady Ada’s E is For Electronics Coloring Book [PDF] (free as PDF, or you can buy a copy for $9.95)
(You might want to see also Lady Ada’s R is for Robots, which is not free.)

Programmer’s coloring book (About) [PDF] (free)

The SELinux Coloring Book (Github) [PDF] (free)

Soldering is Easy (free, but no PDF, only individual page downloads)

Comics, Graphic Novels, Zines, Etc.

– About Coding & Tech-

These include comix for kids and comix for pros, but even those for kids are so well done I get a giggle out of them.

BubbleSort Zines. (Includes zines like “Hip Hip Array!” as well as t-shirts and jewelry such as “BYTE ME!”) (not free)

Code Cartoons (such as A Cartoon Guide to Flux and more) (free)

Google Chrome comic by Scott McCloud (free)

Grokking Algorithms: An illustrated guide for programmers and other curious people (~$17 onAmazon)

Hello, Ruby (for ages 5 and up) (not free, but free stuff available for downloading at the site)

How DNS Works (start here) (free)

Linux comics, a small zine. Others from the same author include “Let’s Learn tcpdump,” “Spying on your programs with trace,” and “Networking! ACK!” (free)

What Makes a Clock Tick (free)

Why’s Poignant Guide to Ruby (free)

– About Geekery Other Than Coding –

We are very lucky here to have Jim Ottaviani on campus as a hard core science geek who loves and loves to make comics. I could hardly talk about comics and coding without mentioning his collaboration with Leland Purvis, The Imitation Game: Alan Turing Decoded! But there are more comics and graphic novels about coders, geeks, and the work and culture they love. This is just a few selected titles, not at all comprehensive (try searching cyberpunk graphic novels to see what I mean). [NOTE: These are mostly NOT free, but for sale at bookstores both analog and virtual.]

Alice in Quantumland: An Allegory of Quantum Physics

William Gibson’s Neuromancer

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer (Pantheon Graphic Novels)

Tom Clohosy Cole’s Space Race

(And if this isn’t enough to keep people busy, you can always make your own, one way or another.)

Interested in emerging tech? Check out Cool Toys!

I’ve recently begun to write a few posts for the Michigan IT Newsletter, and will be reposting those here once they are released. This is part of my grand scheme to force myself back into blogging! Life’s crazy, so things are running late. Here’s the first piece I did for them, which was posted at https://michigan.it.umich.edu/news/2017/12/04/cool-toys/

---

The Cool Toys Conversation group started out as one of the many spaces on campus where people share cool tech they’ve discovered for education, research, clinical care, outreach, and productivity. Since then, it’s evolved to become more of a community of practice around emerging trends and technologies, but without ever completely giving up the original sharing of cool toys. Some of this happens in monthly meetings, usually at noon on the last Tuesday of the month (moving to BlueJeans only in January 2018), some in our email group cooltoysconversations@umich.edu (you may request to be added even if you aren’t part of UMich), and some on social media with the hashtag #cooltoysu. The scope of the resources shared is broad, as fits the scope and range of activities and interests across the university, with some of them focusing on pretty hard core tech and others focusing on links or apps or tech to do something interesting in another topic.

Here are just a few interesting things selected from the hashtag. Highlights include: augmented reality, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, mobile apps, games, and productivity tools.

Seeing AI

Seeing AI is a free app that narrates the world around you. Designed for the low vision community, this research project harnesses the power of AI to describe people, text, and objects.

Mirage

A fun little “photo” app, Mirage allows you to create 3D audio/video/emojis/doodles augmented reality content with your phone. You can also browse other people’s content, but right now, since it’s fairly new, you may not find a lot of content where you are. Here’s a nice introduction to augmented reality from Hackernoon.

The Evolution of Trust

The Evolution of Trust is a clever online game/interactive simulation that explores the mathematics of trust, distrust, and miscommunication through various character types.

Think Check Submit

This online checklist tool helps you choose where to publish your research. In their words: “Sharing research results with the world is key to the progress of your discipline and career. But with so many publications, how can you be sure you can trust a particular journal? Follow this check list to make sure you choose trusted journals for your research.”

Index App

Index touts itself as an alternative to Evernote, or as a one-stop-shop organizational tool. In their words: “Index is the easiest way to capture your ideas. #tag links, notes, files and anything from anywhere, and Index will organize everything into searchable, shareable #collections. Just promise you’ll use it for good and not evil.”

So Long, NMC, We’ll Miss You

For those who haven’t yet heard, the New Media Consortium announced yesterday that they are in liquidation and going through bankruptcy proceedings. The New Media Consortium are the group famed for their Horizon Report series, and there are Horizon Reports in progress which some fear will not be completed or released because of these unanticipated financial challenges.

Official MailChimp announcement (this does not yet appear on the NMC blog or news feed): http://mailchi.mp/nmc/nmc-to-cease-operations

Library Journal: InfoDocket: New Media Consortium is Ending All Operations Immediately, Organization is Insolvent

EdSurge: New Media Consortium Unexpectedly Shuts Down, Citing ‘Errors and Omissions’ by CFO

Campus Technology: New Media Consortium Suddenly Ceases Operations

Bryan Alexander: The New Media Consortium: its sudden death and what comes next

As Larry Johnson says on Facebook, “Words escape me. … So oppressively sad.” The words reverberating through my social media streams include “in shock,” “reeling,” “stunned,” with some asking is this a hoax, and others saying they heard it from someone there.

For my part, it’s been an annual tradition here to schedule meetings in which we do a deep dive into the Horizon Report for Higher Education, and there have been a number of years in which this has been extended to a number of other NMC reports, or multiple meetings because one just wasn’t enough. The Horizon Report is always so rich, you see! Some years, we would have a meeting each month, to dig into one aspect at a time of the tech discussed in the report. It’s been truly fascinating. I’m so sorry, NMC. You will be truly, deeply missed.