Cyber-Event Organized by Biblioredes Takes over Twitter · Global Voices
Felipe Cordero

On August 10, 2010, a group of people linked to libraries in Chile successfully held a 1-hour cyber-event for the Spanish-speaking world. The event was held on Twitter, aiming to raise the profile of libraries as institutions of learning in a digital world. More than 9,000 people participated in the initiative [es].
The event was led by BiblioRedes [es], a program of the Chilean Libraries, Archives, and Museums Bureau that attempts to [es] ¨transform persons into agents of cultural and social development through Public Libraries and cyberspace, and in that way, overcome isolation thanks to the Internet and new digital technologies.”
Jaime Quilán Public Library (Municipality of Pudahuel, Santiago, Chile). Photo by Flickr user fbar, used under an Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license by Creative Commons.
As stated by BiblioRedes [es], the goal of the event was to:
Promover a las Bibliotecas como espacios que contribuyen a garantizar el  acceso democrático a la información, el conocimiento, la recreación y  la cultura, todo ello a través de una de las mayores redes sociales del  mundo: Twitter […] La idea consiste en conversar de las Bibliotecas usando el hashtag  #biblioteca, hasta posicionarlo entre los “trending topics” (temas del  momento) en Twitter.
In the blog Cadaundas [es], Enzo Abbagliati, one of the organizers, added [es]:
Y para ello, nada mejor que llenar Twitter de recomendaciones de libros,  de sitios web interesantes o de actividades que ocurren en las  bibliotecas. Pero también recordar novelas, películas e historias  curiosas  que hayan ocurrido en una biblioteca. Además de personajes  históricos y blogs de amantes de las bibliotecas.
As encouraged by Biblioredes and Mr.Abbagliati, participants shared links and information. For instance, Mónica Hidalgo (@skiken) recommended books [es]:
La triología d Santiago Posteguillo sobre Publio Cornelio Escipion Africanus, Las legiones Malditas y la Traición d Roma #Biblioteca
Similarly, Igor P.L. (@uneletras) said [es]:
Recomendando un libro, que me gusto mucho EL CURIOSO INCIDENTE DEL PERRO A MEDIANOCHE de Mark Haddon #biblioteca
In addition, Contenidos Locales [es] (Local Contents), a “community of people that shares, talks about, and creates digital content about Chile [es],” invited people [es] to visit a library in the town of Camarones in northern Chile.
The event was not limited to Chile and it involved people elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world. In the blog Myrna Lee, la biblotecaria…[es] (Myrna Lee, the librarian…), blogger and librarian from Puerto Rico Myrna Lee described what the event meant to her [es]:
En estas noches, he tenido pláticas intensas por medio del Twitteo,   desde problemáticas sociales, temas picosos y películas no recomendadas.  Ahh recordando el evento #biblioteca, desde ese día se re-generó mi adicción! El evento #biblioteca me abrió las puertas a América Latina, y España…  para mi, algo maravilloso. Recuerden, vivo en un país donde miramos al  norte y yo estoy aprendiendo a mirar al Sur del Planeta […] Voy conociendo, gente interesante,  bibliotecarios 2.0 y más, comprometidos con esta vocación que a todos  nos marca, que a todos nos seduce!
After the event, Biblioredes informed [es] about the scope of the event:
El evento virtual en el que además de Chile participaron países como  México, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Perú, Venezuela, Argentina, Brasil,  Portugal y España (país que alcanzó el número uno con el hashtag), fue  una acción de marketing social en Internet por una institución, la  Biblioteca, que lleva 4.000 años atendiendo a sus comunidades.
Finally, Mauricio Fino, author of the blog MaoLibrarian [es], reflected on the results of the event [es]:
Gracias a wthashtag.com y Twirus seguimos con alegria cómo #biblioteca llegaba a los Trending Topic Hispano de Twitter gracias a 9,798 tweets, 1,576  colaboradores (equivalentes a 1,399.7   tweets por día) durante los últimos 7 días, es decir que no sabemos  con precisión (o por lo menos yo) cuántas personas participaron durante  la hora programada.
Thanks to wthashtag.com and Twirus [we] followed with joy how #biblioteca became a Hispanic Trending Topic on Twitter thanks to 9,798 tweets, 1.576 collaborators (equivalent to 1,399.7 tweets per day) during the last 7 days[. This] means that we (or at least myself) don't know precisely how many people participated during the scheduled hour.
Furthermore, we can also find that 42.2% were retweets (I think this is a high figure), 60.6% were mentions, 16.3% had multiple hashthags and 27.2% came from the “Top 10″ (that is to say, a little more than a quarter of the achievement was due to 10 persons?). If we look [at the Top 10] in detail, we will see 4 of the 8 organizers of the initiative. I don't say this is bad, but I think that this should have been a smaller number [considering that] the official announcement was so “aggressive” as to grab the attention of a few thousand collaborators.