Linked In.
I joined LinkedIn a few years ago but have never been very good at using it professionally. Most of my connections are friends and even former colleagues insisted on referring to themselves as friends (despite my best attempts at being nasty to them all the time to stop this happening!) However, thanks to my time recently spent playing around with the website I have discovered that these relationships can be re-edited to make my profile more professional. I have now also edited the URL to my name and changed my headline so it is no longer just a repeat of my current job title.
I have always been unsure about how LinkedIn could help my career. I have yet to hear of a librarian being headhunted or any examples of high level nepotism (please let me know if you’ve heard differently!) However, as librarians have to justify themselves more and more to an economically minded world, you never know when our industry will be become as cut throat as businesses in the City. It is not thinking optimistically, but in such a climate I can see LinkedIn being a positive statement about my career. I therefore asked a former colleague for a recommendation in order to make my profile stand out and show some of my personality. She wrote lovely words so even if her recommendation is never needed professionally; it has been a great confidence boost!
LISPN
Sadly, in September it will be ten years since I became a librarian so the description of ‘new professional’ would have to be extremely loose to be applied to me! I was interested in going undercover and looking at the downloadable resources on offer. However LISPN had obviously sussed me out as, despite two attempts, the confirmation code was miraculously never emailed to me!
LibrariansAsTeachers Network
My work in public libraries included a lot of teaching (from computer skills to pensioners to local history to children. I always felt that it would be really useful to have somewhere to share ‘best practice’ information and methods so that fifty librarians around the country weren’t all trying to come up with an idea to link Easter to the Dewey Decimal Code (for example!) At the moment there isn’t much in the ‘resources’ section of this site but hopefully promoting this network through schemes such as cpd23 will encourage more librarians to share their worksheets, lesson plans and crazy ideas with others. Sadly all my resources stayed with Wandsworth when I left.
CILIP communities.
I actually left CILIP a couple of years ago in frustration with their lack of action about the library closures. While I am still slightly wary of the vagueness of some of their recent activities (such as the ongoing debate about volunteers in libraries ) it is clear that librarians do need a formal organisation to maintain their profession. Plus, it made me feel clever when they posted me materials because they used all my academic qualifications on my address label! I am, therefore, thinking of rejoining.
While browsing through the CILIP communities website, it seemed as though their forums are not overly popular (three posts so far for June.) Their member’s blogs landscapes is a useful, focussed version of Google Reader gathering together…erm…..the blogs of their members?! I’m not sure how often I would check back here once I am a member but it is good to see the potential of this area.
As someone who is attempting to complete a career development course online, I can obviously see the positive effects of virtual working. For me the power of online networking became clear a couple of years ago as Councils started announcing huge swathes of public library cuts. CILIP seemed mired in bureaucracy and (to me) it seemed that without disparate people joining forces as ‘Voices for the Library’ the campaign would not have been given the organised push needed to save some branches.
There is huge potential within these resources (not including LinkedIn) to really help those in the profession to spread ‘best practice’ but in order to achieve this more interaction in these networks is needed.
In honour of the ‘virtual’ theme of this week’s thing, today’s photo was taken outside Hiroshima Library- somewhere that had to be completely rebuilt and reorganised from scratch and where technology is incredibly advanced.
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