Thing 3: Consider your personal brand

Well, Googling my name brought up some interesting results. The first result was a UK artist called Amy Croft, but a couple of results on the first page were me - my LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. The first Facebook link was me, but doesn't work as I recently changed the URL. Interestingly, my Google+ account didn't show up at all, and when I specifically searched for it I was the second result.

Thinking about photos as part of my personal brand, I am very sick of the work photo I used for my LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook accounts, which is now about 3 years old. So I'll change them to match my Google+ photo (which is the one on this blog).

Apart from that, every time I post something online, my professional life is never far from my mind. So even though my Facebook account is mostly for connecting with family, I'm aware that I'm 'friends' with my workplace and colleagues, so wouldn't say anything that would reflect badly on my organisation or myself professionally. I use Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ primarily for professional development, so I wouldn't post anything there that would be professionally embarrassing. I guess the word 'profersonal' is a good way of describing the way I mix the personal and professional in my online presence.

Thing 2: Investigate some other blogs

Having just spent a couple of hours checking out some of the blogs, I'm determined to spend more time and read them all!

But to start, the Delicious bookmarks were really helpful, with the country and sector tags. I checked some from Germany first, simply because I study German, and discovered a very interesting information literacy project in the UK, ANCIL.

I then looked at some Australian ones in my sector, Higher Education. And promptly discovered people I already know! It's a small world, so I probably should have expected it, but it was a really pleasant surprise.
I was also relieved to see that a couple of other people were on their second attempt at completing the 23 Things, so I don't feel quite so slack for not finishing before.

Thing 1: Blogs and blogging

In the interests of being green, I am recycling my old Forever Learning blog, and starting afresh with cpd23. I started it as part of a Learning 2.0 program which was also based on the original 23 Things at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. Although I didn't finish the program, I learnt a lot, and was wondering how it would be updated with so many new tools.

I put off starting this program because I was finishing the final subject of my Masters (Master of Information Studies at Charles Sturt University in Australia) by distance. Now that all the assessments are complete and I'm waiting for my results to come out, I'm ready to dive in. And try my best to catch up.

Since the very first post back in 2007, I have moved to the Sydney campus of the same university, CQUniversity, have returned to studying (and hopefully finished for now), and have started a volunteer position as an Event Coordinator for ALIA Sydney. This month's event is 'blog every day of June', or #blogjune, which has been a great opportunity to see what great ideas we have in the library world, and how blogging is the perfect way to share them.

As for the importance of blogging for professional development, I now see how it can help me reflect on my learning and development, as well as sharing it with others. I hope this will get me started.

Week 6: del.icio.us and Technorati

To be honest, before taking a proper look at del.icio.us for this week’s task, I had pretty much missed the point. I had heard that it was a way of bookmarking and tagging sites, but hadn’t really thought about how it could be used. Having taken the time to play with it a little, I can see it’s not just a clever way to collect bookmarks and access them from any computer, but also a great way of serendipitously finding related information. By following the breadcrumbs of tags or other people who are interested in the same area, it’s easy to stumble on sites you may not have otherwise found. I can also see that it would be useful for collaboration.

I think I'll need to come back to Technorati to get a proper handle on it. I can see how it's useful for finding popular blogs, or those on a particular topic, but I imagine you have to spend a bit more time exploring, or be a bit more blog-savvy for many of the features to be truly meaningful.

This week's tasks have taken about 2 hours.

Week 5: Instant Messaging and Skype

This week's activities included exploring instant messaging and Skype. Not something I can do on the PC at work, but I have used MSN Messenger in the past, and use Skype frequently at home-- especially for speaking with friends and family in Sydney.

The last activity for the week involves commenting on: Library 2.0 - it's many things to many people and this is what it means to me.

The readings were interesting, and I guess the main point of Library 2.0 for me is that it's all about the users. Whether it's O'Reilly's idea of "harnessing collective intelligence" including library users, not just us 'experts' written about by Chip Nilges, or Michael Stephens' point that Librarian 2.0 "bases all planning and proposals for services, materials and outreach on user needs and wants", the focus is on library users and how we can use all these nifty Web 2.0 technologies to make our libraries suit them.

I have to admit that, as someone who is very focussed on information literacy, Rick Anderson's warning about relying on user education gave me a jolt: "We need to focus our efforts not on teaching research skills but on eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need." But the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. Definitely something to keep in mind as we consider improvements to the catalogue, or the future of SearchSMART and the library website as a whole.

Going by how long it's been since my last post, this week's activities took me almost 6 months! But really, I'd say roughly 3 hours.

Week 4: Image generators and Rollyo

Easing very slowly back into the Learning 2.0 programme. I enjoyed exploring The Generator Blog and other links for ideas, and ended up stumbling on the Barcode Generator, which is what I used for the task (see above).

Rollyo is an interesting tool, and I can see its usefulness for libraries, especially for Reference Librarians to search their favourite sites, or to encourage the use of subject-specific 'trustworthy' sites amongst students. I'm going to be studying German this year, so I set up a Study German Search using some websites I've found useful in the past. I added the searchroll to this blog, and spent about 30 minutes fiddling with it as I couldn't get the Forever Learning 2.0 search to work. If anyone has more luck, let me know your secret!

All up, I'd say I spent 2 hours on this week's tasks.

Week 3: Flickr

GCIC Library
Originally uploaded by amycroft

Ok, I've learnt a bit about Flickr, and have uploaded a few photos. I enjoyed playing with some of the mashups, and I like the Librarian Trading Cards... still not ready to create my own, but it's on my 2008 to-do list. I have to find a photo of myself that I like, and think up something witty to say :)

I'd say I've spent about an hour and a half on this week's tasks. Plus another few minutes, as I have yet to post a comment to another participant's blog.

Week 2: netvibes and RSS

Well, I had fun with this week's activities, mostly playing around with netvibes. I've only just scratched the surface as far as modifying it to suit me, and will no doubt spend a lot more time playing with it in the future. There's a lot of information, but it's certainly less overwhelming than facebook!

I wasn't able to get onto Feedster, but Syndic8 and Technorati worked fine. I used them to find and add a few feeds about libraries and information literacy. I think serendipity is the best way to find blogs, as long as you remember to subscribe to the feed as soon as you stumble on it. Over the past few months I'd found a few interesting blogs and added them to Bloglines. The netvibes faqs were useful, with some easy-to-follow instructions for transferring my feeds over from Bloglines. I prefer the netvibes interface, so will be sticking with it.

At a guess, I'd say this week's activities took about an hour, not counting the time spent playing with netvibes.

Very first post

Finally starting to catch up with the Learning 2.0 programme!

Hoping to get to grips with some of the latest technologies. I especially like the idea of 'playing' to learn-- this programme gives me the excuse to do just that :)

The 3 tasks for Week 1 took me about an hour.