CPD23 Things 5-7: reflecting, networking and professional organisations

I completed my chartership last year so became a dab hand at reflection.  However, as soon as I handed in my portfolio it seemed to fly out of the window.  It doesn't seem to come very naturally.  I'm pretty good at describing, but, in the words of the many school essays I had marked, I lack evaluation!  I really like the 1970 Borton model posted on the information for Thing 5 so my task now is to make sure I think 'So What?' and 'Now What?'.  Hopefully having a blog will help me to do this - I want to fill it with postings so I shall have to be reflective about something!

I like things simple.  Therefore I have a Facebook profile for my personal presence and a LinkedIn profile (thanks to CPD23) for my professional presence.  And I'm happy with that.  I may be tempted to join another network if it's for something specific, i.e. librarians or family historians, so I shall have a look at LISPN and CILIP Communities and see what I find!  I do however subscribe to some of JISC's mailing lists, for example LisLink and CoFHE.  These are a great way of networking with other librarians, getting help and sharing good practice.

I remember during my university course we had tutorial whereby CILIP came in to get us all to sign up there and then.  I can't remember if I did at the time or whether it was a little bit later but I have been a fully fledged CILIPer for a few years now.  What do I get out of it?  I find the training programme beneficial as not only a way of developing skills but a good networking tool.  Also, during my chartership year I attended most of the CoFHE LASEC meetings and got to meet other local College librarians.  I receive Update (although I do have to force myself to read through it) and have signed up to their blog and LISJOBNET alerts.  That's about it though.  I would be very interested to hear from anyone who finds other benefits from being a CILIP member.

CPD23 Thing 3: keeping me current once I'm out there!

I have just finished setting up my new profile on LinkedIn and it's got me thinking.  How many tools do we really need to advertise ourselves in and how many are duplicating the other?

Do people keep a mental list of all the things they're signed up to (e.g. LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, etc.) and make sure they tick off each one whenever personal information changes?  I am a bit of an organisation freak so I would ideally like one tool that I use to store and publicise all of my professional information.  Why do I need to spread myself across all these tools?

CPD23 Thing 3: getting me out there

I have searched for my name in Google and the top results include: a female voice-over artist; an actress; four LinkedIn profiles (none of which are me); a couple of Facebook profiles (one of which could be me) and; a Twitter account (which definitely isn't me).  Not very impressive.  However, if I did create a Twitter account, or a LinkedIn profile, how would I differentiate myself from the few that already exist in my name?

I then searched for my name and my place of work - a little more success here!  This time the first few entries do refer to me: the first is one of my postings in the LisLink mailing list archive; the others relate to CoFHE LASEC meetings I have attended.  If I searched for the name of my blog it turns up third in the list - I think I should be able to help bump this up by adding the name of my place of work to my blog.  To help develop my online professional presence I can investigate creating a LinkedIn profile.

One of the things you need to consider when developing your online brand is how other people are going to be searching for or finding you - remember to include keyword labels such as library, or your name or place of work to try and make sure you turn up in any search you feel you ought to.