In order to promote my blog post, I first tried to get some new and helpful contacts on Twitter, who might have some insight on the actual topic. Since my beat is education and youth in the South Bronx, I started looking for some teachers. It took me a long time, but I found some contacts like Mark Anderson.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Promoting my blog post

I found two other teachers from the Bronx and also some students. Then I went on promoting my blog post:

 

 

 

 

 

Since there are no comments on my blog post, I guess that the tweets on twitter were not that successful. I also included the link to my post in a post on my personal (but German) travel blog and I got some friends writing me messages that they found the post very interesting, but that they have no idea how to answer the question. So maybe it was a too difficult question (because if anyone had a solution for it, there wouldn’t be that many problems with the situation).

Get started with the survey

After promoting the post, I went on thinking about what my survey could be.
For my craft class, I talked to a librarian up in the Bronx and she told me about cuts on the library and that she sometimes finds it hard to justify her job. I found that opinion interesting and started to ask people ( I addressed teachers, librarians etc.) how cuts on education affect them. I started doing that by posting a question on the Facebook page of the Mott Haven Library (where all users can create a post on the wall). Coming back after two days, I realized that my post had been deleted. It seems that the library as an official institution only wants its own posts on its wall. Question is, why do they allow people to post something then?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was kind of depressing. But I went on using Twitter for my questions.

And I even got retweeted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, I only got one answer by a teacher. But an answer is an answer.

 

 

 

I thought some more time about what the librarian told me. I thought it would be interesting to know what people could waive when they go to a library. Lot’s of people got kindles and don’t go to libraries anymore, they got smartphones, so they might not need computers in a library anymore.

 It seemed that computers weren’t that necessary anymore. But I wanted to have some people writing their opinion on the issue rather than just clicking a question. I asked them what they thought, but first I got no answer.

In a last desperate attempt I decided to create a post in German, because I felt some of my European friends do not feel addressed when I post things in English.
And I was right.

There was a pretty good discussion going on between one girl that thought, computers in libraries are still important but that librarians are just not needed that much anymore. The other two girls thought, librarians would still be very important and that the libraries do not need computers. The answers might have been different if people from the Bronx answered it, because I think not all of them have access to internet at home. One of the girls in the discussion linked to a quote by Nail Gaiman:

I found the discussion very interesting and I think I will explore the need of libraries in a time of financial crisis more.