This document discusses the use of social media for historians and history projects. It provides an overview of common research tasks in history and recommendations for which social media tools are best suited for knowledge creation, discussion, curation, presentation, and promotion. These include using blogs for knowledge creation, Twitter for discussion, Pinterest and Flickr for curation, Prezi and Slideshare for presentation, and all of these tools for promotion. It also provides guidance on setting up accounts and profiles on these platforms for both personal and collective academic uses.

1. www.le.ac.uk
Essential Social Media
for Historians and History Projects
Terese Bird
tmb10@le.ac.uk
Learning Technologist and
SCORE Research Fellow
Institute of Learning Innovation
#HistorySocial Workshop
19 September, 2013
Photo by x Daniel Rehm, Flickr

2. What shall we talk about?
• Exemplar:
Manufacturing Pasts
• Research project tasks
overview
• Social media overview
for tasks
• Referencing and
Wikipedia
Photo by Superamit on Flickr

3. http://www.le.ac.uk/manufacturingpasts

4. How we did
Manufacturing Pasts

5. The academic research cycle
Social media: A guide for researchers (2011), p15

6. Historical
research tasks
ON THE INTERNET
•Community
•Digital materials
•Discover
•Disseminate
Sengaw.wordpress.com

7. What tools to do these tasks?
• Knowledge creation – offline research, blogging
• Discussing – Twitter, Facebook, Google+
• Curating – Scoop.it, Pinterest, Flickr
• Presenting – Prezi, Slideshare
• ‘Advertising’ – all of the above
Private / Professional / Collective Uses

8. Academic Digital Profile:
Cristina Costa on Flickr

9. Twitter– personal or collective account

10. Twitter
• Follow experts
• Ask a question, get answers from experts
• Get ideas
• Hottest news (use the search)
• ‘Faster’ than email
• Announcements
• ‘New post’ tweets
• Include the world
• Attend conference virtually
Top tip: when tweeting
in a collective, add ^TB
(your own initials) at
the end of your tweet
if you can

11. Twitter – filtering by creating lists
1) Click ‘Me’, then select Lists under the gear
2) Click ‘Create list’, give it a name & description
3) Click ‘Following’, select someone, click and
pull down to select ‘Add or remove from lists.’

12. Blogs – Wordpress –personal or collective

13. Flickr

14. Facebook - Page

15. Facebook – Group

16. Wikipedia – no promotion allowed

17. YouTube

18. Vimeo – longer than 10 minutes

19. Slideshare

20. Academia.edu

21. SoundCloud&AudioBoo

22. Kwiksurveys&SurveyMonkey

23. Feeling overwhelmed? Try one new thing
“No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow
you progress, you are still way ahead of everyone
who isn’t trying.”
-- Tony Robbins

24. Thank you!
• Cann, A. J., Dimitriou, K., & Hooley, T. (2011). Social
media: A guide for researchers | Research
Information Network. Retrieved from
http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-and-
disseminating-research/social-media-guide-
researchers
I’m happy to help: tmb10@le.ac.uk