Thing 1 Blogs, gadgets and widgets

I have spent some time investigating what I can do with my blog and have started to link in other online elements such as my Twitter feed, and 2 of my scoop it subjects using widgets and gadgets. I also used the NetworkedBlogs Facebook app to link to my blog so that it publishes my blog posts automatically onto my Facebook stream. I’m sure my family and friends would be thrilled to see my posts (hmm!).

On a practical level I have also used the NetworkedBlogs app to link our Health Library blog to our Health Library Facebook page. This saves us a bit of time keeping our online streams in line. I have also added the library twitter feed, an RSS feed of health news and a youtube video bar of our etutorial demos. We already have a link to our Facebook page. This is giving us an opportunity to reflect our different online activities together.

I hadn't really done very much work on the Health Library blog as it has been going for quite a while and was initially set up by someone else.However I'm starting to feel very experimental.

Thing 4 Current awareness - Twitter, RSS and Storify

Thing 4 looked at current awareness and Twitter, RSS feeds and Storify.

Twitter

I have been on twitter for a few months now. I help to manage the Health Library account @ceclibrary as well as my own account @libcheryl. Both these accounts are focused on our user groups. The health library account promotes services and resources available at the Health Library. I use my account for current awareness and resource promotion. I follow a number of healthcare-related tweeters as well as librarianship-related ones and a few local (Stoke on Trent and North Staffordshire) resources. I tend to retweet mostly. I must admit that I don’t make sufficient use of hash tags to identify my tweets. Though I have recently started to pick up on following particular tags, for example #mlib and #lilac12 which followed conferences. I use Hootsuite to manage my twitter account.

I don’t think that we have really had the breakthrough to connect to our user groups yet. Though I am picking up… well, I’ll say an eclectic group of followers.

RSS Feeds

I have used RSS feeds for quite a long time now. I currently use Google Reader to keep track of feeds that I sign up to, previously I used Bloglines. At the moment the most active ones that I keep up-to-date with are health-related ones or (lo) technical ones. I think many of the library-type bloggers that I signed up with originally have moved on – I need to review which library blogs I follow.

I have found that RSS feeds are invaluable for making resources visible to users, even though our user groups don’t seem to have embraced their use. We can put feeds into web pages, blogs, emails and reuse the content – a mashup? - etc. using netvibes, yahoo pipes and feedburner; as well as provide email update services. (see SATH libraries wiki for information about how to do this).

For example our Health Library latest news blog is embedded in our home page; I have used RSS feeds with Netvibes to create a current awareness service; then used yahoo pipes and feedburner to re-use our netvibes feeds to create news animator widgets which I put on our subject pages.

Storify

I have not come across Storify before. It seems to rely only on social media sources such as twitter. I must say I wasn’t impressed with the presentation and it didn’t really appeal to me.

Scoop it

I love Scoop it! I really like this as you can have any type of internet resource, as well as add your own text. I think it looks pretty good too as items are presented in a magazine type format. You can also follow other people’s topics and make/receive suggestions.

I am already signed up to this. I have 3 topics:

• Healthcare Researchers and Social Media
• International Nursing Day
• My CPD 23 Things (just started)

I was so thrilled when people started following my topics (ok only 4 but still).

I also follow….

• Information Literacy – Education
• Social media and networks in medical education
• Social media, learning and (medical) education
• Technology enhanced learning
• Elearning and health

I have linked my scoop it account to my twitter account so that items are re-tweeted.

Paper.li

I hadn’t come across this before and this seems to look even more like a newspaper / magazine. It seems that you set up searches to populate the paper rather than individually select your own content – how useful this is would seem to depend on whether you are collecting the information for yourself or presenting it to someone else.

Current Awareness

I use a whole range of resources and tools to help me to keep up-to-date both in my own profession of librarianship as well as in the subject areas of my users. In addition to these mentioned above I also follow a number of Jisc mail groups and am signed-up to a number of email bulletins. The tools I use depend on function required, availability, ease of use and how attractive they are to re-purpose to use with library users.

Thing 3 Consider your personal brand

... or oi gov, it wasn't me!

Thing 3 looked at personal branding and provided a number of resources to investigate. 

As suggested I carried out a search for my name on a search engine (bing)– 10,700 results. The first was for facebook (not me) , a couple of linkedins (none me), Cheryl kent the photographer (not me) and Cheryl kent the author (not me), then a whole series of obituaries (well, you know). I didn’t make an appearance until the end of page 3 where my Scoop it subject came up and a photo of mine from the floods in Doncaster. Limiting to UK only pushed my hits up the listing and included my contact info on Hslid and Keele university. Also tried a search including library and librarian and got similar results. You also seem to get lots of hits from the Daily Mail - Cheryl who comments on stories (not me) and hits about Cheryl Cole (so not me).

Thinking about what I do online made me realise that I must have quite a fractured profile (brand?). Because so many things are “shareable” you end up creating an online profile without realising it.

What is my goal? Well, it depends on what product I’m using and what I’m using it for. I tend to focus on what is achievable with the immediate product rather than whether I have an overall online goal. I’m experimenting with this blog as part of the cpd23 course. I’m not sure that I would continue using it past that. My use of some other tools will be different whether for professional reasons linked to my current job (eg twitter), or whether with a longer term professional outlook (eg linked in) or whether from a personal perspective (facebook). Of course these inter-link in many ways. Over time I’ve used products and dropped them as I’ve moved on, so no doubt there is quite a breadcrumb trail.

My online presence is a bit all over the place - not sure if I can pull it together to create a brand.

Thing 2 Investigate some other blogs

Thing 2 encourages us to investigate people’s blogs. Having a look around at other people’s blogs it was reassuring to see that many people are also just starting out and feeling as apprehensive as me. I used the delicious links to look for folks also in health libraries. As we have only just started there isn’t much to say at the moment so I just left a few hellos as comments. I have also signed up to the RSS feed so that I can catch up easily on what other people are blogging.

Thing 1 Still Blogging

Have taken a look at everything you’ve ever wanted to knowabout library blogs and blogging! By thewikiman. He talks about taking control of your online presence, indicating that it may be something used by prospective employers to screen employees and suggests using the tool Personas to get an idea of what online presence your name has.

Well, according to Persona –I am a minor aggressive musical book reader who likes to share, possibly via committees; do a bit of management of illegal medical news (illegal higher than books, really!); slightly fashionably famous for religion and genealogy, mainly involved in teaching sport online (is that possible?).

It may disappoint you (or not) to know that much of this is nonsense about me… mostly… I’ll own up to the books, genealogy and medical. But maybe there is a Cheryl out there somewhere who fits this perfectly and good luck to her.

We don’t how this information has been trawled, what algorithms have been applied, whether there is any agenda – is there an online sports teacher paying for advertising space? Somehow putting your own presence out there and being in control of it (is that possible?) may mitigate any potential damage.

I’m sure that our online presence is as multi-faceted as our offline lives and I’m not sure that everything would go into a job application form. While I appreciate that demonstrating social media skills are appropriate, even essential, for some job applications, I wouldn’t like to be the personnel officer trying to justify a recruitment decision based on social networking searches.

I think I need to work on my profile.

Thing 1 Blogs and Blogging

As you can see my blog is now up and running. I'm afraid that I didn't spend too long comparing and contrasting blogging tools. I took the lazy option and set up on Blogger as I already have a Google account (so not another link / username / password to remember). I am also a little familiar with the interface as we use this for our library blog. Of course the most difficult bit was choosing the layout and theme - redecoration may occur from time to time.
I have added in some gadgets/widgets so that everyone can share my musings as much as they like. You can also post a comment - though I am moderating these. I guess the blog will develop as I learn more on the course.

Registration for 23 Things...

I'm just registering for the online course 23 Things for Professional Development
Hoping to learn more about web2.0 and social media in a professional context - there must be more to it than sharing videos about cats.