Sunday 21 August 2011

Thing 1 - getting to grips with this new fangled blogging!

Recently I've realised just how far behind with times I really am when it comes to social media. 

I have never written a blog, never knowingly read a blog, and despite being 28 and (I think) the prime age for it, somehow the whole MySpace thing totally passed me by.  I can get to grips with Facebook, but only as a way to keep up with friends.  And as for Twitter, I always thought it was a way for people to say what they've just eaten for dinner and thrill us with how their children just shoved a pencil up their nose!

But so many of my friends working in the library world are now mentioning who they follow on Twitter in a professional sense, and are recommending useful blogs that could help with career development.  Which is how I discovered about the 23 Things.

I love my current workplace (a specialist library in Camden), and the people that I work with, and would probably stay there indefinitely if only I weren't on a temporary contract.  Unfortunately, because my main role is that of a book cataloguer and general Library Assistant, I know that when my contract ends next year I need a few more strings to my bow so that I don't become pigeon holed and only able to be employed as a cataloguer - of which the jobs are few and far bewteen.  When I look for another job I want to have more options available to me, and I want to experiment with other areas of library work.

By the end of the 23 Things I want to be able to say with confidence that I can use social  media in a professional context and boost my CV with it.