Thing 12: putting the social into social media

Thanks to cpd (and a new smart phone); I have been attempting to use twitter more. However, I find that a major problem is that big news stories often happen during the day while I’m working. Unless something happens while I’m checking my phone on my lunch break, then I’m commenting on a story or tweet hours after the fact.  I’m now signed up to LISPN and have befriended an old colleague but to be honest haven’t really looked at the conversations in the forums yet to offer my two pennies worth. I am trying to comment on blogs though as it seems weird that so many people have looked at mine but then not said anything (although I suppose if you can’t think of anything nice to say then you shouldn’t say it!)

So- are these statements true?

Social networking can lead to better communication. I think social networking can be invaluable in widening the horizons of people in the profession as well as alerting them to up and coming news stories. Coming from a public libraries background, the ongoing work of Voices for the Library is proof of how well social media can be used to unite people in a common cause.  But better communication? I’m sadly too old to use LOL or :) although people older than me (or those more grammatically correct ) would argue about my excessive use of exclamation marks!

It creates a more collaborative working space where people are encouraged to share their ideas. As mentioned before I’m a huge believer in good/ best practice and sharing ideas. There are some networks at the moment (e.g. librarians as teachers) which have massive potential for enabling this although there don’t seem to be enough people collaborating so far.......

It aids in building online communities. I’m a bit confused by this one- surely all online communities are examples of social media?

Social networking can also provide easy access to other areas of the profession. Very true- by following certain people on twitter and reading the cpd blogs I am able to stay aware of what is [depressingly] happening in public libraries as well as getting some sort of idea of what it is like to work in other aspects of librarianship that I have no experience in.

Today’s photograph was chosen for how the name of the library fits with my attitude to social media. Here I am outside the library in the Wellcome Collection

Thing 6: Virtual Networking

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.