Reflecting and Networking, things 5 & 6

A catch-up post for Things 5 and 6.

Thing 5 - Reflective Practice

I am quite a reflective person, I do spend a lot of time thinking over the things I do, have done and may do in the future.  I may even be a little too introspective for my own good.  I’m always the first to start a post mortem of a party or occasion where I may have made a total arse of myself and spend the following week stressing about it and what I can do (or not do!) the next time to prevent such feelings of stupidity.

I think I really started to reflect on my professional practice when I was midway through my Traineeship.  I was unlucky at interview and was called in when the original candidate quit after a month in the job.  This auspicious start to the year (or, my career) made me really conscious of my own abilities and skills, and other people’s perceptions of my work.  It wasn’t until I found my feet at Corpus and started to explore what other people were doing that I started to assess my own professional progress, as it were.  I wanted to get more involved to make the most of my Trainee year so I made sure to take up people on offers of visits and training opportunities.  I took part in OxLib Teach Meet where I delivered my Trainee presentation a day early and to real live professional Librarians!  I asked a lot of questions.  I read a lot of blogs.  I was always up for more tasks and responsibilities.  I think my Trainee year provided a brilliant springboard for library school and the Oxford library network – indeed I am still now at Corpus and studying part-time at UWE.  I am still using things I’ve learned from being a Trainee, notably the training sessions themselves fed in to some bits of coursework and readings.  I use the fact that I was a Trainee to connect with other library people in Oxford as most are interested to hear how you got on and then offer their own pearls of wisdom.

I tried to write a reflective piece about my first year atlibrary school, but it is very descriptive instead.  Library school is allowing me to think about what I am learning and applying it to my work and vice versa too.

As far as reflecting on CPD 23 Things goes though - I am not doing so well.  I know I am too focussed on my own progress and should be reading more and commenting more on other blogs.  With that in mind, as soon as I hit 'publish' I'm off to comment as I've never commented before..

Thing 6 – Online Networks

Twitter

Over the last few months I’ve tried to make the most of being on Twitter, which I suppose is the main online network I follow.  I like finding out about key issues in the profession by reading the tweets that unite or divide.  It is also excellent for keeping on top of many jobs that are posted.  (I’m not seeking a new job, but it is useful to see how the job market is looking in my sector.)

Facebook

Strictly personal and becoming evermore the burden I can’t see myself ever opening this up for professional networking.  Facebook is like the how-is-it-not-finished-yet party you can’t leave for fear of missing something hilarious. Or gross.  Or grossly hilarious, that you know everyone will be talking about for months and months and just why would you want to exclude yourself from All The Fun anyway, yo?  However, I do use it to keep up with and share photos/links/articles with my nearest and dearest who are all flung to the four corners of the globe.  For this Facebook is pretty good as everything is in the same place and just everyone is on it.

LinkedIn

I don’t fully understand why I would need or want to join LinkedIn at the moment. It seems that a lot of what it offers can be found elsewhere.  I can’t face setting up a profile just for the sake of it as I know that I would forget to update it.  If anyone can tell me why I should definitely get on it, please comment below!  Are the groups worth it? Maybe I’ll change my mind and come to it when I am actively job hunting.  I take on board the point about Google searches which can’t be laughed off as it’s a given employers will be looking you up!

LISNPN/CILIP Communities

Now, these are two networks I should exploit more. I enjoy the guest blog posts for LISNPN and it does seem to be a very active network.  CILIP Communities is a tiny bit terrifying but I’m sure once I suck it up and start to explore I will make some great connections!  I don’t know if I am alone in finding the CILIP website quite hard to navigate and find things though? Don’t tell, like.

Thing 4: Current Awareness

I have enjoyed this Thing as we’ve all been able to take so much from each other, such is the egalitarian nature of Twitter.  By being on it and using it nearly every day I’ve got to learn loads.  Even by simply lurking I have picked up rules of etiquette, tips and brilliant advice. (Maybe lurking is bad etiquette?!)  For the most part though, I adopted the Learn By Doing approach and just got on with it.  You’ll see my nonsense on Twitter most days now and it helped when I got my Smart phone a few months ago too.  However, Thing 4 has really helped me think about how I should be using it “properly”.

Last week, I took a look at this excellent blog post by @medievaljenga.  It holds some solid tips and advice and further tools to use to make the most of Twitter.  Will definitely be checking out Pocket.  Snap Bird was also a revelation to me as well, thanks to @walkyouhome.

At first, like many others who have already written about this Thing, it all seemed overwhelming and I limited the number of people I followed.  However, the more I explored the more interesting and funny and informative people I found so I wanted to follow to see what they had to say.  I have spent today so far sorting out many of these in to lists as suggested by Jen in her aforementioned excellent blog post.  I have to say though that Tweet Deck has yet to reveal itself to me properly, as the app I am using. That is, I am not sure how to use it the most efficiently to help myself.  I’m still experimenting as I didn’t really have much trouble on my own timeline catching things I was interested in or wanted to contribute to.  I will persevere though, to use Twitter in such a way as to exploit its many benefits.  

(The next thing I must learn: how to “mute” certain things, for example I am not interested in every single conference that people are going to, and sometimes up to ten people are live-tweeting such events and it is too much!  Even though I don’t read anywhere near every tweet on my timeline, it would be good to have some control.)

I’m keen to stick it out with Twitter as the more I use it the more I get out of it.  There are some brilliant people out there.  Good enough to get their tweets embroidered on samplers? I expect so. Although, maybe iced on a cake might be more fitting for these LIS gurus.

RSS feeds - have been using Google Reader intermittently for a couple of years.  I usually forget all about it to be honest despite my life being basically run by Google these days.  Now though I’ve subscribed to some really great blogs and being involved in cpd 23 things is making me want to keep up so for this it’s been awesome.  I love the RSS feed for all participants in the programme, really useful!  I really enjoyed @girlinthe’s post about how it all comes together - an interesting peer in the back door.

Storify looks spiffy. I love how it looks and it has enhanced many a presentation or news article.  I haven’t played with it myself, although have made baby steps and set up an account. I’ll come back to it when I have an actual cause to use it.