Thing 3 - my own personal brand

The cpd Thing for this week is to consider our personal brands with an activity to search for ourselves online.

My personal brand
I began by reading the article by Mary Kelly (the Practical Librarian) and following a couple of things on there when I became aware that I had inadvertantly been creating my own brand at work for some time now. Most people at work know that I'm interested in becoming a subject specialist and that I am interested in the library user as a learner, mainly because these are the things I tend to talk about the most and the jobs that I apply for, while I don't see anything wrong with this, in fact I think that having a known interest in a team would be helpful and has been helpful to me.

Activity
I Googled myself, something I often do out of curiosity (vanity?), and discovered that I have created 2 brands for myself and realised that depending on how well the person Googling me knew me would depend on which brand they get. A prospective employer would search for Rebecca and find a 192 listing and a report which I wrote as part of the Junior Research Associate Scheme on sustainable waste management, hardly something which screams 'librarian' and thought this may deter them, or perhaps the lack of information on Rebecca would concern them.

To anyone who knows me I am Becky, here is where my librarian self comes out. The top results were my LIS NPN account and things which I had liked on Facebook, as these were Newcastle Libraries and CDG Northeastern and thus related to my career I'm happy that these things came up. However, these things are essentially hidden from people who don't know me.

I have to be honest and say that I haven't found the courage to show this blog to any of my colleagues to get their feedback on it so any comments from people reading this are most welcome.

Along the lines of personal branding

Thinking about Thing 3 and my own personal brand reminded me of good old Eugene (see video below). I recently attended the Librarians as Teachers event where this video was shown. Once upon a time Eugene would have been most peoples idea of a librarian. However, the role of the librarian is changing but are peoples ideas? The main theme of the day was the changing role of librarians and how teaching is now an increasing part of many librarians jobs, I can't help but think that Eugene should have included a blackboard and a teaching cap in his act.

Thing 2

Having looked around at various posts from various people I have been amazed at just how small the world can seem, I have already found a number of people who, like me, have done or are doing the Information and Library Management Masters at Northumbria University. As I mentioned in my earlier post blogging is new to me and so far I have found it interesting to read other posts and even comment on them, something I had never done before even though I have read several blogs on and off. Reading about the experiences of people in different sectors than me (I'm academic) has been an experience in itself and hopefully as time allows I will have time to read the blogs of the ever growing number of participants.

23 Things for CPD - Thing 1

Hi everyone,
Well, I've started, I have managed to create my first ever blog!! Having been a 'lurker' for quite some time, often reading but never commenting, I am very pleased to have taken that first step :)

A little bit about me - I have worked in Northumbria University library for 5 years now in Customer Support (Circulation), I have recently completed my MSc in Information and Library Management at Northumbria by distance learning and I will be submitting my Chartership application by the end of this year.

What I'm hoping to get out of this is more experience with using online tools (experience of creating a blog achieved) apart from using Facebook I don't have a great deal of experience with all the wonders of Web 2.0. I have dabbled here and there but never really attempted to become familiar with all the different tools.

Happy blogging,
Becky