Thing 4 Current Awareness

I was really tempted to put in a picture of currants for this one, but have held back! For Thing 4, I was surprised to be asked to investigate a site/tool I'd never even heard of: Pushnote.

Pushnote
After having a read some other posts by 23Things participants (e.g. Girl in the Moon), I've decided not to try.  It might seem a bit lazy but the chances of me wanting to use it after I've the programme is over are small so I'm going to concentrate on other things.  I already use Delicious to tag sites and I find that quite helpful for keeping track of sites for my own use.  I'm not really bothered about sharing sites with other people.  If there's something that's struck me enough that I want to share it, normally it's something that I think will be of interest to a particular person and so I'll email it to them. It's always a nice excuse to get in touch with someone and show you're thinking of them.  As you can guess from that last comment, I mainly send links to friends and family!

Flickr: Tracy Holland

Twitter
Last year in the Oxford 23 Things we looked at Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  I signed up for Twitter to try it out but concluded it was for 'old people' who could afford internet enabled phones.  Since then I've realised I'm getting old because quite a few of my friends Tweet.  Unfortunately, I'm still a pay-as-you-go gal so my attempts at Twitter use are sporadic.  When I was doing the taught part of my library course and working two days a week I would check Twitter in the mornings before going to class and on my studying at home days but now I'm back working 4 or 5 days a week I've not been bothering. Same conclusion as last year (backed up by Laura's experience).

RSS feeds
Now I like these.  I use Google Reader to track my favourite blogs and find it really clear and easy to use.  If I didn't use it, I'd probably not bother to check each blog so it's a boon. Spotty dog! (Thanks to my friend from Dingwall for teaching me that phrase)  I've signed up for the cpd23things participant feed so I'm looking forward to using that to widen the pool of participants posts that I read for the next Things.

Not Very Current Awareness
Writing this post, I've realised that I don't really use these tools for very up-to-the-minute info.  Perhaps this is something that I can reflect on for Thing 5 - how can I efficiently and effectively improve my current awareness?

Personal Branding - ouch! Things 2 and 3

Pic from peoplequiz.com

Oh dearie me! After all my good intentions I've fallen woefully behind. I'm might take a bit of a short cut and start rolling multiple things into a single blog post.

Helpfully, by doing Thing 2 - looking at other people's blogs and leaving posts, I was also finding out about Thing 3 - personal branding.  It was interesting to see the different approaches that people take and their opinions on their own brands.  Two lovely people left me comments below and I had a wee nosey at their profiles and a few others.  I used the Delicious page of cpd23things participants to browse by category.  It was comforting to read that lots of other people preferred to be lurkers than authors.

Personal branding sounds painful.  It seems that this branding malarky is rather time consuming, but I can see that when you put the effort in it can be very effective.  There are some people's blogs/online presences that I particularly like e.g. Joeyanne Libraryanne (her 23things blog is separate).

My own branding's not particularly strong.  I've jazzed up this blog to make it look a bit more modern and added a picture that matches the one on my twitter and linked in accounts.  If I search for my name on Google I don't really appear unless you add 'SSL' or library or Oxford, instead you get some wifey off the Brady Bunch (see picture).  But on the upside, if you do find me, there's nothing up there that I wouldn't want people to see.

Alicessl is probably not the wisest name choice.  I adopted it when I was working as a trainee at the Social Science Library. Conveniently, I'm working there again now so it still fits.  Perhaps I shall have to pretend it's an abbreviation for something else e.g. supersleuth librarian or I could use it to tailor my career path and try to become a Social Sciences subject consultant!  On the other hand, one of my fellow librarians in training goes by the moniker of Theatregrad and I think it works well because it share a memorable fact about her.

As I look at other people's blog for the subsequent 'Things', I'll be particularly aware of their branding. Hopefully it will give me some inspiration!

23 more things

Well, it's been a while! I'm reviving my blog to do the 23 Things for Professional Development. I created it last year for Oxford University Library Service's 23 Things programme.  It looks like the things we covered last year will be relevant to the 23 new things in this new CPD version, so I thought it might be handy to continue it rather than start a new one.

I'm really looking forward to the 23 things and learning about how web2.0 can be applied to cpd and hearing about other people's experiences with it.