Thing 6: Online Networks

I have a funny relationship with online networks. I’m willing to give pretty much anything a go once (except, you know, the B word*). The thing is, really, I’m pretty vanilla. Try as I might, I just can’t get the variety to excite me. The quantity, well, anyone who’s seen my twitter feed knows just how much I love online networking. I just can’t get into the other kinds of online network. Is there something wrong with me?

LinkedIn

Oh, LinkedIn, you are a funny thing. What are you. Why are you? Are you only really there for people of a certain age with certain jobs or certain aspirations? Whatever you are, I don’t think you’re quite for me yet. I think the reason LinkedIn and I haven’t made friends is that I’m not particularly comfortable filling in the information required to have a properly ‘complete’ profile. I can happily and openly tell the world what jobs I’ve had, what I’ve done, maybe at a push what skills I’ve learned – but a summary about me and my specialities, recommendation from other people, and uploading my CV? LinkedIn my darling, I’m just not ready for that kind of openness in our relationship. I’m not an incomplete individual, please don’t tell me that by being unwilling to invest so much I’m failing you. If you can’t accept me as I am, or let me develop at my own pace, I just don’t think we have a future together.

Facebook

Facebook, Facebook. You’re so abusive, but I keep coming back to you. I don’t know how to walk away, even though I know it’d be for my own good. I can’t get what I truly need from you, and you’re no good for me. First you got me hooked on WordChallenge and now I’m so clouded in the fugg of Farmville that I can’t see any good in you whatsoever. You’re a lying, cheating, deceitful beast, changing my security settings in secret. You make me ill, exposing me to viruses you’ve picked up from a disreputable character who’s probably someone who bullied me at school but I felt too rude to snub. You make it hard for me to hide anything. Your latest act of cruelty was to render the chat function virtually unusable. Why must you treat me so, Facebook?

You have your strengths, don’t get me wrong. The Voices for the Library page is a useful network, and the closed group just for campaigners makes it a safe place to talk about shared concerns in private, but I’d rather leave dealing with you to other team members, because I resent you so much. I dislike you almost as much as I dislike Murdoch. There, I said it. I think of you in the same way. I’m not sorry. When Google+ is ready for me I’ll leave you and I won’t look back.

LISNPN

Lovely LISNPN, you’re such a sweetheart, well-meaning and innocent. You were kind to me when I was a student, before I discovered the harsh realities of LIS life. But you were a bit clunky, and I kept forgetting my password, and most of the people I interacted with were sitting at the other side of the same computer cluster anyway. To be honest, I felt like I was giving more than I was receiving. It wasn’t going to work. But now…now I look at you and my, haven’t you grown up? You’ve matured into something sexy, and vibrant, and confident. You seem to have so much more to offer. Just look at the content now! I’m sorry I didn’t have the time to invest in you. I’m so glad others did. You’ll make people very happy. Who knows, maybe even me occasionally now that I’ve seen your more mature self…

Twitter

Twitter, really you’re the only one for me. You are genuinely magical. Since you came into my life, no other online network has satisfied me. Even though you’re clearly stunted with your capacity for only 140 characters at a time, I just can’t get enough of you. You’re quick, you provide instant gratification…I know it’s weak but I’ll be honest – you do make me feel confident when someone retweets something I’ve said in approval. You make me feel like I’m not alone. No matter the time of day, you’re there – there’s always someone, somewhere in the world, tweeting away. You’re so flexible – I can organise you however I like, with lists so you can give me what I want whatever mood I’m in, whatever information I need. It’s easy to get involved in strange and unusual things in a safe way – all I need to do is tweet at someone I’ve never tweeted at before and see where it takes me. And God, you’re big. You’re funny and sweary and brave and a force for social good. When I grow up I want to be like you, Twitter.

* Bebo

Thing 5 – Reflective Practice

I’m quite used to the concept of reflective writing – I was introduced to it during my graduate traineeship, where I was required to keep a reflective diary, recording my experiences, what I thought about them, what was valuable/not so valuable, how I thought my skills were developing, and areas for improvement etc. One of the assessed elements of the Librarianship Masters is a series of reflective posts, which I found quite easy to do because of my previous experience with it. I wasn’t especially keen on it at the time, and didn’t see the point to it – but even during the job application process towards the end of the course, and in trying to improve my ability to Do Stuff Better within a job and as part of a campaign group, it became apparent just how useful it can be to be able to talk and write about your experiences, strengths and weaknesses in that kind of way.

Like many others, I find that my blog posts tend to be descriptive rather than reflective, although I’m sure we tend to reflect without even knowing it a lot of the time. For example, as I wrote my a blog post last night about standing for CILIP Vice-President, I realised that the way I was subconsciously structuring it was along the lines of the “what – so what – now what” format. It can be a useful concept to have kicking around in the back of your mind even if you’re not doing it for CPD purposes – it makes for a meaningful beginning, middle and end of your written work. Reflecting on reflection, I’m coming to realise that I also tend to apply this to the talks and lectures I give – my standard structure tends to be “what’s going on – why’s this relevant – what can we do about it” – so I do think it’s valuable stuff to be aware of, even if at first glance it’s not clear what the point of it is if you’re not studying, engaging directly in CPD or chartering.

Indianapolis Central Library Auditiorium by pjern on flickr

These are some useful resources from a reading list on the MA course:

• Jackson, R. (2008) “Information Literacy and its relationship to cognitive development and reflective judgement.” New Directions for Teaching and Learning. 114 Summer 47-61
• McGuinness, C. (2007) “Using reflective journals to assess the research process.” Reference Services Review. 35 (1) 21-40.
• Moon, J. (1999) Learning Journals: A Handbook for Academics, Students and Professional Development. London: Routledge.
• Sen, B. (2010) “Reflective writing: A management skill?” Library Management. 31 (1/2) 79-93.

There’s also this article which gives a really good explanation of the value of reflective practice in LIS and how it’s applied within the Masters course at Sheffield:

• Sen, B. (2011) Developing reflective practice in LIS education: The SEA-change model of reflection, Education for Information (In Press). http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/42933/2/Sen_42933.pdf

Thing 4: Current awareness – Twitter, RSS and Pushnote

Please excuse my tardiness, for various reasons I’m a bit behind (neighbours moving out and taking their internet with them, Umbrella, day-job, really dreading Thing 4 and so putting it off like there are a million tomorrows…). No more procrastination – on to Thing The Fourth!

Twitter

According to twuration and howlonghaveyoubeentweeting, I’ve been tweeting since 27th January 2009, making my account 899 days old, or 2 years, 5 months, 2 weeks, 1 day, 10 hours, 46 minutes, 13 seconds old at this precise moment. Blimey.

Two and a half years ago I was a graduate trainee and had just started getting involved in things library-related, so I think I’ve always used twitter for that purpose, although much more so over the last year, through Voices for the Library advocacy and Save Doncaster Libraries campaigning. I mainly use it for:

• Keeping up with library news – current awareness
• Retweeting interesting things (and using it as a platform through which to share interesting library-related quotes, articles & photos via tumblr – not all the stuff on my tumblr is library-stuff and I tend to untick the ‘send to twitter’ option if it’s not)
• Promoting and publicising what I do – news, events, blog posts etc.
• Talking to people about libraries, campaigning, getting ideas and feedback, asking for information and help etc.
• Livetweeting at events so that people who aren’t there can find out what’s being said (for example, I was rapidly tweeting away at Umbrella using the #ub11 hashtag)
• Keeping up with world news (and comments about it from comedians, journalists and musicians)
• Talking about general rubbish with friends
• Telling people what I had for tea

Although the last two might not be particularly useful per se, I think it is a good thing to be a ‘real person’ online, so I don’t really try to avoid this. I think it’s safe to say I’m a pretty prolific tweeter…some of it’s quality, some of it is really not, but I seem to be able to maintain a gradually growing number of followers so I get the impression I’m mostly useful and vaguely interesting to follow! I’ve started warning people about when I’m going to be constantly tweeting at conferences to give them a chance to unfollow me and refollow me afterwards if they want to, but there’s also the option to filter out certain words or hashtags, which saves having to remember to refollow someone afterwards.

I follow quite a high number of accounts (almost 800) and although they’re not all regular posters, I find it useful to have certain lists. (I think librarians must be the most ideal twitter users – they love their lists. I’m on 129!) I do need to filter out my ‘librarians’ list into individuals and organisations I think, although I enjoy the way they blend together sometimes.

On my laptop I use tweetdeck, which is a friendlier browser than your standard internet browser for using twitter, and displays lists and searches nicely so you can ignore certain ones when you don’t need them. It has its problems and little buggy bits, but nothing to make me want to switch to anything else so far. Unfortunately I don’t have a fancy enough phone to be able to use it on there, and I’ve not been brave enough to ask tech support to allow me to install it on my work PC (probably all for the best, my productivity would no doubt take a nose-dive…) but it works well when I’m at home or at events and stuff.

RSS

I started trying to use Google Reader about a year ago and failed miserably. I put too much on there, kept forgetting to check it, looking at blog posts through other routes and generally getting in a bit of a mess with it. I figured that if something was important enough, I’d come across it on twitter or someone would tell me about it. My relaxed attitude seems to be working ok so far but I’d like to get a bit more organised so that I can be a bit more efficient in preparation for my PhD starting next year. I’ve therefore completely wiped my RSS feed and will be starting again! Any recommendations for must-reads would be more than welcome, please.

Pushnote

I’m afraid I just don’t have the time or energy to play with a new toy, so I’m going to deliberately give this little bit a miss. Bad Lauren.

Thing 3: Consider your personal brand (Part Three)

I’ve left this bit until last because I needed a good think about it: “Professional/personal identity – do you want to merge the two or do you prefer to keep them separate?” I’m going to try and keep it short, honest, and hopefully useful.

I can mostly get on ok with the idea of a ‘branded’ identity in terms of a background image, consistent style and something that represents you as a person. I do it out of a desire for things to look nice, recognisable, and be easy to navigate. I’m ok with the idea that this is fluid, and it’s relatively easy to change things if you feel your ‘image’ no longer fits how you feel as an individual or doesn’t work with what you’re doing within your profession. I do, however, have problems with the idea of branding as an individual in terms of an online communicative presence. Identity is a changeable thing from moment to moment. The thought of trying to create a fixed identity through what I choose to say/not say at all is problematic for me, let alone the sense that I should create a fixed and marketable/profitable/pleasing one. It’s not really something I’m keen to devote time to because I don’t think it’s something I can or should control. I don’t try to do a professional/personal split, it’s false and impossible. Professional is personal for me, I’m ok with that, and it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make if employers/whoever don’t like my online presence. I’d probably have an issue if it became relevant. I dunno. I’d still tell em where to shove it.

Having had a read of How To Ruin (Or Build) Your Personal Brand, had a little sick and collected myself again, I think I can say that some of these things I do, not deliberately, just because I am a me and although I’m changeable in many ways I’m consistent in others (the way I write and to a degree my tone). I engage because I have an understanding of how social media works. I network because I’m a social critter and I just can’t help it. I’m intellectually generous because I’m a librarian.*

Some things in the article I do almost deliberately sometimes as a direct ‘screw this’ against ‘branding’ or trying to be appealing. That’s not to say I don’t already consciously/subconsciously alter my behaviour dependent on my surroundings – just as I do offline. Then again, I can be a cantankerous thing and only occasionally do I think “hmm, maybe I should post this later after editing when I’m calmer”. It’s not just out of being difficult, though; I’m a touch choleric to say the least. I don’t calm down when I’ve had time to absorb something. When I read something that bothers me enough to pass comment, I tend to channel all the bothered into dissecting something and responding to it in a fairly rational way (I think. I hope). If I go back later, I get worse. I go back and edit my post and add unconstructive elements. So in posting spontaneously, or writing and then scheduling the post to be published at a more social time of day, I may well come across pretty…well, angry…(I’d rather think of it as ‘passionate’) but I think it’d be really boring if I wrote about things in a style and form that calmly stated how things are tough and here are things from all the angles. And, frankly, it’d be disingenuous. And if I didn’t get mad I’d get sad, and a depressed Lauren is not a productive campaigny Lauren.

Maybe things will change as my situation changes, but I’ll certainly be very reluctant to be anything other than ‘myself’ online. I’m in a good position to do this though; my job is totally unrelated to the campaign work I do, I’m going back to uni to do a PhD soon (fingers crossed) and the point of being a campaigner is to be Angry As Hell at The Man and tell people about it. I hope I manage it ok. And I’m more than happy for people to tell me if they think I’m a dick. It doesn’t mean I’ll listen, but at least I’ll know. So do comment away!

* Someone recommended I shouldn’t put scripts/presentations for lectures and talks online because I could make money from them or use them again somewhere else). I can’t in good conscience do that because of the subject area, for a start.