I left teaching, as I wanted a career change & get into libraries, and the next 6 months were spent initially feeling sorry for myself,  then I started reflecting, what could I do to improve so I started asking for feedback , volunteering, shadowing, visiting, temping, completing short courses & so on and it paid off. Before I started work in my current place of work I worked for a young person’s information service and the culture of reflection was very much engrained, I would have supervision every 6 weeks and at the weekly meetings we were expected to bring case studies to discuss and evaluate practice.

In Elaine’s piece about the ‘Reflective writing workshop she talks about the the need for taking action after the event, reflecting quickly so as not to lose that ‘gut feeling’ you have . When I moved in to academic libraries  I think this is something I was good at, studying for my MA & being part of the library’s Learning and Development Team definitely helped. Then I got promoted to a post which had been been vacant for about four months and the next 12 months kinda became the wilderness years in terms of reflection and my time became consumed with learning the job, taking part in a full-scale project… That’s not to say I didn’t reflect on work practices, I did, I just don’t think I engaged much in personal reflection.  I think now I’m turning a corner, at least I hope so, I’m consciously making an effort to write down my thoughts when I’ve attended an event as soon as possible afterwards, having the work blog helps. Aside from the initial reflection, something I need to do is also reflect on an experience later on down the line, say 6 – 12 months after the event, to see what impact its had, whether my thoughts /  feelings are the same, what’s changed.

Reflective practice, work in progress, me thinks.

My cat in reflective mood

RSS: A few years ago we had wiki set up for frontline staff so they could be kept up to date with changes to policy and procedure, the option was was get these updates via RSS feed or via email. I could never get the RSS feed to work so I stuck with the clunky daily email updates. Until I read the post for thing 4 I’d never heard of Google Reader (I hope I don’t embarass myself too much more …) . I’ve been using it now for the past four weeks and at the moment I like it and have found it really useful to keep up-to-date with things, BUT I think that may be because I don’t currently have loads of susbcriptions, I can see the potential for it getting unwieldly. I’ll defo stick with it for now.

Twitter: Like Emma I have a love/hate relationship with twitter. I’ve been a member for just over a year. Before I signed up Damyanti was always trying to recruit me and extolling its virtues, but I didn’t get it. Then one summer’s day last year I thought “why not, let’s see what all the fuss is about”.  What I like: I’ve found out about a few training events that I’ve subsequently attended and I’ve been able to follow conferences on hashtags. I’m a recent convert to tweetdeck and this has helped too with the keeping up-to-date stuff. I currently follow over 200 people, most of them in the library / information world and some culture organisations so I can what exhibition to visit / film to watch / gig to go to (oh and the obligatory celebrity too).  What I don’t like:  It can sometimes feel like I’m a voyeur, as I’m not on it all the time  and you can come in in the middle of a conversation, or if you don’t follow everyone whose taking part in a conversation then you miss stuff, tho I don’t worry about this as much as I used to.  What I need to do: I think to some extent I’m still finding my feet with Twitter, I like how I currently use it but I do need to participate more.

So where do I have an online presence:

I’m on twitter (@Indipuss) Again I agonised over the name and decided to name myself after the cat and define myself as a cat owning librarian - cliche, yes. I’ve considered changing a few times, particulalrly when I’ve got some, um, interesting followers and I do need to update my profile on there as its vague and doesn’t reveal too much about me and my professional interests. I have started tweeting a more library / information related way but my inane tweet quotient is still quite high and so I’m mixing person and professional which I’m not sure is a good thing but I don’t think I could cope with  having two twitter accounts.

I have a LinkedIn profile which I set up over 12 months ago after attending UKSG but my profile is quite sparse, make that non-existent and I’m not too sure what value I see in it and am very tempted to get rid of my profile. For those who do use it feel free to try to convert me and convince me why it’s a good idea.

This blog – I found it easy to set up not so easy to decide on the background and opted for an out of the box design. the colours are actually quite dark, a bit moody and I think I need to choose something brighter, more inviting.

I have an uncommon first name and surname and on the vanity check, the first 7 results, related to my twitter & LinkedIn accounts, then there was a result to a JISC mailing list which I am signed up to, then a result for me taking part in the Birmingham half marathon in 2008!

I am conscious that I don’t have a strong brand but at the same time there is a reluctance to share too much of myself, how do I get the balance right?

I think the line-up in general looks great and have been amazed by the response and the numbers of people who have signed up. In particular I’m looking forward to the the things relating to:

Thing 13: Filesharing and collaboration

Things 15 & 16: Getting involved

I also thought that participanting in the CPD23 programme would benefit as it would help get me in the right mindset for Chartership, reflecting on my experience.