Text by: Jo
In the evening of Tuesday the 5th of July I participated in #auslibchat - a monthly Twitter conversation for LIS students and librarians, facilitated by the ALIA New Generation Advisory Committee (NGAC). Every month has a new topic. This month was Customer Service. I was thrilled to hear from so many people who clearly love and want to excel in customer service, and to share heartwarming and horror stories about being on the giving (and receiving end) of customer service.
I participated via both the HKLibConnect Twitter profile and my personal profile. Using my personal profile I shared my individual experience, and tried to share perspectives unique to Hong Kong from the HKLC profile. The Hong Kong presence was noted by the Australian Library Community:
In fact it was not only Hong Kong represented. I know at least one participant is currently working in China, and the conversation was even referenced by a librarian in Copenhagen:
How it works:
The official NGAC Twitter profile facilities the conversation. They ask five questions over the course of the hour, things like:
Then you can chime in with your response, or you can just follow along to see what other people are saying. Everyone uses the same #auslibchat hashtag so you can see the responses of everyone who is tweeting. The NGAC facilitator or other participants might reply back to you, ask you another question, or ‘like’ or retweet your comments. Of course, you can do the same to all the other participants. The ‘official’ conversation is an hour long, but people can carry on tweeting til their heart’s content, and some conversations continue for a few days. Over the course of the hour there maybe hundreds of tweets from hundreds of participants. There will typically be a summary or storify of the tweets collected and shared on the NGAC blog.
The whole thing might sound overwhelming if you are new to Twitter or have never tweeted in your life before, but honestly it is great fun. The people who participated were all very friendly and supportive (and humorous). In my next post I’ll share some tips for participating in a Twitter chat and some other global Twitter chats you might want to get involved in. Stay tuned!
#auslibchat takes place at 7pm HKT on the first Tuesday of the month.