Thing 6: Online Networks

Can’t believe we’re at week 5 and Things 6 & 7 of CPD23 already!

‘Thing 6’ is all about online networks, so I worked my way down the list provided on the Thing 6 blog post.

1. LinkedIn

I joined LinkedIn recently, after thing 3 got me thinking about my professional network- I didn’t really have one.  Since joining up I’ve not taken part in any discussions, but I’m slowly building up my network, profile and links – I think this is going to be a really useful professional tool. I have linked up with some of those colleagues I removed from my personal facebook page when I had my ‘tidy’ back during thing 3 and have joined a couple of useful groups.

2. Facebook

I’ve been using facebook for years and although I update the CILIP East of England page and follow some professional organisations its use is primarily personal – scrabble anyone?!  As I’ve mentioned above – Thing 3 led to me having a tidy of my facebook ‘friends’ to enable me to have a balance between facebook and LinkedIn for personal and professional purposes.

I thought about the Reid Hoffman quote "Facebook is the backyard BBQ; LinkedIn is the office" mentioned in the thing 6 blog post and I agree.  For me this is my ideal split - I want to keep in touch with professional colleagues, but I don’t necessarily want them seeing a picture of me in my Moonwalk outfit of a multi coloured animal print bra!

3. LISNPN

I joined LISNPN a while back after coming across an article on it in a CILIP update – I must say this is a great site!  I encouraged a few newly qualified colleagues to join, and also a friend who was working through her library qualification – she has since graduated.

I came across some great discussions and even participated in one or two!  From a discussion on chartership portfolio’s I was offered someone’s evaluative statement to view as an example in addition to those available on the CILIP website – very useful!

4. Librarians as Teachers network

I’d never come across the LAT network before, so although I don’t do any teaching as part of my job I thought I’d take a quick look.

I didn’t join, but some of the forum posts I had a look at were quite useful – even for those of us that don’t ‘teach’ as part of our daily routine I think there’s some valuable info here – I may be back if I can find time in the future!

5. CILIP Communities

I’ve blogged for the CILIP EOE group using the communities pages, but that is my only use so far of this particular section. I should look at this further!

Do I think there’s room for new networks such as Google+? Probably, in some shape or form as not every network is going to be right for everyone.  However it’s about the balance and knowing what is or isn’t going to be valuable.  Working through this topic today I realised I’ve not looked at LISNPN in weeks, and I rely heavily on the LinkedIn emails to tell me what’s going on in my networks –its having the time to read through the discussions, keep up with tweets and still make my scrabble moves and view my friend’s holiday snaps!

And a final thought……..

I was having an email conversation with MG the CILIP EoE vice chair today – I was supposed to be going to a meet up in Cambridge tomorrow (thing 7!) but it seems I’m not going to get there due to moving house and numerous other things.  MG said in her email “It is true that it seems we are never going to meet in person - we can always say that we are a perfect example of online networking ;-)...”