Social Networking: Thing #12

Professional Social Networking 
An additional advantage is that when you do get engaged into a professional community and find yourself in the predicament of job seeking again your LinkedIn account or Twitter feed will have a professional networking appearance.

A disadvantage would to have too much personal information intermixed with your professional. Separate and treat personal and professional social networking differently.

Reflection
I haven’t added much to my already huge repertoire of networks, maybe taken away a few skills though.

I already had the accounts, but I am forced to realize I should use them more often. I attended most of the WebJunction/ALA LearnRT conference, watching the twitter feed, chat and program ppt’s. It is exhausting to keep up, but interesting. I can’t imagine enjoying it more by participating more in the dialog – because then I’ll lose focus on the presentation (which is ridiculously frustrating) just to be chatty and get my name out there. If I had a question – I was prepared!

I will continue to grow my usage of social networking. Maybe one day soon I will be outspoken and need to use my voice and I will already have the avenues set up and maintained to do so.

I think social networking works for some. 
Just like face to face networking work for some. 
Others watch from the side lines. 
And others don’t care how others are getting along. 

One way of networking or communicating won’t please everyone, all the time.

Social MEDIA is everywhere and those who want to connect have to join in or loose out on those opportunities. 

Thing #10 & Thing #11 (Education & Mentoring)

I have been a librarian for 16 1/2 months.

I became a librarian because that's what people were saying I should do. It took me 7 years to finish my undergrad because I didn't want to spend the money on an education that I didn't know if I'd be interested in. The "just cuz" you need to go to college and get a degree reason wasn't enough for me.

When I finally found sociology I was in love, transferred to a UC and finished up my degree. When I tried to find a job that I could use my new found degree with there were less than many and I didn't have any experience in the field of non-profits, research or fund-raising, etc., etc.

I found a great job to pay the bills with, but I wasn't satisfied. I kept thinking about how people always said that I should be a librarian. I'm not quite sure why, maybe because I spent so much time in college, learning a variety of things creating a breadth of knowledge that reminds them of a librarian. [But my knowledge is kinda like that statement about web - It's as wide as an ocean, but only an inch deep.] I finally took it seriously and checked out the available programs. Minus a few classes that go against my natural characteristics I was in love again.

My job search landed me as a solo librarian at a private college only an hour away from my previous location. I'm in my first position by moxie, apparently I added a little extra oomph to my initial interview [or so my boss will tell you]. Apparently when I found out how the college operated I was very full of ideas for improvements.

I think that there is too much variation in the library field in order to take the sufficient number of courses and be prepared for it all! I hope to learn all that I can while in this position. I also hope to add a degree soon to my accomplishments in a subject specialty masters in social psychology. I dream of working in a large research university as the Social Sciences librarian; helping faculty and students with research, building collections and giving back to the community. And I see myself as a community college librarian in my later years.

I currently am set up with a mentor through the state chapter of ALA. I speak with her almost every 2 weeks and we discuss my activities and I learn about her projects. I can't say that I'm overwhelmed with the opportunity to run to someone I know and ask questions/share. It has been nice to know that someone is there just in case I have that kind of situation. In reality I am in such a unique situation (mentor isn't in the same one) that only other small schools in my predicament can really weigh in on trouble shooting. I have a listserv for that.

Thing #8 and #9: Google Calendar and Evernote

Calendars are a pain. I have the worst memory among all my friends and older relatives combined! I need reminders, but who want's to spend the time setting them, let alone write in in one calendar and then have to copy it to another one. What forgetful person can manage all of that!?

I have and do not use Google Calendar (expect for this cpd workshop). I’m more of a written calendar (for memory) type of person. I have a hard copy calendar that I use for both work and personal (the color coded pens bit). I don’t want to put personal information on a second calendar (Google) and Outlook (work) will not sync up with Google Calendars to have them all in one place. AND Outlook certainly doesn't need or want to know my personal business.

So I'm in a bind and I continue to deal with a hard copy (both personal and work), a phone (on the go reminders) calendar items (run on Windows), and a workplace Outlook calendar. I manage but one calendar that would agree all together would be great – Maybe one day I’ll get it down!

As far as Evernote goes; I am already using Diigo which has similar features - friends, highlighting, note taking, tagging - but I’ll check it out...eventually :)

Week 5; Thing #6 and #7:

Social Networking

Currently on LinkedIn; I have not actively attempted to pursue a well developed page. I will continue to work on it. I also joined more professional groups J

I interpret LinkedIn as the “adult/professional” version of Facebook. I think that this site is quite strategic and helpful when you need to advertise yourself in job hunting circumstances. I made my account when I was with my last company and to use as a marketing tool for new employment.

Currently on Facebook; I have one account specifically for profession information/groups/etc. I like the informal and formal groups that use Facebook as a meeting place and event organizer. I find that more “share” links also contain LinkedIn as well as Facebook icon (which was dominate prior), limiting the gap on which site produces more professional networking.

Currently have LISNPN on a RSS feed on my iGoogle home page. I hope to continue to follow this group as they redefine librarianship for the future.

I joined a long time ago but haven’t really explored ALAConnect (similar to the UK’s CILIP), I will probably use it more at point of need, such as when I am able to attend a conference I can be on top of the chapters and roundtables events.

Professional Organizations and other networking

I have been a member of ALA and ACRL since my second year in my MLIS program (they really do have great rates for students!). I was able to attend a local ALA conference and experience those phenomenon’s first hand. I was also able to distinguish the divisions of as well as the overlap of librarianship in the content of the sessions.

At my current company I was encourage to join certain pertinent groups and found a local group that focused on my “new” interest in instruction. I do believe that because of my small involvement I would join other local groups and grow my network of fellow librarians.  

A local California chapter was soliciting mentees and mentors. I quickly signed up and received a mentor in March. She has been a wealth of information. I am a little too independent at times and we are currently out of touch although she is available I am not in meltdown mode just yet. Her insight has truly helped me, with new ideas or reconfirming some of my own thoughts in our field of instruction.

I love the story of my first networking experience in my new librarian position. Shortly after accepting my first position I went on a long awaited trip to Europe. I suppose due to the time of school release our fellow passengers were almost exclusively in the educational field. I soon became acquainted with a retired librarian. She worked at my neighborhood public library in her first years and her sister was coming up on retirement as a local public library director. Through her I was able to discuss academic librarianship with the currently director of local CSU. In the following months I was able to have a lunch date with her, her sister and an empty central library.

Since I am just a year and half into my first position in the field I am concentrating on learning the ropes one step at a time. I have not since contacted these lovely women since our first encounters. I would have no qualms about contacting them in the event I had a question on leadership or change of course in the field.

As you can see I am a little relaxed about channeling strong networks, however it is a fault I recognize and hope to correct in the future.

Reflective Practice in Seconds Flat

cdp #5:

Reflective practice is almost immediate for me. Whether I follow up for more than a minute…well, that tends to fluctuate. I like most of our students do not want to listen to something that I have no interest in at that moment. [Disclaimer: my interests are wildly varied on a given day.]

Therefore, if I listen to a webinar on a database – I’ll make an effort to learn the database or write up the notes for students or colleagues. If I learn about a social media app. I play with it and determine if it’s a tool for work, professional interests or personal. I suppose once I understand the gist of a tool or a database and see where it falls in world related to me and I file it appropriately I will forget about it. [Note: this can happen in span of 2 minutes or 2 days.] [Additional Disclaimer: in Management by Strength color is red.]

Hence reflective practice isn’t practical to me when I’ve already tagged or inserted or saved the information in an appropriate place I don’t dwell on it. When I have a problem that I need to solve I may open up the right file and find the information to get the problem straighten out.

Summer Procrastination - Late #4

Late Thing 4:

Been there – done that. I’m slightly overloaded with technology logins that I decided not to use Pushnote. I’m currently using Diigo for my tagging site which has a sticky note feature. No you don’t get to add friends and the like but I don’t worry about the social networking thing most of the time (See post cpd23: Week 2 for more explanation).

I’ve been on Twitter for several years. I post once every few months. I have recently used the twitter account mainly to check out the conference scene and hear about what I’ve missed at this year’s conferences (ACRL and ALA). I was happily surprised to find that I knew of several of the main speakers mentioned, or the main topics reviewed.

It seems if you stay on top of a few blogs (check), listservs (check) and read up on any concepts that you are unfamiliar with the conference scene is a little boring because you’ve already spend your time trying to keep up on the hubbub of librarianship. Now I’m sounding really condescending and pompous, but it’s probably true for 60% of the conferences (that relate to my field of academics).

In fact I’m attempting to put together a quick handout for educating the faculty and administrators at my college on Creative Commons licenses. Since we are a for-profit institution the best way to fly around copyright sure seems to have the “human readable” text right there in front of the user. My initial “ask around” to see who’s even heard of it was amazingly filled with negative responses, and few educated guesses.

cpd 23 - Week 2: Branding

Um....it's really not my forte to talk, give speeches, or even write well (hence the "um"). The idea of branding "my online presence" seems bizarre to me.

The college I currently work for is not willing to allow social networking by everyone that wants to start a Facebook page on their behalf. However, I can see myself as having a fierce online librarian presence, but just "me" - no. There are way too many brilliant librarian's out there with ridiculously interesting ideas to read and ponder - I feel like making a brand of "me" would just stuff the internet a little louder and take away from my reading time even more (you don't want to see my 'if I have time to read' physical pile, let alone online readers).

Good Luck out there to the beginning brilliant librarian's who want to have a voice and lend us new aspects of librarianship they are passionate about.

cpd 23 - Week 1

Why am I taking the cdp11 course?
I am a second year librarian in a private career college. I have the availability to work on personally selected projects. Therefore, I would like to see what else is out there so I can process these technical innovations into avenues to assist our students.
I'm not a blogger. I am a horrible at keeping a journal and I'm not one to spout out about things (more introvert and observer) - leaving me with little interest in writing and promoting myself. However, I constantly read blogs in the library world - so I am already good with Thing 2 this week :-)
A little history: This blog was originally created for the same reason (to be more tech savvy) in one of my MLIS courses. As you can see I didn't have much to say then, just enough to get credit for learning how to start a blog. I took the time to edit the design. I hope you like it.