Thing 4: Current awareness - Twitter, RSS and Pushnote

I already use Twitter for a mix of personal and professional activities but haven’t reflected yet on why I do so. I am somewhat lacking in tweets but use it instead to follow other people – a few librarians (one who sits on the desk behind me at work which says a lot about how open plan offices work), a few libraries, the local theatre, some cyclists on the Tour de France (don’t ask!) and several comedians.  I’m not entirely sure what I should tweet about and I suspect this will need to be considered in terms of my online brand but at the moment I’m happy to follow the others. Many of the people I follow use it for commercial purposes - plugs for their TV shows etc which is ok as I follow them because I like them and I will probably watch their shows anyway.  The Twitter accounts I like best for librarianship news are @Philbradley and @ijclark.

Google Reader is the most useful tool I’ve discovered this week. I’ve added all the librarianship blogs that I follow. I’m getting used to seeing everything in the one place although it does seem a bit cluttered.  I’ve decided to restrict it to librarian blogs only so that I can use it purely for current awareness.  My best blogs for current awareness are Phil Bradley’s weblog (to keep me up to date with the different products available), Sheila Webber’s Information Literacy Weblog (local to international news etc for info lit) and Dean Giustini’s The Search Principle Blog (I like his use of Slideshare and I’m looking forward to week 12: Presenting information which includes Slideshare).

After reading Helen’s 23 Things post I’ve started an iGoogle page. I’ve kept it quite simple and only added widgets/gadgets for Hotmail, GoogleReader, Twitter, calendar, YouTube, weather, To Do list, BBC news and just for fun some waddling penguins which frankly are the best thing on there at the moment. I kept this open on my work screen for the whole of yesterday and it’s quite nice to scan everything at once but will only be of use if I remember to log in each day (I fear I may have to write myself a note to remind me!).  I've put iGoogle on a trial but it looks promising.

iGoogle seems very similar to Netvibes which I have messed around with in the past. Yesterday I saw a great example of how to use Netvibes for current awareness from Emma Aldrich at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust Libraries  MTW NHS Trust Knowledge Services I’d like to do something like this for the students I support at the university but web 2.0 tools are looked at with some suspicion here. LibGuides and Wikidot look like other useful tools and maybe my workplace will explore these at some point.

Thing 3: Consider your personal brand

I don't know whether to breathe a sigh of relief or be slightly miffed. I tried Googling my name, trawled through the first 10 pages of results and found nothing! I'd like to point out that if you Google my name I'm not the author, the glamour model or the housing manager.  Still I carried on thinking I must be on the old interweb somewhere. I added in 'library' and lo and behold I found a couple of references to me.

On the first page of results I found a photo of me that I can't remember being taken nor did I give my permission for it to be put on the web with my full name! In terms of boosting my online presence, it's not my best side and I could do with a little airbrushing so I won't be getting snapped up for Paris Fashion Week. It's work-related but I think you should always ask permission if you put someone's photo up on the web. I would have said ok but not with my full name just my job title.

On the third page of results I found my work contact details. The fact that it only appeared on the third page doesn't say an awful lot for the web presence of my institution.

On the fifth page was my Twitter account. I've recently made my tweets public but think this will only last as long as cpd23 because I feel a little vulnerable. I keep my Facebook page locked down as much as possible as this is my personal not professional space - not that there's anything outrageous on it.

In terms of improving my brand I need to up my comments, tweets, blog posts etc to generate some more traffic. I'm hoping cpd23 will help with this.