Thing 5



Lonely by the Water by Matthileo in Flickr
 (available for use under
the Creative Commons Licence)

When reflecting on why I chose to do the CPD23 course this year my main reason was sheer frustration at the fact that I had stagnated in terms of career development  since graduating last summer, mainly due to the acute lack of professional development opportunities in my workplace.

Things 1 and 2 were all about creating and exploring blogs. I have been following the blogs of several library professionals for a few years since I found them extremely useful when studying for my degree. However I had never considered writing my own blog as I felt that I hadn’t got anything interesting to say! I hope that working through the remaining “Things” will alter this self- perception and give me the confidence to continue blogging. I also hope that this experience will broaden my horizons in respect of reading, and commenting on, other blogs that I follow.

I found Thing 3 really interesting as it related to personal branding. As advised I spend many hours pondering on what exactly I wanted my branding to say about me, both in terms of wording and imagery used. I must confess that I am really pleased with the outcome and feel that it was well worth the time spent considering all aspects of my branding. I have now updated all my online presences with my new imagery and bio in order to establish consistency.   

Despite already having a Twitter account (albeit an inactive one) and knowing about RSS feeds I still found Thing 4 about current awareness really interesting. I used this activity as an opportunity to do an overhaul of my RSS feeds list (most of which I had set up while studying) and to add some of the recommended ones.  However as mentioned in my post about Thing 4 although I did register with Storify and found browsing others’ stories interesting I didn’t really get on with creating my own story (due to browser inconsistencies). 

As well as doing CDP23 I also resolved to try and attend more library-related events and activities, even if it meant attending in my own time and at my own expense! 

http://www.librarycamp.co.uk/

To this end I recently participated in Library Camp Leeds. I have to confess that that I did feel a bit nervous before the event as this was the first time I had participated in this more informal type of conference.

However I came away at the end of a really interesting day with a much more positive view of what this style of conference is all about and having met some really interesting and friendly people. I felt that as well as providing the usual opportunities to network and share ideas this event gave me a much better perspective on the current state of the library and information sector as a whole.  It also linked in nicely with CPD23 as I came away with a new list of interesting people to follow on Twitter!