The Liminal Librarian

Just flying by to say that LISjobs.com job ads can now be found on twitter. Yes. Finally. So follow @LISjobscom for updates.

I finally got on twitter last week — @lib_rachel if you want to follow my oh-so-exciting tweets. Yes, I’m slightly (OK, majorly) behind the curve. I do like it, as I was afraid I might — the reason I successfully avoided twitter for so long was not because I doubted its value, but because I feared getting involved in yet another online timesink. One of the things I wonder about our time online — on twitter, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on whatever social networks we choose to give our time to — what’s it taking away from? The time I spend blogging is time that in pre-Internet days I would have spent elsewhere; the time I spend on Facebook or Flickr or twitter — no matter how much I multitask — has its own opportunity cost. Not that social networks don’t have their own rewards, but I do think sometimes about the trade-offs.

Now I must go be conference Rachel, so I’ll leave you with that half formed thought and invitation to connect on twitter. And if you want to follow my totally-unrelated-to-anything-here bargain blog, follow @mashupmom — which basically just retweets the blog entries. So if you prefer twitter to RSS, enjoy!

I always get a kick out of reading about authors’ overreactions to negative reviews, but it’s been a while since I’ve read some great ones. (See all the fun from last April for more along these lines!)

So, I was pleased to see some new rantiness appear. Here is just part of a mind-boggling example:

In last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, Caleb Crain reviewed Alain de Botton’s The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. While regular NYTBR watchers like Levi Asher welcomed the spirited dust-up, even Asher remained suspicious about Crain’s doubtful assertions and dense prose.

But on Sunday, de Botton left numerous comments at Crain’s blog, writing, “I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make. I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude.”

You don’t see a lot of schadenfreude in blog comments these days! Maybe it’s all moved to Facebook and twitter, too. Oh wait — something has! Check this out — Alice Hoffman (although she later apologized and deleted) got mad enough to post the private email address and phone number of one of her negative reviewers to her twitter feed. Hmm. Maybe I should finally get myself a twitter account after all, apparently I’m missing all the fun…

OK, I always wanted to say that… but here’s one for you Twitterers, or those of you who obsessively update your Facebook status. Memoirs, Ink. is holding a “What’s Your Status?” contest:

Memoirs Ink is having a free mini-memoir competition inspired by some great lines we’ve seen on gmail status, facebook status, twitter and others. The status line, while it can be a boring travelogue or list of things done in a day, is also a great form of mini memoiring. (Yes, we just made that word up.) So email us your status (150 characters MAX) and win cool prizes.

Read all about it — the site’s in frames, so click on “writing contest” and then “what’s your status? contest.”

Another quick pointer as I continue clearing out my open Firefox tabs: If you missed the post a while back on the Asymptotic Twitter Curve over at Creating Passionate Users, go read it now. I’ll wait.

(What am I doing now? Waiting. What am I doing now? Still waiting. What am I doing now? Thinking I should stop typing before people think I’m on crack. What am I doing now? Hitting Publish….)

OK, yeah, I still don’t “get” Twitter so much!