Thing 7 - at last! Face-to-face networks and professional organisations

With Xmas, New Year, and a button-eating cat, I've gotten quite behind in my 23things! 
With some reference to the Thing 6, I've become a member of CILIP now, and I'm just waiting for my details to arrive so I can have a look at the members-only area of the CILIP website. 
While I haven't been working my way through 23things, I have been keeping an eye on Twitter, although I don't really post that much.  I usually only have time to glance at it, and I don't want to just retweet, or post without thinking, and I don't have that much time to ponder over what to tweet!  I suppose it's just a habit I still need to get into, to consider what I could tweet earlier in the day, what may be of use or of interest.  For quick, bite-sized news though, Twitter has no equal!

Thing 7 - Face-to-face networks and professional organisations
Well, I haven't cheated and read all the things in advance (I may have skimmed over them..), so this is perfectly timed!  I am on the LIS-Wales webmail list, from which I get items of interest in the library professional area, such as important press releases and training courses, helping to keep me informed.
As I mentioned above, I joined CILIP, as I've been meaning to do, but the offer of £25 of gift vouchers to the member who sponsored me (to be spent on library books, of course!) gave me the impetus to fill in the form and get it sent off. Although I already kept an eye on the CILIP website, I will now have access to some member-only areas, which will hopefully be of use.  I am already a member of the CILIP Linked-In group, as it's got open membership, and have followed some discussions on various areas of interest. 
I have noticed various training and networking opportunities, and was able to take part in a local tour of the Atrium library not far from where I work, and have a little chat to some fellow librarians the day before the general Save Our Libraries Day on 5th February.  There was mainly discussion about the various cutbacks, and how people are doing their best with ever-more limited funds. 
There are definitely plenty of training and networking opportunities available.  A fellow student posted on a facebook group, as well as LinkedIn about a library unConferenence in Leeds, which sounds good, but is a bit far, and the tickets sold out very fast too!  This Library Camp idea sounds like fun, and I do intend to try and get to one eventually.

Thing 6 (Part 2)

Moving onto the rest of Thing 6 this week, although as a quick aside, Karen Blakeman's latest newsletter (here is her blog: http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/) mentioned www.paper.li, which is a brilliantly simple way to read your twitter account!  Trawling through twitter can be a bit of a chore, and this turns it into a newspaper that's a much easier read on your screen. I could see it being used to present news and commentary in areas of interest to a wider audience.  I'm still investigating it, but you can rename it suitably, and add Editor's comments, publishing weekly, daily, or twice daily.
Back to the Thing!
LISNPN  - This is short for the LIS New Professionals Network - so ideal for me.  One of the first things that you see on the homepage are the forums - and the most important thing about forums is that they are active!  These are - not horrendously so, which is just as well, but it is obviously used by a number of people.  I've had a quick look at the download section, which has how-to guides, a couple of  which look excellent. Definitely one to keep on my "to be checked regularly list"!

Librarians as Teachers network - This isn't really of use to me at the moment, but I should be providing training in the future, and I will come back to it then, as I have no experience of this! Although started for people doing teaching courses, it's aimed at anyone with an interest in the area, and really that will probably be anyone looked to advance their professional development.

CILIP communities - I'm not a member of CILIP, although the library does have membership.  I will probably join next year, as I can definitely see the benefits.  There are a lot of CILIP-related posts, and a lot of different groups that you can join which look to be of interest.  There don't seem to be that many comments or replies, but those there are do look useful.

Thing 6 - Online networks (Part 1) LinkedIn and Facebook

LinkedIn - I actually set up a LinkedIn account a month or so ago, as a fellow Aberystwyth student sent me an invite. I haven't 100% completed the set-up yet, as I've been exploring it, and waiting until I got to this Thing to go into more detail.  LinkedIn is actually quite forward in making suggestions on how you can improve your profile, but I still haven't found a photo that I like - I'll have a look on my computer at home, and see if I can find one.  The only other thing to do, really is add more contacts!  I sent a few requests, and got one answer back already, so hopefully this will improve!

Facebook - I do have a facebook profile, but that's really for family and friends, so I don't want to get it mixed up with work.  I don't use it that much, but it's still handy for keeping in touch with certain people I don't see very often.  I could see setting up a facebook page more if you're a public-facing company, but I'm not sure how much use it would be for this library.

I've spent long enough in LinkedIn tonight, so I'll get onto to the rest of this Thing in my next blog post!

Thing 5 - Reflective Practice

I have been enjoying looking at these Things - some new, some not, whilst getting frustrated by the limitations of work tech.  Unfortunately it can be painfully slow, which can make a quick 5 minute task last 20 minutes!  I have been fitting my CPD 23 Things into a couple of hours on Monday nights, and have just about successfully managed this. 
Things 1 and 2 - Blogging: I'm still not a huge personal fan of this, although I enjoy reading other blogs.  There is a lot of useful information out there, and I'm trying to learn how to actively filter it so I don't get swamped!
Thing 3 - Considering my personal brand.  This is still ongoing, but at least there aren't any nasty things about me out there.  My twitter name is perhaps a little odd, SiobhanWGLib, but not too bad. 
Thing 4 - RSS feeds, Twitter, Pushnote.  This one has taken me the longest to do, although so far it's the most useful.  I'm still getting the hang of RSS feeds, even though I signed up to Google Reader, as when I select, sometimes it adds it to my browser, and I'm not sure why!  It's really important if you want to follow a number of blogs and webpages though, to prevent information overload. 
I was already on Twitter, and I created a work account, which is very useful, as I am following a number of librarian twitters which post recent news and blogs that I may have missed. 
I am unable to download Pushnote at work, but a colleague (Stephen Gregory!) has advised me that he doesn't think it's that worthwhile.  I will leave that one unless I hear better opinions about it.

Thing 4 again!

I have finally sorted out how to add Twitter to my blog - it was very simple (once I worked out what it was) - the original template didn't allow the design to be changed, and as soon as I did, it all updated very nicely!  A bit odd that the default isn't fully functional, but it's finally sorted.

So now I can move on to RSS feeds.  I decided to use Google reader, as this was most convenient.  I am really impressed - it is hard to keep track of different webpages, checking for updates, and so on, and I can see this will be of great use.  It would be nice if it could be ordered into different subjects, but it's still a good idea. 

As for Pushnote, I can't download that at work, so I'll have to leave it, perhaps, to try at home. I do use Stumbleupon at home, and it sounds similar.

CLIC Social Media Conference

I attended the CLIC Social Media Conference last Wednesday, which was ideal as many CPD23 Things were discussed, as well as one person actually giving a talk on CPD23 Things.  It was nice to meet other librarians, who were all either using social media, or trying to learn about it.
I heard about Twapperkeeper, which allows the archiving of hashtagged tweets from Twitter.  This doesn't sound that useful, until you realise how popular tweeting is getting at conferences - there were loads of tweets flying around actually during talks, which explained the constant buzz of mobile phones.  I did tweet a couple of comments myself, and they are good as aide-memoires, when looking back, although they may be a little distracting during the talk itself if you're not that good at multi-tasking.
I decided to use Twapperkeeper, and found that someone else had already set up an archive, but unfortunately it only dates from about 4pm on the date of the conference, which is a little unfortunate as I know there were loads of tweets before then!  I can still use Twitter's search for this though, as it's less than a week old.
I've just checked and I'm sure there were more tweets on the day, but perhaps they hadn't hashtagged them? In any case, it was a good conference, and I did make a few notes on the programme!
The first couple of talks were overviews by Mandy Powell and Emma Harrison on how they use Social Media in their lives, and how useful it is to them.  I found it really interesting that something that looks really complicated can be quite easy, such as Emma linking her Twitter account to her LinkedIn account.  Mind you, I've yet to work out how to add it to blogger, but I'm sure I'll sort something out!  Once it's done, it then automatically updates, making you look terribly efficient.
Emma noted that the twitter accounts of all the Uni of Glamorgan librarians are named after their position, so it can be passed on to the next person to get the post.  They also had beautiful professional black and white photos done for their avatars.  For now, I'm sticking with my cat!
The remaining talks were shorter, but we still managed to over-run by half an hour, and it didn't drag at all!  I could certainly see how an organisation can make good use of Twitter in particular (can you see a pattern?  Everyone loved Twitter!), but it's necessary to keep it focussed so it remains useful and relevant.  There was some mention of Facebook, but many people prefer to keep this personal.  Organisations can set up pages, but these are probably better for general announcements.
LinkedIn is a good way to make connections, although there wasn't too much discussion of it.  I'm still setting mine up!
There was a short demo of the CU Virtual Librarian Service, which looks amazing, even though it doesn't really apply to my own position.
There was a little time left at the end to have a quick tour of Trevithick library, which is very compact, yet somehow spacious.  It's very modern and up-to-date, and was renovated with the help of sponsoring companies, who have placed tasteful ads around the library.  They really just look like art posters, with the name of the company noticeable, but not distracting.
All told, a very well-attended, professionally useful and genuinely interesting conference!

CPD23 The continuing saga!

I have noticed that Stephen Gregory has added his twitter feed to his blog, and I'm trying to work out how to do it myself, but no luck yet!  I also explored Twapperkeeper, mentioned at last week's CLIC Social Media Conference, and can see how useful it is, although it depends on people tweeting what's actually happening at the time.  I did a little of this, but it's a bit difficult, and requires multi-tasking to pay attention to the talk and use your smartphone to twitter a short description, comment or question.