Thing 4 - Twitter, at last

Well, I've finally joined Twitter, spent ages trying to write a good bio (not very successfully, will have to revisit) and sent my first tweet. I've found a few people to follow, and will develop that over the next few weeks. Then I read The Wikiman's essential things to do when joining TwitterI'm not quite there yet. Am lacking a photo, in particular. Some things I'm worried about with Twitter - 1: keeping up with the amount of information out there, and 2: having time to join in the conversations. This doesn't feel like something I'll do at home, so will need to find a way of incorporating it into the day job. How long before it just becomes second nature?

I've also done the RSS thing and will start using google reader. I was very encouraged by this post from Organising Chaos which talks about being selective with tweets and feeds. Perhaps this is the answer to my questions above. I already do this with emails, so it may just be a matter of using the same techniques. And librarians are good at sorting information, aren't they?

I'm glad to be learning more about this, and to be keeping up to date. After hearing so much about social media at Umbrella earlier this month, it seems even more important to be part of the conversation. and found that

Thing 3 - Brand, what brand?

I've just googled myself and discovered that, in online terms, I barely exist. I have to admit that this has never bothered me before, but in the context of CPD23, I do feel I need to do something about it. The first reference to Janet Westcott was a 192.com entry from 2002, so completely out of date. The Facebook entry was not me (not surprising as I hardly use it) and the 5th reference was to my LinkedIn profile - but I've put hardly any information on it, so it would be difficult to contact me through it. 7th is this blog, and 10th is a link to minutes of a meeting I attended in 2003! So, no brand at all.
Thinking about what I might do about this, I feel quite sure that I want to keep my professional and personal lives quite separate - though has calling my blog 'a librarian by the sea' already merged them? I certainly wouldn't be blogging about my family life or personal things, but it would be helpful for me to have people able to find out something about my professional life online. Obviously more work required.

What's in a blog?

Looking at other people's blogs can take all day, I've discovered. There are some great titles, and I've even found another librarian by the sea. Most people seem to have started rather nervously, and that's rather reassuring for me. I've been interested to see how many people here were at Umbrella, and I intend to write something about that later.
I've tried to leave comments on a few blogs, but seem to be in a loop of previewing and signing in to my Google account, and not actually getting the comment posted. Can anyone suggest what I should be doing???

First post!

This is my first blog post for cpd23 and in fact, ever! I've decided to do the 23 things this summer to give a boost to my professional development: I hear and read lots about social media, but haven't really dipped my toe in yet - so here goes. I'm looking forward to reading other blogs, and investigating new ways of communicating. After more years as a librarian than I care to count, it's time I learned some more new things.