twitter
as i mentioned, i set up a twitter account a while ago and use it semi regularly for personal stuff. i tend to go through phases of using it a lot, and then i don't bother for a while, and then i'm back using it again. in any case i do tend to check it regularly for stuff that other people are saying. i find it useful to keep up with what people i know are up to and what they think about things that are happening. i have only used it once for 'professional' purposes and that didn't go particularly well.
let me explain. as i think i have mentioned previously, my employers were generous enough to pay for me to attend the second day of cilip's umbrella conference last month. i went with the intention of live tweeting the sessions that i went to, providing those who weren't as fortunate as myself with an opportunity to hear about the inspiring stuff that was going on. i completely failed. during the first session i tweeted a couple of quotes from the speakers about the future of libraries. i read some other people's tweets about the session too. then i froze. i had no idea what to say! i retweeted a couple of things that other delegates had tweeted, but that was about it. my phone went back in my pocket for the rest of the event.
this, i think, was partly down to one of the problems i identified in the last thing. my twitter account is my personal twitter account. i had visions of the people i know that follow me reading my tweets from the conference and thinking 'this is incredibly boring, why do i want to know about this?', while people at the conference looking for posts with the umbrella hashtag would be thinking 'why is this '@jamonbreadyay' guy just aimlessly repeating things that other people have said?'. i think next time i go to a conference i need to think carefully about how/why/if i'm going to try and tweet about it. or maybe just get a 'professional' twitter account. i still haven't made a decision about this.
in the mean time i'm going to follow more library people on twitter. i've looked at the list on the 23 things blog and chosen a few people that i recognise from various places. i've also followed some people who work in the kind of jobs that i'm interested in. i'll keep you updated on how useful this is for me!
rss
again, i mentioned this in the last post, but i do follow several lis blogs using google reader. i check this every day and i enjoy keeping up to date with people's views on library related stuff. the list of lis blogs on the 23 things site was really useful, though, and i've added a few more to my subscription list. i've also shed a couple of blogs that weren't really interesting me or that i didn't think were completely relevant to my needs. sometimes you have to be brutal.
pushnote
i had a look at this and i don't think it's for me. i can't recall a time when i've read something on the internet and thought 'i want to comment on this and get into a discussion with other people about it'. maybe that comes back to my lack of confidence in my ability to articulate my opinions properly. maybe i'm just thick. or maybe i just think my friends are thick. whatever it is, i'm going to hold off on this one until i can see a situation where it might be of more use to me. i'm not ruling out using it or anything, i just don't think i need it at the moment.
that's it for this thing! i'm doing my best to try and get through all these and catch up. if i can do the last thing along with everyone else then i reckon i'll feel like i've achieved something. to both of my readers, thank you for taking the time to wade through all of this.
ps. in other news
there's talk of my contract being extended here! i can't really say much about it yet, though. if it happens, it'll be doing something that isn't catalogue based and may actually involved speaking to library users more. this is a bit nerve racking but i'm excited about a (possible) new challenge. i'll keep you updated! see yer!
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