Thing Four: Current Awareness

Twitter
I have been using Twitter for about 6 months and use it mainly for communicating with family and friends, but also for keeping up to date on developments in the library world (and mommy related things). I am already a follower of many LIS organisations and librarians and find many of them really interesting.
Rating: 5 / 5

RSS
I signed up for Google Reader and integrated it with my Google Chrome browser. I have also downloaded a feed reader for my blackberry so I can keep up to date with library blogs etc on the go. I am REALLY enjoying RSS feeds and have already learnt an awful lot about new technologies. I can't wait to implement all these new ideas into my own library!
Rating: 5 / 5

Pushnote
Pushnote is something I'm still looking into. I'm not sure how useful it will be to me, and in all honesty, I don't really see the point in it. I feel it would probably take less time and effort to simply copy and paste a link to someone in an email, tweet, or facebook message, rather than signing up for an entirely new website just to recommend and comment on other websites. I won't give up on it just yet and will continue to explore, but this one I am not very hopeful about.
Rating: 1 / 5

To summarise
Twitter is my favourite for personal use
RSS is my favourite for professional use
... Pushnote is yet to impress me

Bedtime stories ... on the ipad ... really?

It astonishes me how far the modern world has come in the last 10 years or so. CPD23 has introduced me to an enormous network of librarians embracing new technology and ensuring their libraries are at the forefront of everything! A media-savvy friend of mine recently posted a link to an article on an astounding kids' book on ipad called "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore".





The article says that the book is a children's bedtime story. Now, as both a librarian, and (more importantly in this scenario) a mother, I find this hard to swallow. When my little boy goes to bed, he wants to sit on Mommy's lap and be read to by his Mommy, quietly and calmly until he gets drowsy enough to go to sleep. Although there is an option to turn the voice over off, I know that my baby will still be so amazed by the moving pictures that my voice will no doubt fade into the background and he will inevitably get bored. Not only that but it is pretty well known that television is a stimulant to children. Surely showing your child a bedtime story on what is essentially a mini-television (I know the ipad is much more than this but run with it for a minute) is just going to stimulate them rather than calmly settle them down for the night?

On a more positive note, the app truly does look amazing and there is no doubt in my mind that e-readers are the future. New technologies need to be embraced by libraries everywhere. If I could get my hands on an ipad for our library I would be one very happy lady!

Thing Three: Personal Branding (Ouch!)

Over the past two days I have thought a LOT about my personal and professional branding. Joeyanne commented that she likes to take a "profersonal" approach to demonstrate both sides of her personality - and this is something I would really love. However, in my current position, I work with children aged 11-16, and mixing personal with professional is something that requires the utmost security, and it may be something I simply cannot do. I should also mention that I have the tendency to make sarcastic comments on social networking websites (non-work-related!!!), some of which I know friends would find hilarious - yet people I know in a professional capacity may find a tad rude(?!). Both my twitter and facebook accounts have the highest level of security to stop students etc from adding me, or seeing these!

For the past 3 or 4 years my online alias has been rlb14, my initials and my lucky number. I have decided to keep this alias and use it as the focus of my branding. With "rlb14" already taken on twitter (by someone who has annoyingly never tweeted), I have simply added an underscore to the end of it (hence rlb14_).

I have revamped the layout of my blog which was previously a desktop template, to something I can brand across the whole of my online profile and perhaps in future, business cards and CV print outs.

As my visual brand "logo" I would like to design an owl to go with my title (hubby says this what I most remind him of). My twitter background has been a very cute Mommy and baby owl for the past year or so, but creating one of my own would be a much better solution to stealing someone else's image!

Googling my own name results in a whole list of personal security breaches, including facebook comments I have made, and even a map of bike rides I have been on which start and end at my home location. I have updated and tightened all of my security settings and will be writing a complaint in to facebook on the issue of privacy.

I will end my entry with a question - what do you think my personal brand (so far) says about me?

Thing Two: Blog Networking

For my cpd23 blog networking I have focused my attention mainly on other school libraries in the UK. I used cpd23's delicious list here (which I have never used before) and found it very helpful. Although I would love to read many more blogs I have found myself very short on time in which to read them. I should have mentioned that as well as a school wannabe-librarian, I am also Mommy to a wonderful, but very demanding, 13 month old little boy! As I mentioned in my first post I cannot access any blog sites from work so I have very little time in which to do this course - but I am determined to complete it!!!

thoughtsofaschoollibrarian looks very promising as well as meadowtime on wordpress.

I have begun "following" a few blogs on here and bookmarked other blog site entries on delicious and in my browsers bookmark list.