Thing 12: Social media

I discovered CPD23 fairly early, but through an email list, not social media. I've now started using social media for professional purposes, having previously used Facebook for family and friends.

Over the last week I've got going on LinkedIn, with 11 confirmed contacts and more under way. It'll be interesting to see how it goes, but it has enabled me to see what previous colleagues are now doing and assess any areas where current interests might overlap. It'll then be easy to contact them.

I've also joined some LinkedIn groups, but suspect they may feel too big and impersonal.

My Twitter page now tops Google search results for my name, but LinkedIn is only 10th, providing I use quotes around my name, otherwise it's ranked much lower. I'd prefer Twitter to be way down since it's experimental as part of this course. This looks like a disadvantage at the moment - especially when job-hunting!

Recently my family history society started using Facebook as a new channel for communicating between current and prospective members. I am the society's librarian so it's sort of a professional network. It does seem to be fostering a sense of community, but is not the best platform for answering research queries, which can be quite complex. The publicly archived email list is better, I think, as the answers can be found in Google searches by anyone with the same question in future.

While developing new networks and other sources, I still monitor my RSS feeds and email lists. With all these new channels to monitor, I will have to develop better techniques! I'll keep working at it.

Thing 11: Mentoring

Well I've left this one brewing for over a week and still don't have a lot to say.

I don't have a mentor and do not feel comfortable about approaching anyone to be a mentor for me at the moment. It's something that I will keep in mind for the future.

On the other side, I was asked a few years ago to mentor someone studying part time in an area of my expertise. I'm not sure how useful I was to her as the relationship did not continue beyond that particular course unit, but I did learn a little myself from her.

Thing 10: experiences as a librarian so far

I became a librarian in New Zealand after a career as a programmer. My first library role was as a volunteer in Playcentre, which I attended with my young children. I moved on to a bigger Playcentre regional library before becoming a library assistant in an intermediate school (years 7-8) - without a librarian, but with other library assistants. I had also become webspinner for a voluntary national organisation with a major sponsor, so had become HTML and writing-for-the-web literate.

I started the MLIS as a part time, mature student, face to face as I was in Wellington - the only MLIS course in New Zealand. I found that my hands on experience in 3 libraries and a website across a wide range of activities (plus general life skills), was excellent preparation for the seminars where I was able to make useful contributions to the discussions. I joined LIANZA as a student and paricipated in the Wellington activities.

After completing the MLIS I became Collection Development Librarian Electronic at the National Library of New Zealand, a senior librarian role that I hadn't thought to apply for until invited to do so. I really enjoyed the changing role for 5 years before returning to Britain for a while (still here). The National Library was an excellent place for professional development as it was at the cutting edge of electronic legal deposit, web archiving and other developments. Seminars, international visitors, courses etc help develop the potential of the large number of librarians and other staff.

In LIANZA we had meetings to discuss introducing professional registration, but it was finally set up after I left for Britain. Since arriving here I have taken a variety of temporary roles in two university libraries, a government organisation's portal and contract website work. My MLIS is recognised by CILIP but I would like to charter. However I feel I need to move into a permanent job to do this.

If anyone reads this and would like to help by offering me a job...

Thing 9: Evernote

I've installed Evernote and had a little play but time will tell. I think I may be able to remember to use it when moving between computers.

What I most need to get to grips with at the moment is something to pull together blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc. I installed Tweetdeck a couple of months ago but now may be the time for me to integrate it into my daily life alongside my RSS feeds that I monitor on my browser toolbar each day.

Alternatively I may need something else that pulls the RSS feeds alongside Twitter, Facebook, blog, Pushnote, Evernote,...

Slowing down.. Thing 8: Google calendar

I now have Google calendar with my holiday in it. I have a tailored alert so I get off my PC in time to go. Nothing amazing and it seems to behave like calendars should.

After following up the 2 further readings I can see how it would be useful embedded into a library or other website. I'm now following yet another blog in case there are any more useful musings.