Friday, July 22, 2011

CPD23 - #3 Your Personal Brand

I've been aware of branding, especially for organizations, for awhile, and I have even checked my name on google a couple of times to see if I'm even listed. Surprise! My new google+ account profile comes up first on the search page. Who knew?

I show up most often under my full name and secondly under my self-assumed nickname. Often there are links between the two. There is some consistency with use of name, but less so with images. I like two professional photos that I display on Facebook, google+, and my blog, but for some reason have chosen a "Flat Stanley" for Twitter. Perhaps because when I first started posting Twitter was more a newsy "here's what I'm doing" kind of app. I need to change my old photo on LibraryThing, and maybe Twitter, too.

Since I work in the library field, but really live in the wind band world, I guess I'll have to live with a little inconsistency to my total brand. Does this mean I'm schizophrenic? Should I consider separating my two identities? How does that work on Facebook where I crossover?

For now, I think I'll clean up photo images and pay more attention to what I write, and how I write it.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

CPD23 - Thing 2 - Blogs continued

As a part of setting up a blog to comment on our own personal development, CPD23 members were asked to visit other members blogs. Since I work and live in Nebraska I decided to look for colleagues. Along the way I discovered some interesting things.

1. CPD23 is sponsored by UK librarians, so most of the blogs and news listed on the CPD23 blog are - British. They've been setting up some area meetings - in the UK. OK, time to look somewhere else.

2. I imported CPD23 to my iPad's "Flipboard" app to make it easier to read the blog posts. But, I got mostly the UK info when I wanted the Nebraska stuff. I finally located the Nebraska page and now can view colleagues' posts.

3. Many of my colleagues submitted their blogs from previous years' 23 Things and haven't yet started blogging about this program. I also noted that most of the colleagues are from rural libraries. Since I work in Omaha we won't find a lot in common. Fortunately I also live in a small town with a library of its own. I think this year's 23 Things will teach me more about what a small town librarian's life is like.

Finally, I amamazed at how quickly one can fall behind in this project, and I appreciate receiving Twitter posts from CPD23 to help keep me on track.

Monday, July 4, 2011

CPD23 - Thing #4, Twitter, RSS, and Pushnote

OK, I'm doing some of the things out of order. We just returned from our Summer vacation to see all 3 kids and 6 grandkids. For awhile we didn't have wifi access, and then we were just too pooped to pop. However, following a wonderful nap and waiting for the Fourth of July specials to come on TV, we're up and at it!

I've been using Twitter for a couple of years now, although I was on a self-imposed hiatus for about 9 months. When I first started using it Twitter seemed like a Round Robin conversation where everyone speaks and no one listens. Have you ever been in a conversation where you were talking about one thing, and then after pausing, the other party began speaking about something completely unrelated? Well, that was Twitter--then.

Twitter:--now has morphed into sharing news and other websites with your followers. It's a way of keeping followers up on the latest news, and as such is a valuable tool for libraries. My branch has several programs each week, so there's always something new. We can communicate with patrons who are followers to keep them updated on the latest program. I like this approach to twitter much better.

RSS feeds: It's very easy to get inundated with RSS feeds and not have time to read them all. Be careful what you sign up for! Again RSS can be a valuable resource for libraries in communicating new events to patrons. Recently, I purchased an iPad and found a magazine-style RSS aggregator that I like very much. It's called "Flipboard." It comes with facebook and twitter feeds as well as news, sports, lifestyle, tech, and flickr interesting. You can add RSS feeds of your own to the app. All the pages show photos, icons, and text arranged in a magazine format--so very visual and easy to read. If you have an iPad check it out!

The new thing for me is Pushnote. I had not heard of this app/extention before and am still learning about it. Setting up a Pushnote account was easy as was the download and installation of the extention in my Safari browser. Initially I tried downloading it on my iPad, but that didn't seem to work. Pushnote's fax indicates that mobile extentions will arrive soon.

My Safari browser has a new star located in the address bar. When I click on it a new window opens with the current browser page listed. Supposedly if others have rated the page the star will turn colors. Maybe it's if other friends have rated the page the star turns color. None of my facebook or twitter friends apparently use pushnote yet. Anyway after assigning 1-5 stars you can add a short comment about the page. You can also view other "hot" pages highly rated by other pushnote users.

For Pushnote to become a valuable library tool more folks will have to begin using it, and I certainly have to keep playing with it to learn more of its functions.

Are any of you using Pushnote? How valuable have you found it to be?