About GLTU

Blog maintained by Anabel Marsh

I’ve been on Twitter since 2009 and have used it to meet quite a lot of other librarians online. Some of them actually lived or worked quite near me, and it began to seem ridiculous that we didn’t know each other in real, as opposed to virtual, life. The answer was a Glasgow Library Tweet-up! After publicity on Twitter (#GLTU), about 20 of us met in a pub in Glasgow on a cold January evening in 2012, and from that grew a National Libraries Day activity: In the Loop, a tour of Glasgow Libraries via the Subway (#nldshoogle). This was a great success – Subway staff were intrigued at the idea of a library crawl rather than the pub crawl they were more used to, and gave us all “shoogle bags” to carry our books in. There was a definite feeling amongst those who participated that we needed more informal, cross-sectoral events with some kind of loose CPD theme attached, so the GLTU series has continued. It has also expanded into Library Camp Glasgow and other projects. Not only are the events fun, professional contacts have been made and chartership visits arranged. All events are followed by a visit to a nearby hostelry of course – if you want to join in, get started on Twitter, look out for those #GLTU hashtags and read about our further exploits here! To see who else is involved, have a look at my Twitter list of everyone who has been to one of the events, or at least expressed interest. I also have an email list though not everyone is on that – if you want to be added, DM your address to @AnabelMarsh.