I was prompted by this post from Cathy Davidson on making online professional engagement visible and this piece in the Chronicle on #altmetrics to use TweetLibrary and Storify to archive my tweets. I began using Twitter for professional purposes in 2009, shortly after receiving tenure. It’s been an important part of my working life, but I never thought about how it illustrates my areas of engagement until now.
The archive reflects work I’ve done post-tenure in a number of areas: teaching/assessment, scholarly research and writing, blogging and chatting on professional issues, chairing a department, moving into advocacy for the humanities both in the classroom and the public square, and keeping up with developments in my discipline (such as digital humanities). I’ve attended conferences and contributed not only presentations via the traditional paper but also content to the backchannel via livetweeting. The archive illustrates the ways we can connect with colleagues to share ideas, ask questions, and keep our own learning and development going.
Screenshot of my Storify archive
But as part of that, I realized going through the material that the archive also offers a window into something we don’t often get to see: process. If you go through the archive, you’ll see the early stages of projects, brainstorming for blog posts, a public testing of ideas and an appreciation of feedback. You’ll also see the impact, however small, that some of this work has. That’s something else that’s not always visible in scholarly work. Using this tool, I can get a sense of who is reading my work, the extent to which it gets passed around and commented upon, and whether or not what I’m doing is making a difference and contributing to a dialogue. It’s not the only way to measure the reach of faculty work, but it might be a valuable way.
