Professional involvement

In the past I have not seen the value of becoming involved with CILIP etc.... how wrong I have been. In the last 5 years I have taken a more active interest. Wanting to give something back to the profession now that the offspring have spread their wings, I first became a CILIP Mentor, then a CDG committee member and more recently have become the group's treasurer. I am also the Secretary for the Association of British Theological & Philosophical Libraries. I must confess I did not realise how rewarding these actives could be and wished I had found the time years ago. I have learnt new skills, made new friends and gained a tremendous amount of confidence. I would certainly recommend becoming involved particularly if you are a new professional as you will be able to increase your network and acquire a lot of useful skills. These days networking and a wide ranging portfolio are essential if you want to achieve your full potential. I wish that the opportunities now available were around when I was working towards chartership etc... 

The list of possible organisations is certainly useful and there are two that I shall explore more fully. I am sure that I am not the only one who finds it difficult to keep abreast of the the large number of organisations that are appearing almost daily. That's why awareness courses like this are great. Well done all :) 

Is there anyone out there?

Very interesting Things this week. Although I signed up to LinkedIn last year I have not really use it until the last few months when I have had a number of 'link' requests so have used it a bit more. This weeks Thing seems to be about LinkedIn v Facebook. I would agree with Reid Hoffman that Facebook is for home and LinkedIn for the office. I have accounts on both and have always taken the view that LinkedIn is my professional networking whilst Facebook is for keeping in contact with friends. My husband says that his company actively uses LinkedIn for recruitment, training etc.. .  I think LinkedIn is invaluable for becoming better known particularly if you have a business or a particular skill to promote.

Although I tend to think that Facebook is really a 'social' space I can see the value of promoting the library service or having a presence on it. Saying this I think that it is really important that the library Facebook page is not allowed to stagnate and should be updated at last twice a week to keep it fresh and interesting.  We intend to setup a Facebook page for our libraries for one term to see if this method of communicating information would be of benefit to our users.

I have not used LISNPN but can see it would be of great use if I were a new professional - I wish this had been in existence when I first qualified (some time ago now!). I must admit I did feel rather isolated and this site would have been brilliant.

I was interested to learn about the LATnetwork, I think that this could be really useful. I have thought for sometime now that library training should have some element of teaching experience incorporated. This is particularly useful for anyone working in education - librarianship has come a long way from stamping books.

I was not aware of Google+ but am not surprised that they want to introduce something like this - world dominance springs to mind. I think one of the problems is that there are now so many networking sites that soon we shall need a guide to where to start. I think that these sites will have to start to specialise in order to make their site stand out. It also gets confusing for a novice like me. Soon we shall spend all our time in front of a computer, the art of old fashioned face-to-face conversation might become a Thing of the past!

Reflections

What an interesting blog. I have got a bit behind so have only just started Thing 5. A very thought provoking and well written blog post with some very useful links. I am always telling my colleagues that they should reflect on the courses attended etc... but rarely do it myself in written format - its about time I did.
I agree that applying a new skill or ideas is sometimes the most difficult aspect of reflective practice especially if you do not use this newly acquired knowledge straight away. Writing about ones experiences also helps to re-enforce what has been learnt and to reflect on how these new skills can be incorporated into ones current post at a later date can also be beneficial.   

To date I have found it really useful to go over some of the things that we learnt last year. I have certainly gained some new insights and have been inspired to learn more. The new links have provided essential current awareness as Web 2.0 tools have moved on in 12 months. I have tried to introduce a few of the things I have learnt into my everyday work life but have found that this can sometime be difficult to do as there is never enough hours in the day. Regrettably my hours are to be cut due to the current economic problems so I shall have even less time. I am however determined to try and shall continue to endeavour to bring our libraries into the 21st C.

Fun and games

I have certainly had fun and games today setting up a new Twitter account, RSS feeds and a Pushnote account. Our IT officer has things tied down so much that its difficult to download anything. Although I set up the Twitter account last year the system did not want to let me in so I had to set up another and that was where the fun started. I finally managed to gain access after much frustration by setting up a new account. I have a couple of followers already from the US - gosh!

I am still not convinced about this medium. I can see that it could be useful if you want to find some information quickly but I guess it is only as good as whats available. I like the idea of being able to add videos and links as it is a very quick way of disseminating information. Only having 140 characters also means that it is quicker than writing a blog. I equate Twitter with mobile texting. 

I added the RSS feed for cpd23 blog so now I have a quick way of finding it which is great. I got into a bit of a muddle with adding the feed as I still had the old one on my iGoogle page and it didn't want to download the new one. Fortunately my colleague was on hand to help me out.

Pushnote: I signed up to it but unfortunately I cannot download it yet, I need to talk to our IT Officer. I think this seems quite a good idea to be able to share good site and warn your friends of rubbish ones. I am not sure how frequently I shall use it but it is good to at least have that facility.

Who am I?

This is extremely interesting. I must confess I have not put much though into my brand (it no doubt shows) and the recommended articles have given me much food for thought. I think that I shall have to work on this, particularly my LinkIn profile. I have been meaning to update that for a while so pehaps this will be the spur that I need. I did Google myself and to my surprise I found that I had about 5 pages worth. Thinking about my blog page I'm not sure that this wishy washy blog reflects my personality - or perhaps it does?

On another note, I attended an excellent session on medieval manuscripts last week and as part of the homework I was directed to the following site which I must share as I think it is a hoot and is perhaps an indiction of my type of humour

To blog or not to blog....?

Have completed the second task - obviously. I must confess I have not blogged since last year although I do regularly look at other peoples. Have changed the look of my blog a little although it is still not as fancy as some of the ones I have seen. There are certainly some very creative people around. I still feel very much like a novice as there seems to be more sites, gagets etc... than ever around. Still practice makes perfect and I shall get plenty of that over the next few months.

23Things 2011

Last year I ended 23Things with a final blog that lamented the ending of the course, this year I would like to say hurray - its 23Things time again. I shall not be lost this summer for 'Things' to do!

Thank you team for offering this again with extra's. I intend to work through it all again to act not only as a fresher but to try the things I opted out of last time. I also intend to try some of the 'Things' out on the staff and students. Breaking my leg last September meant that my plans were not realised, hopefully I can rectify this during the next academic year.

I completed Thing 1 by setting up a new iGoogle page - I had completly forgotten how to do it so it has been a great refresher exercise. It has ended up looking very similar to the one I created last year - now what does that say about me I wonder?