A sense of community

So this weeks Thing is about social media, one of the good developemnts of Web 2.0?

I personally think that social media is a mixed blessing. The advantages are obvious and well discussed, for example: communication, online communities, usability, speed, access and so on, plus being online can take away some of the pressure of a face-to-face meeting as no one can see you blushing. However, there are numerous disadvantages.

Disadvantages of social media
The main disadvantage is that it is so time consuming, I now have too many social media accounts and get email updates from several of them which simply clutter my hotmail which leads to more time filtering out the potentially useful or interesting ones and following them up. But, whenever I contemplate deleting one or more I am then faced with the dilemma of which one? I need Facebook to keep in touch with my friends. I need Twitter to keep up with my professional people I'm following. I need Librarians as Teachers Network as I want to be a librarian. I need LIS NPN to keep up with new professionals to see what we're all going through in the quest to reach our dream jobs. I need LinkedIn since it's supposed to be a top place that employers look when checking out your professionality and rates high in Google search results. How do I cut these down? How do I overcome the fear of missing something if I leave a network?

I am also concerned about the relaiblility/accuracy of the information available. Anyone can set up a blog or make a post on one of these sites and there is no noted professional who checks this. This is a problem inherent on the internet, where is the peer review? A lot of information is presented as fact rather than the opinion that it is. Academic publishers have items peer reviewed so you can assume that a book or article has been reviewed by someone in a position to point out any errors or points of contention, not that this means the content is 100% accurate but there is a level of competence assumed of the authors.

Another irritating disadvantage is the crap that I am faced with on Twitter, everytime I log in I am faced with someone who feels the need to tweet about where they are, what they're eating, what they're watching, when they're off to bed and so on. Why anyone thinks their life is so interesting as to tweet every single last detail is beyond me, I feel like shouting at them to shut up, do something interesting then tweet about that! My main complaint about Twitter is that I may be following someone who genuinely tweets about things which I find interesting but then feel the need to tweet some random stuff.

Ok so rant over. I'm hopeful that when the semantic web is in full flow that better searching/filtering will mean that I won't have to waste so much time filtering through unwanted information, then all will be well.

Contact?
CPD23 has enabled me to make contact with existing contacts in different ways, for example, I now follow several people who I  know professionally on Twitter. I haven't yet made new contactsand am finidng that quite difficult. I am spending a lot of time trying out these social media and trying to find posts which I find interesting that I don't feel that I have time to foster new contacts, I hope this will change and believe it should in time and with some more effort on my part. This is definately something I need to work on.

Use of social media for career development
I had dabbled previously, I set up my LIS NPN account last year them promptly forgot about it as nothing much seemed to be happening. I had joined LAT after attending a Librarians as Teachers event organised by CDG and UCR. I have a love/hate relationship with Twitter, i'm not sure that i'll ever really like it or use it consistantly. The only social media which I have made a notable effort with is Facebook, I have joined several relevant groups and often look at their pages.

Is there really an online community?
I think that for professionals who are interested then there is an online community, but for the rest of us it's kind of hard to break into. I'm not an expert yet, I  know I will be one day because I'm working hard towards it. I feel quite intimidated by these highly knowledgable people who are posting and so far am working towards the courage to actually join in an online discussion. It's kind of good for lurkers like me who can dip in and out and pick bits up where I can but I need to work harder to get to the stage where I can truly benefit from social media.

The Social Network(s)

So far i'm not doing too bad, I use 3 of the networks mentioned: Facebook, LinkedIn and LISNPN. Of these the only one I put any real effort into is Facebook.

Facebook
This is where I keep in touch with my friends so I have become a fan of the various professional pages on there as a way of keeping up to date the lazy way. I say lazy because I am on Facebook every day keeping up with my friends so when pages that I am a fan of updates their status I get it in my news feed, it is mixed in with my friends' updates but still I see it earlier than I would on anything else.

LinkedIn
I have just joined this today and so far do not see what all the fuss is about, I admit this is a little premature and I am hoping that with effort I may see some benefits, so here's hoping...

LISNPN
This is one which I see the most potential in, I find it easy to use, it has useful information on the site and I like the use of the forum. I joined this about a year ago and did nothing with it, purely because I'd forgotten about it until I saw it mentioned for 23 Things, now I have rectified that and will make more time for this particular network.

Mini reflection
Looking back at my attitude towards Twitter I can honestly say that the more i'm using it the more i'm liking it, I don't think it will ever be as useful for me as Facebook but I am trying with it. The best part about Facebook is that it is profersonal, I get the professional and the personal aspects of my life in one place.

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.