As I am new to Twittering, I just recently became aware of the existence of Twitter communities, or Twibes. Immediately, I began searching for fellow aficionados of medieval history, and it took me no time to find a Twibe called Medievalists. Of course I joined, and have now been a member for a few months. For those of you who have not been to a Twibe site, it is basically very similar to a Twitter page, only the participants are group members, in my case people who like medieval history. If you tweet something to the group, the message can be displayed on your twitter page, and group members communicate between themselves about various things. So far, this was very similar to other groups on the internet, except for the 140 character restriction. The difference became evident after a while, when seeing what people communicated about, and how the format was being used.
Medievalists is of course one of a multitude of groups dealing with this particular subject. I counted several dozen, ranging from manuscript appreciation groups, to Twibes dealing with medieval music and art. Looking through them, it seemed to me that members were using the Twibe as a bulletin board – announcing lectures, new books and upcoming TV programs, or as a place to link videos, podcasts and articles. It was obvious from the Twitter format that these groups were not able to support lengthy discussions, but the information was getting across nonetheless. During a random visit to one Twibe, I followed the links to a variety of new articles and books, some of which I definitely plan on reading later.
Unarguably, Twibes offer a wealth of information in a concise and clear way, and you are guaranteed to get something out of every visit, if you have the time. However, there are several shortcomings to this format. For Twibes or any similar platform to become truly useful to historians, they must first overcome certain obstacles, such as the random nature of the available information. People link and upload their personal preferences, and that makes Twibes a diversified and interesting place, but also a somewhat messy one. When searching for something specific – a tweet linking to an article you’re looking for, a reference to a new book you heard about elsewhere, things don’t go as easily.
Another problem is that the information is scattered across a large number of Twibes, so that when looking for something, you must first quarry through a long list of irrelevant material. Resolving these issues would go a long way, in my opinion, in making Twibes a valuable resource for historians. It could, in essence, serve as a huge database for researchers, who can access an endless bank of articles, books or images this way. The advantages of storing information in a database of links centered around a community are clear.
Looking through such a repository, a researcher can limit his or her search to a specific topic, while not losing the intuitive personal element that these groups offer. In other words, members who link interesting and relevant items are more likely to link more of them, or at least to know of someone who does. Anyone following those links would come across a personalized collection of information, maximizing the chances of retrieving good material.
In this way, the Twitter-based community can fulfill its potential as a useful research tool. How this can be achieved is, however, open for debate. The same dilemmas that plague the digitization efforts addressed in many recent posts are experienced here also. The information is there, but in order to reach it effectively, an efficient search engine is also needed. This engine should be able to group tweets of similar topics into hit lists, making search results more focused. To date, I know of no such application.
There must be numerous other ways information linked in this manner can prove useful to researchers of every kind. The value of interlinked personal databases is becoming apparent as a method of storing and accessing information, and promises to evolve and improve in the near future.
