Thing 7 & 8

Thing 7: real-life networks

I have always been and I continue to be a big fan of online networks, if I am honest I am also very interested in how people network and “work a room”.  Since the beginning of my career I have been involved with Cilip, when I undertook my chartership back in 2005, my mentor encouraged me to get involved with the Career Development Group (CDG) at a local level and since 2010 at national level organising the national conferences.

 This was hugely beneficial to both personally and professionally, as I was able to not only meet people from other sectors, but to expand and learn new skills – some of which I would not have been able to do in the “day job”.  The skills which I learnt include networking, minute taking, organising, delegating, chairing, liaising, promoting, and getting articles published.

Affect on my career

I have learnt new skills, which I have been able to showcase at job interviews; it has helped me to expand my C.V and led me to get more out of my membership with Cilip. It has also led me to visit other sectors and get a broader knowledge of the issues which affect other sectors and see how other professionals are dealing with the same issues albeit in a slightly different context.  It has also helped my confidence and I am more willing to comment in meetings and put my point of view across.

I have always been very heavily involved in Cilip, as it has been my main professional body – I realise that there are many other organisations and associations which I could investigate further and widen my knowledge.  One of the main issues which I have with some organizations is that they are very heavily centred in and around London and South East area – and I can’t afford the train fare or time away from work to go up and visit them. Locality is a very key problem (as I live in a rural part of Somerset) in being able to visit and speak to people who are nearby.

As my career has developed I have also become a member of the Institute for Learning, which has been very beneficial in helping me to keep up to date with the teaching and learning sector. Although I am not an active member, I do try and read all of the information which they send me and keep abreast of the latest developments.

As I have to pay for my memberships out of my own money, I am very selective as to what groups I join and how it is going to benefit me.  This post has made me realise that there are other groups which I could investigate and see what other opportunities are available. I looked at the SLA but I think I may ask colleagues what groups they belong to and what they get out of them. I will also look at other posts for this thing and see what comments others have made about various groups.

Thing 8: Google calendar

I will admit that online calendars are an excellent way of organising yourself but are helping for colleagues to know where you are and when you are free if they want to arrange a meeting with you. My work place uses a shared online diary and once to get use to and remembering to fill it in, it works well. Although saying this we are a small team there are four of us, so the majority of the time we tell each other where we are and what we are doing. I can see this system working well in larger teams and services. 

The use of the calendar also means that you can use it to your advantage when trying to organise your time and your work load. As you would be able to block out a particular time so that you can work on a particular project.  I try and use my online calendar to block out time in my diary to work on a project- but as many of all know – you never know what will come through your door and demand your attention.

Thing 6: On-line networks

On-line networks are great! They are a great way to connect and share ideas - although I am slightly disappointed that thing 6 did not include email discussion lists. I joined the Jisc mail email lists over ten years ago and I am still a member and I find them very useful and helpful when I need help. But I know that I am moving away from the topic.

I will admit that I two see on-line networks as having different roles in my life - Facebook is for friends and family so that I can see what is happening in their lives and share what I am doing while networks such as Linkedin is for work and professional information. Twitter is one which I used for both - although I do try and keep my postings professional. So I am not going to comment about Facebook in this post.

Last year I attended the New Professionals Conference, in which Suzanne Wheatley from Sue Hill ran a workshop about the importance of managing your on-line presence. One of key messages which I took for this session was the following:

1. Keep it updated
2. Put a recent photo on your profile - but you not your children or dogs
3. Ensure that it is professional
4. More and more job hunters and employers are looking at your profile so ensure that it says the right thing about you.

I will be honest after the conference, I did go and check out my Linkedin profile and added a more recent photo and updated my details. Although - hand over heart I do not do this on a regular basis. I may go and have a quick look after posting this.

What I get out of them

This is an interesting question - I suppose my LinkedIn profile is useful for job hunting, and connecting with my colleagues. I do try and keep the account for work purposes only rather than for friends. Now that I think about it I really so not use the LinkedIn account for anything other than this. The groups which I belong to are interesting but I have not really commented or joined in the conversations - I suppose I am a little bit nervous and scared. I do find it really useful to have the information sent to my email address, as it means that I do not have to keep login to see what is happening.

There's a time and place

More and more employers are creating policy and guidance around the use of social networking sites and it is useful to go and find out if you have one and more importantly read it! If you are unsure over anything you can always ask. Why do I mention this, I was also talking to another librarian recently and they were saying that some employees were on Facebook during work hours and their status read:

"enquiry desk - so boring"
"have a presentation for tomorrow, have not done anything - just going to muddle through".

If your boss or colleagues look at this status then what is it saying about you and your professionalism. I know that I do not access Facebook or twitter at work, because that is not what my employer pays me to do. If I was updating a library Facebook page then this maybe different, but as we do not have one, I can't really access Facebook on my work computer.

Networking

I am a huge fan of networking, and the more you can do it the more contacts you have the more experience which you can draw upon is always good. Online networks can help you keep up that interaction and share ideas and thoughts and it can be done in one place. Managing all of these sites and profiles can be difficult I have tried netvibes and hootsuite - but the last one I just can't get to work. I may try again using Chrome browser and see if this makes a difference.

Other sites

I have not really looked at Pininterest and Google+, as I feel that I want to get on top of the networks which I already belong to and get the most out of them before moving on to the next one. Pininterest looks good - for hobbies, I am a BIG crafter and I would proberly use this site for this rather than work.

Thing 5: Reflecting and reflecting

One of the key components to undertaking your chartership, revalidation or teaching qualification is the R word should be central to what we do! One of the hardest things which Emma comments on is time, I think we all reflect on what we do, whether we had handled a situation badly or how we can do it better a second time. Whether this process is written down or how you remember it is just important to take time out to do it. Getting into the habit can be very differcult, but what is more difficult to trying to remember what happened weeks or months after the event. I think that it is a great way to be honest with yourself - but try not to be too hard.

There are lots of different ways of recording your thoughts, albeit whether it is a blog, diary or just comments on a calendar. In the health sector, nurses are expected to be constiatncly reflecting on their practice and so there are a lot of books on the sheleves about this. I personally like Gibbs reflective cycle, as it shows that it reflection is a constiant and one which we should be doing and using. One of the things which I found useful is to try and take 20-30mins a week thinking about what you have done and how if you were asked to do it again, what you would do differently.

There is a great word document  reflective writing on the web which has come the university of portsmouth, it is a great tool to help you think about the terminiology used to help you think in a more reflective way, http://www.port.ac.uk/departments/studentsupport/ask/resources/handouts/writtenassignments/filetodownload,73259,en.pdf when I do the chartership workshop for the Career Development I always show and point leaners towards this.

Things 4: Current awareness - Twitter, RSS and Storify

I will admit that I have a twitter account, but because I can’t easily access it from work I do find it hard to follow. Although saying that it is very useful and you can find out a lot of information from it. I do struggle to keep within the word limit. The very nature of twitter is that it is a conversation and I do struggle with the speed of the responses.  So joining in can be difficult as I think that I am just catching up on the conversation. I suppose, as long as I have something to say, people will not mind.

I recently took part in a chartership chat and I was blown away by the speed and found it difficult how to follow conversations. The next time I took part I asked how to other people followed it and used Tweetdeck this made it much easier to follow and responded to the different questions that were being asked.

I have be brave and but a link in to a blog post which I had written and was impressed with the number of people who did read my post. So twitter is a really good way of getting your thoughts across to other professionals. I am also really impressed by how concise you have to be and it is a very skill, to be able to get your message across in 140 characters.

RSS feeds

I have used these in the past, during the day job and they are useful. I struggle to try and find a reader which works for me. I have tried google reader but get a bit lost I suppose I should and work at it as it would be easier to follow the latest goings on.

Storify

I will admit that this was completely new to me, and on first glance I don’t know if it will be that useful. I looked at some of the links which you gave and the reflection one on the chartership chat was really useful. This would be a good way to find out what other people are thinking and then reflect on what they have thought. It would be interesting to use this tool to keep the twitter feed but I am not sure if this will be useful to me. I suppose it would be useful to keep photos of a process which you could refer back to if your students were more visual. But I am not convinced that this will be a useful tool for me, although I will have read other peoples posts to see what they think.

Scoop.it

I really do like the look of this tool especially after reading Ian Clarke's blog. This is something which I am going to investigate, with a focus on e-learning, an issue which I am really interested in. I look forward to posting my results:)

Thing 2: investigating other blogs

Wow - there are so many blogs out there. I really was not sure where to start. I have to admit that I am a bit of a lurker, I read and do not post comments. I suppose that is a nice way to hide, so I will admit that I did try and leave some comments on wordpress, but as I do not have a wordpress account it did not seem to work. But I have been able to follow people and comment on some blogger blogs.

As I am based in Health library, I decided to focus in on this area, just to make it easier for me to find people. I suppose it is not so important to follow professionals in your sector, but I suppose it is good to get started. One of the things which is not worrying me, although I know that it is still early days, is that other people's blogs look so much better than mine. I suppose that this should give me some encouragement to look at the features and see what else I could add onto my blog.

It is reassuring to find out that alot of people are having the same thoughts and comments about joining this course. There is such a wide range of blogs that I will continue to work. I while ago, I asked a couple of colleagues how they manage to keep on top of blogs: there were numerous answers, the most popular were:

• Take time out once a week to look through blogs and search for information
• Use twitter to follow interesting people and then read what they have written (looking forward to the twitter piece which is coming up soon)
• Create searches which will appear in your inbox, from google alerts.

One thing is very clear from this activity, the information is out there - you just have to search and find it - as a librarian, this is something which I am familiar with:)

Thing 3: consider your personal brand

This is a very interesting topic, as the Internet has made everyone more searchable. I will admit that I did google myself and wow,up came the reports and articles which I had written appear. Although some of the results do not include me. I had some business cards printed lasted year and I was not sure what photo I should use on the front of the card. It took me ages to work out which one I wanted to use. I am not the must comfortable of people and I do prefer to stay out of the limeline. My twitter account has a avatar rather than a photo of me. My linkedin profile does have a photo of me, but it is a couple of years out of date, so this post has made me realise that I do need to do some updating.

Last year at the CDG New Professionals Suzanne Wheatly spoke about the importance of your online presence, as a way for employers to do some "research" on yourself. So it is important to ensure that everything is upto date and correct, it is also important to make sure that all of your online persona say the same thing. She also commented that it was important to keep your personal and professional life separate

I do have a very clear line between my professional and personal life. My twitter and linked in account is for professional purposes and my facebook account is for personal use. I am now going to investigate how my blog can be used as a promotional tool. So there maybe some changes, watch this space.....

CPD23 - second time lucky

I am going to attempt to complete CPD23 again, last time, I found that work, home and life got in the way of trying to get myself through the 23 weeks. I also found bloging really difficult - mainly because I thought who would want to listen to my thoughts and comments about the library world and my experiences. But actually I have over the last couple of months realised that my own thougths are just as valuable.

I have now over 10 years of working in libraries - wow - that was a bit of a shock when I realised this. I have worked as a library assistant, librarian, trainer and now I am an e-resources co-orindator. So there is lots and lots of knowledge and experience from all of these years. I do feel that I have not learnt everything that there is and that there is still so more to learn. I am a chartered librarian since 2007, and I am embarking on my revalidation, something which I am hoping undertaking this online course will help me to complete. After all the use of the reflection is something which blogs can be used for.

Over the last ten years things have changed dramatically, the use of blogs, twitter and the internet has made the library world so much smaller. I signed up to email discussion lists, the knowledge and friendliness of other professionals who had been there and tried that, was incredible. This was very much a push experience, as the information came directly to the inbox and their the information is still invaluable. Now  this information can be found on blogs, searching and finding this information is a bit alien to me so I am very much looking forward to learning how to do this.

I am looking forward to finding out about the different social media and useful tools which will help me in my working life - as well as a way of finding new networks.

So here goes.....