Thing 5: reflective practice

I was first introduced to reflective practice during my graduate traineeship at Leeds Met three years ago (they’re recruiting for their next graduate trainee, if anyone’s interested, by the way!). There was a lot of emphasis placed on preparing us for life as a librarian and, as reflection is viewed as increasingly important in the LIS profession, they asked us to keep a reflective diary of our year, from which we could create a final reflective report at the end of the traineeship. Writing reflectively didn’t come naturally to me, but I persevered, and, whilst my earlier entries are fairly descriptive, by the end I was starting to get the hang of it. At that point I still wasn’t totally convinced of the value of reflective writing; it felt like something I had to do as part of my career. During my MA we had to keep an assessed reflective journal of our progress towards becoming an effective manager, as part of our year-long management module. I put this off for as long as possible because the whole management module scared me and I didn’t know where to start, but once I forced myself to get on with it, I began to see some value in reflective writing; with no prior experience or knowledge of management, it helped me to consolidate what we were learning in the module, to relate it to my past experience with my own managers and colleagues, and to consider how I might behave as a manager in the future. And again, I saw an improvement in my ability to reflect, as I wrote my journal entries; the final couple got really good marks and were genuinely reflective.

By the time I started my job, the ability to reflect was coming much more naturally, and I decided to set up a blog in which to reflect on my experiences. Now, I blog about everything I do; every event, conference or course that I attend, things that I do at work, such as teaching, as well as my thoughts on my past experiences i.e. library school and job-hunting. I think that I do it in a reflective way (examples here and here, if anyone feels like commenting!), and writing up my experiences allows me to make sense of it; to really consider the experience, pick out what I learnt, and work out where things went wrong. It’s easy to forget what you’ve done if you don’t record it, and it’s easy to forget the value (or non-value) of something if you only record it descriptively. Now that I am Chartering, reflection on everything I do that relates to my PPDP objectives is hugely important, and the decision to Charter was one of the main reasons that I started blogging about what I’ve been doing.

However, as explained in the CPD23 blog post for Thing 5, reflection isn’t just about getting your Chartership or other qualification; it’s about working out what you’ve learnt and where you go next in your work (and maybe even home?) life. Once I have finished my Chartership portfolio (if that ever happens!) I’ll continue to reflect, because I feel that it makes my work more effective. Checking that the staff whom I line-manage are reflecting on their work and personal development, and encouraging them to do so, is a standing item on the agenda for our monthly one-to-one updates. All in all, I am a big fan of reflection. However, when someone refers to it as “reflective practice”, I start to feel anxious, and panic that I’m not doing it correctly, that I’m not being reflective enough. I think that may be one reason why my Chartership has stalled; I look at the “Building your portfolio” book, or get an email from my mentor reminding me that I must write-up and reflect on what I’ve been doing for my portfolio as soon as possible, and I get really anxious, even though I know, or at least I’m pretty sure, that I am doing this. I think perhaps this might be more of a symptom of me feeling stuck and de-motivated with the whole Chartership process, though (that’s a whole other blog post!).

I think my CPD23 blog posts have been fairly reflective so far. I’m not sure about this one though!

Thing 4: Current awareness - Twitter, RSS and Pushnote

Current awareness is something on which I place a massive emphasis, and for which I always make time. It’s not just about being able to shine in job interviews  or meeting a Chartership criterion; it’s about knowing what is happening in libraries and in the wider HE sector, who’s doing what and what outside factors are having an impact, in order to bring that knowledge into my work (both my paid work and my voluntary roles), research and reflection. I use a few different methods to stay up to date, including Twitter and RSS. Pushnote, however, is not something with which I was familiar prior to CPD23.

Twitter

I love Twitter, and this is where loads of my current awareness comes from.  When you follow a lot of people in libraries, HE, technology etc., like I do, if anything important or ground-breaking occurs, you’ll see it in your Twitter feed.  I use Twitter to keep up to date in several ways:

1. Keeping up with LIS news. I’m subscribed to lots of Jiscmail lists, and I read publications like SCONUL Focus, but sometimes you have days when you’re just too busy at work to read your mailing list messages. During my lunchbreak, I can log onto Twitter, and if something interesting has popped up in the LIS world, someone will be tweeting about it, with links to the content and maybe even a blog post or two discussing it. Twitter helps to ensure that I don’t miss the important things.
2. Keeping up with general news. As above; Twitter reassures me that I won’t miss anything that I need to know about.
3. Finding blog posts to read. As I explain below, I follow blogs and use Google Reader. However, I find Twitter really useful for pointing me in the direction of good posts. I think that, again, it’s a case of being quick and easy; during my lunchbreak I might not want to spend ages looking through my Reader, but Twitter sends me straight to the most up-to-date and relevant blog content. Of course, this relies on me following a lot of LIS people who also blog and/or read and retweet blogs.
4. Asking questions. I head to Twitter for anything, from questions about what to do with our current journals display to requests for restaurant recommendations! Twitter contains such a mass of knowledge, and it is by far the fastest way of sourcing ideas. It also allows for discussion with others about an idea that someone has suggested, which mailing lists do not, unless the respondent has sent the reply to the list rather than direct to the asker.
5. Answering questions! I enjoy sharing my knowledge, experience and ideas with others, and looking at what others are asking also provides an insight into what the current trends and issues are.
6. Serendipity. Twitter allows you to find things that you weren’t specifically looking for; a link that someone posts, a discussion that two people who you follow are having, something that someone who you don’t follow has posted which has been retweeted by someone who you do follow. I can’t think of any other information source that allows for such serendipitous information discovery.

Twitter does, however, have its limitations. It’s very fast-paced, and it’s easy to miss something. When I was doing my MA, I would have it open in the background as I worked on my coursework or dissertation, and check it periodically. However, now that I work full time, I don’t have time to check Twitter at any time during the working day, other than lunchtime and coffee breaks, which means that I don’t get as much chance to see what’s happening, or to get involved in conversations, as I used to. In this respect, using an RSS feed is much more effective; things don’t disappear, or at least not as quickly! The other significant limitation of Twitter is the character limit of tweets; it becomes less quick and easy if you have a lot to say, as you have to send multiple tweets, or use a tweet-extension tool such as Twitlonger (which then hides much of what you’re saying from immediate view).

RSS

As I’ve said, I use Google Reader to keep track of blogs. However, often I will have come across the most recent posts on Twitter already. I find it most useful when I have been away from Twitter for a while I think. I have to admit that my knowledge and use of RSS feeds is very sparse outside of Google Reader. I just find Twitter much more efficient for keeping up!

Pushnote

I’m afraid I’m not convinced of the usefulness of Pushnote. I’m not entirely sure what it does that Twitter/blogs/Delicious/Google Plus/probably other established sites or tools don’t already do. Feel free to try to persuade me otherwise, but having signed up specifically for CPD23, I can’t see myself doing anything further with it, and will be sticking to Twitter I think.

Other tools – mailing lists and publications

As I said earlier, I also use some fairly traditional tools for current awareness, namely Jiscmail lists and publications such as SCONUL Focus. I don’t always have time to browse them in much detail, but do find them useful. Perhaps I should tweet more of what I discover there, for those who don’t look at them.
 

Thing 3: consider your personal brand

It’s taken me a while to get going on Thing 3. I have been putting it off because I know my personal brand is pretty much non-existent – scatty at best – and I know it’s something that should be on my growing to-do list. I always feel like I have something better to do though! I am not one of those people who spends ages on their blog theme; I chose the first pretty one I came across, and that’s enough for me. I don’t have the patience to make everything look nice and consistent; I just want to set things up and get going! At the same time, it’s only in recent months that I’ve really done anything that might make my name known to people who don’t know me personally, so constructing a personal brand hasn’t, until recently, been something that I’ve felt I needed to consider. I do realise that I should probably make more of an effort in this respect though, if I’m going to continue blogging, writing and speaking, so hopefully my reflections in this post will help me to identify steps to take.

I have a Twitter account which I use heavily, a main blog, this CPD23 blog, a LISNPN account, and a LinkedIn account (which I have only just set up). I also have a Facebook account but I don’t really include that in my online presence as I don’t really use it that much; I mainly just keep it there as a convenient way of contacting friends. I use my full name on my blogs, LISNPN and LinkedIn, and @rachel_s_b on Twitter. I really wish I could use my full name on Twitter but unfortunately someone else has it (and annoyingly, as always seems to be the case, they have tweeted a total of once – grr!). When I first started using Twitter a few years ago, I wanted to remain fairly anonymous – recognisable to people I knew in real life, but not discoverable by name – so I used a daft nickname. A few months into my MA, I decided I might want to use Twitter in a professional capacity, so I changed it to something which included my first name and other initials; I was still reluctant to have my full name on there. Like many people of my generation, I started using the internet as a young teenager, in the days of chat rooms and forums but long before Facebook, and the dangers of revealing anything online that could identify us in real life were drummed into us by our parents, teachers and the media. In more recent years, we have been warned to be careful about what we put online because it never really goes away, and is only a few clicks away from the eyes of a potential employer. All of this means that I have found it really difficult to break out of the mentality that I should remain anonymous for my own good, and to feel even vaguely OK about putting my full name to my public online profiles (and even now it freaks me out a bit when my blog stats show that someone searched for something like my name “and new professionals” or “dissertation” – that’s someone who knows who I am and is looking for something about me). I think the breakthrough came when I became a CILIP blogger; one of the criteria that you have to meet is to clearly identify who you are on your blog, so I added my surname to my first name on my blog homepage. From that point on I was never going to be difficult to find elsewhere – my Twitter feed appears on my blog homepage so that is easily discovered by someone reading it – so I decided to go ahead and add my full name to my Twitter profile. The whole point of LinkedIn is to market yourself and to make contacts, so it seemed pointless using anything except my full name. Nothing bad has (yet!) come of having my full name on my profiles, so now I am wishing that, in the interests of consistency and easy recognition, I could use my full name as my Twitter handle. However, as I said, I do have my full name in my profile information, and it’s not as if the two are vastly dissimilar, so I don’t think this will cause any problems in my personal brand. It is frustrating though!

When it comes to photographs, however, my efforts are poor! I have a major problem with photographs, in that I am extremely unphotogenic! Approximately 99% of the photos of me that exist make me cringe. I tend to deal with this by using a slightly pretentious one where I am looking away from the camera (as I do for my blog and LinkedIn), or by making use of my recent discovery that sunglasses can make my face vaguely photographable (see Twitter). I know that in the interests of recognition I should be using one in which I am looking straight at the camera, but honestly, I would just look awful – not an image I’d want to portray! I have tried to use face shots in my profiles in the past, but I hate them so much that eventually I crack and remove them. I have put a photo of myself into a blog-post in the past, to illustrate it, but I was OK with that because I knew the post would slip down the page eventually – it wasn’t like a profile picture that you see every time you log on! I have no idea what to do about this one. I suppose I could make some poor soul stand there for ages taking headshots of me until I find one that I can bear to make public! What do you think – do you think it’s a problem that you don’t see my face properly on Twitter or my blog or LinkedIn?

I definitely take the “profersonal” approach on Twitter, mixing library-related stuff with my love of Beyonce, cider, Lady Gaga, tattoos and volcanoes, among other things! I think I get the balance about right (although my followers may disagree!). I always like to see people tweet about their other thoughts, loves, activities and interests, as well as the professional stuff; we are all more than just librarians, after all! As I have said many times now, I am a firm believer that talking about hobbies, football, anything really, in order to make friends, is just a good a way of networking as making more formal professional contacts through discussing professional issues, and pretty much everyone who I follow seems able to do both very well. With my blog, however, I try not to let the non-library aspects of my life creep in; with the CILIP blogger badge, I feel very much that my blog should be for professional issues, thoughts and discussion only, as it goes through to the CILIP members blog landscape, on which, I presume, visitors will expect to find professional blogs. I am thinking of starting a non-library blog for other writing that I’d like to do (I am going on holiday alone for the first time next week and think that I may well come back with lots of tips for other solo holidaymakers, but I don’t think my current blog is the appropriate place for that), although then I worry about fragmenting my online identity, bringing a non-professional presence into the mix!

I really fall down on my visual brand. As I said earlier, I just don’t have the patience to make my blog or Twitter look nice! To be honest, I remain unconvinced that this aspect of my visual brand is important. I don’t really notice other peoples’ blog backgrounds (sorry!) – I am there to read and maybe comment, and that’s it. What I do think is important though is ensuring that you can be recognised, and that all aspects of your online presence can be easily found. I try to do this through linking everything; a link to my blog on Twitter, my Twitter feed featured on my blog, my Twitter name and blog URL in my LISNPN and LinkedIn profiles. However, I think I am going to investigate Flavors, or something similar, as a means of bringing as much as possible into one place, the URL for which I can then distribute. Now that I have started publishing, I also want to find a way of bringing a list of publications and conference papers into my online presence too. 

I Google myself fairly frequently, and have done for years. Until fairly recently, the results were dominated by a lady tattooist in Hollywood, California. Since I published an article and was selected as a New Professionals Conference speaker, I have started to creep further into the results. Now the majority of the results on the first couple of pages are me; various Tweets, my blog, my LinkedIn profile, LISNPN, Lanyrd, bits and bobs from various CDG newsletters (bet the tattooist is thrilled if she Googles her name these days!). My Twitter profile is the first result, which emphasises to me the importance of keeping it as something that I wouldn’t mind people in high places seeing. My blog doesn’t appear until the second page, but when it was new it didn’t appear until much further down, so maybe the more I blog the higher it’ll climb. I was pleased to see that the 5th result was my “speaker profile” on the CDG for the New Professionals Conference, as that tells people a lot of what they should know about me, as well as including my email address for easy contact. There’s nothing that appears in the first 10 pages of results which I wouldn’t want people to see, so I’m comfortable with what appears when someone Googles me. Googling my name plus “librarian” brings my blog up to the first page of results, my dissertation up to the third, and, excitingly, a blog post praising my New Professionals Conference paper appears at the top of the fourth page! I could spend hours trawling through Google to see what else is there now!

Writing this post has actually helped me realise that my personal brand is perhaps not in as poor a state as I thought. I definitely think I need to work on consistency and recognition, however, and, as I said, I’m going to look into tools to help me do this. Is there anything you’d like to say about my personal brand? Does it matter that you can’t see my face properly in my profile photos? Do my non-professional Tweets irritate you? All comments and criticism welcomed!

Thing 2

I fear I am falling a little behind! I’ve been feeling a bit gloomy and directionless over the past few days and have needed some time away from all things LIS to get my thoughts together and work out what I’m doing. I am feeling much more my usual self now though, so here I am!

Thing 2 was to read and comment on some other blogs. I’ve been doing this by looking at those posted by people I follow on Twitter, searching for them under the #cpd23 hashtag, and looking through the Delicious bookmarks set up by the CPD23 organisers. I can’t get over how many participants there are – so many blogs!

I’m no stranger to blogging so reading and commenting wasn’t a new experience for me. What I have really enjoyed about looking up other CPD23 blogs, though, is seeing how many people have started a blog for this project; people who were unsure about blogging, didn’t know where to start or didn’t think they had anything worth saying have been encouraged to take that first step of creating their blog and announcing themselves to the LIS world. Some of these new bloggers were already involved in the online LIS community through Twitter, others don’t (yet!) use Twitter and are entirely new to the community. Over the past week I have spoken a lot about my worries that there are barriers created by perceptions which prevent people from feeling able to join in online, and that they are thus missing out on the opportunities for engagement, learning and inspiration that can be found there. CPD23 is already acting as a successful means of bringing people into the community that so many of us value, and I am pleased to see this happening. I look forward to reading all of the blogs that I can throughout CPD23, but perhaps especially those of the new bloggers.

Hello!

Hi all, and welcome to my CPD23 blog. I'm doing CPD23 because, well, I love CPD, and I take every opportunity that comes my way, particularly when it's free and can be done from the (relative) comfort of my (Ikea) sofa. There are some excellent people involved in this who are going to be offering advice and direction in the weeks to come, so I think it's a great opportunity to learn from the experts. I also hope to get to know some new people too.

I'm an academic librarian and am heavily involved in supporting LIS new professionals. I'm still buzzing from yesterday's New Professionals Conference, at which I was a speaker. I usually blog at Rachel's Big Adventure but have decided to set up a separate blog for CPD23, to keep things more organised.

Now I'm off to read some of the other participants' blogs. Looking forward to the rest of the programme!