November Prof Pick: Andrew Bonamici

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1Andrew Bonamici is Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Program Development at the University of Oregon Libraries. During 2015-2016, Andrew served as interim Director of Special Collections and University Archives. Beginning Fall 2016, he now serves as interim head of the library’s Digital Scholarship Center.  Andrew is a member of the UO’s Educational Technology Advisory Committee and the Disabilities Issues Administrative Council, and serves as the UO’s insitutional representative to the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), He holds the AMLS degree from the University of Michigan School of Information, a BA in Music History and Theory from Marylhurst University, and is a fellow of the 2005 Frye Leadership Institute.

For this month’s feature “I would like to focus on twitter, which I find ever-useful as an alert service with links to interesting and important articles and websites.”

Twitter launched in 2006 as a microblogging service, designed from the beginning to function with mobile phones using the SMS (Short Message Service) application. The protocol allows 160 alpha-numeric characters in an SMS message. The developers subtracted 20 characters to allow for a username, hence the original limit of 140 characters per tweet. The  Wikipedia entry is worth reading for additional background on the platform’s development, growth, management, controversies, etc.

There’s no denying that celebrities,  politicians, and corporations make extensive use of twitter for promotional purposes. In the higher education environment, however, twitter can be highly useful as a source for links and connections to interesting and important articles, websites, organizations, people, and communities of practice inside and outside of the academy.  With care, the signal-to-noise ratio can be tolerable.

The list below is a small sampling of the accounts I follow –

UO Departments

Many UO schools, colleges, departments, programs, and administrative units have twitter accounts. Look for the twitter bird icon in the A-Z index. For starters:

People, including UO colleagues and alumni

Other Digital Scholarship Centers

Professional Organizations, Publications, and Communities of Practice

Wait, there’s more…..

 

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