Thing 4

Thing 4 is a goodie, very very useful.

Twitter: I already use twitter. I realise that I use twitter as a current awareness tool. Much in the way I thought I'd use RSS feeds when I was first aware of them. I like the 140 character limit of twitter. You can get the gist of topics quickly and follow up the ones of particular interest. People generally tweet links to their blogs too, so no need for rss feeds eh? Superb for time pressed people facing information overload.

I started using twitter because we decided to set up a departmental account and I was curious. Then the wonderfully patient @sarahjison took me through the basics. It's great having these new professionals around to encourage us less new professionals - tho I'm sure it shd be the other way around!

I found people to follow by checking who people I knew were following. Once I was following a few people I would then see who they were following etc. Then I discovered how very useful hashtags are as a way of finding people with similar interests to me. It's all very easy and quite organic.

I follow some amazing library people as well as national and local news, local organisations, my local MP and even Sussex police. Oh, and @Santa_claus for my kids. I haven't really considered how my profile might encourage, or not, people to follow me. I guess I thought only people that know me would want to follow me. Those and people that want to sell me something! Ned Potter's post "3 essential things to do as soon as join twitter" on his blog thewikiman.org/blog is very good on this.

RSS feeds: I have not been so successful with these. I signed up to too many a few years ago and it quickly became unmanageable. So I stopped using them. I started using RSS feeds again when I joined cdp23, to follow the posts on each 'thing'. I've just signed up to add the feeds of all the participants to my google reader and I'm overwhelmed! I'm not sure how to manage over 600 new feeds. This is going to take some work.

Pushnote: I'm not convinced how useful this will be. I am slightly concerned at having more information coming to my attention that I can deal with. However, as the purpose of joining cpd23 is to try new things I'll give it a go. Though I'll get to grips with my overflowing rss reader first!

Thing 3: my brand

Oops if I had been thinking about my 'professional' brand I really wouldn't have called this blog 'old librarian...' I'm honestly not that old!

If I get bitten by the blogging bug, which I hope I do, I will have to create a new blog with a more appropriate name.

I was struck by how well designed Joanne's blog is and how the theme runs through her business cards aswell. I don't have design skills or knowledge of blog packages. This is something I must find the time to learn about.

One of my reasons for joining in with cpd23 is to embrace social networking and make it part of my world. I have never filled in my linked in or facebook profiles. My natural inclination is to be private. I had an unpleasant experience with someone tracking me down through my work details on google. This put me off 'revealing' myself. I think it's time to be brave and look outside my world to connect with others. Get over myself if you like!

I use twitter fairly regularly. However, I don't feel it's appropriate to write detailed tweets that relate to my work. I am a User Services Librarian. Many aspects of my work are delicate or confidential. They relate to staffing matters and problems students are having with their use of the library. I am well aware that what might be a funny story amongst colleagues could give a dreadful impression of our users or staff to others. Another thing to be careful about.

So thing 3 has been extremely thought provoking for me.

Thanks for reading...

Joining in vs #cliquegate

I am very excited to find that two lovely people have commented on my first post. This makes me even more determined to comment on other people's posts in future. Rather than doing the 'lurking' thing of reading, agreeing inwardly (or not!) and keeping all thoughts to myself.

I decided to get straight in and write my 2nd post today, Saturday, as we are due to have our self issue machines installed on Tuesday. An exciting week ahead... but with no time to blog.

So far I have really enjoyed exploring other participant's blogs. It's good to see some people I recognise and great to see some of the imaginative names people have chosen. In recognition of my 1st sentence I feel I should go back and add some comments on the blogs I've enjoyed.

Which kind of brings me to #cliquegate. In case you missed it there was a suggestion at the new professionals conference this week that people felt the new professionals were a clique. I don't want to rehash the discussions as they have been made very eloquently by others. If I knew how to add links to other people's blogs I would here... I'd recommend Lauren Smith and Rachel Bickley or you could follow the hashtag on twitter when we get to thing 4. Suffice to say that it was excellent timing that it came up in the 1st week of cdp23 as it made a superb reason to check out blogs. It has also made me consider my feelings towards new professionals and whether there is a 'clique'.

In some ways I have to admit I am jealous that people entering the profession today have social media to help keep in touch and support each other, plus a conference to go to. In more ways I regret that I didn't do more as a new professional to keep in touch with others or form networks of my own. So the cliquegate business has made me even more determined to find time to continue with cpd23 so I can get over my reluctance to join in and stop lurking.

Cpd23 - good intentions...

So cpd23 here we go.
I'm a long way from being a new professional. When I first started my career everyone was excited about the introduction of CD ROM databases. My colleague and I shared Vax machine. Eventually that was replaced with an Apple Mac, which we thought was incredibly generous and forward thinking of our employer. We communicated with phone calls and wrote notes to each other and made full use of internal mail. So I remember a world when email was new and we felt like early adopters. Oh and the ways we used to attempt to use the Internet - gopher anyone?

I couldn't consider myself an early adopter now. I tweet in a sporadic way but have avoided bloggs as who'd want to know my musings? I'm not interesting enough, etc...

This cpd23 is a good kick to get back some of that enthusiasm. Sure it's an impossible summer to do this. We are introducing RFID and a whole new way of handling enquiries so we are all madly busy and stressed. But then when will there be a good time..?