Thing 5 – Reflection, Reflection, Reflection

Image Credit:  James J. Jenkins on Flickr.

I am not, as most people who know me would probably agree, a particularly reflective person. I’m very impulsive, and tend not to labour over things. Reflective practice does not come easily to me. It is something that I do need to force myself to consider rather than a regular occurrence in my day to day life.

During the course of my Library degree at Sheffield, my lecturers were very keen on the idea of Reflective Practice, and it was a core aspect of many of my modules – with most demanding some sort of assessed or un-assessed reflection on various aspects of the course. Dutifully I complied, and to my astonishment I actually found it really rewarding, and it helped me determine why I was doing things, and what I could improve on or what interested me. In essence, reflective practice helped me determine a path forward in order to develop my skills (and also on occasion, rein in my strong personality!) so that I created a more purposeful attitude to my working relationships, behaviour and my academic progress.

I don’t really hold store with academic models on reflective practice, so I don’t really have a guide to how I reflect on my experiences. My reflections tend to be on more negative experiences, e.g. where I perhaps felt out of my depth, or an instance that troubled me in some way. I find it harder to reflect on positive experiences, as I find it harder to pinpoint why something was good. Negative experiences are easier to try to determine a way forward – for instance, what I could have done differently, or why something went wrong.

I do find reflective practice helpful, but it is not something that I do as a matter of course. I need to change this behaviour.


*By the way, if you’re wondering what has happened to Thing 4 – I haven’t done it. I’ve skipped right past it and onto more interesting topics. Unfortunately (and I did try), I can’t muster up the enthusiasm to wax lyrical on RSS feeds. Although, if you get the opportunity, do try If This, Then That, which I am using for a multiple of things. I have it set up to automatically add anyone who tweets on the #cpd23 hashtag to a special CPD23 twitter list, I use it to text me weather updates, and give me a comprehensive one page list of a core group of friends’ social networking updates.

It’s great, try it! The wonderful @meimaimaggio on Twitter gave me my invite, for which I am eternally grateful. I have three invites if anyone would like one. 

Thing 3: Consider Your Personal Brand

 Image Credit: iDream_in_Infrared on Flickr.


Personal. Branding.

Two words that make me shudder. Yet again I am late with my entry – not due to workload but simply because I didn’t want to have to deal with this topic. To me ‘personal branding’ brings to mind the idea of desperation in a cheap suit, the sort of individual who likes the sound of their own voice, who is eager to prove to everyone who gives them even the slightest amount of attention that they are in fact someone.

This sounds scathing and indeed it is. I have met too many of these individuals in my life and the idea of being such a person is too much to bear.

However, I do have a Twitter, and a Linked-In, and I used to be a Blogger on a very successful site (which was voted one of Cosmopolitan magazine’s Blogs of the Year for 2010). I have a Facebook, a Livejournal, a Tumblr and have previously been active on many an internet community in the areas where my interests lie.

My online presence then is very strong; my personal brand however is not, especially with regards to librarianship. This blog is the first truly librarian-y thing that I have ever set up. My Twitter, Tumblr and other social media outlets are not library or librarian-focused, they are very much personal. I often fear in fact, that people will be disappointed when they follow me on Twitter expecting lots of library related debate and comments – this is not the case. I have been on Twitter for nearly three years, over a number of different accounts and name changes and my account has been locked and unlocked numerous times. My Twitter is actually very much personal – I started it when I frequented a fashion-related community, then I became a shoe blogger. I then starting writing for a football website and went to library school.  In short, I have many different people who follow me for many different things. My tweets reflect this.

Sometimes I prattle about shoes, other times I lament my beloved Arsenal or Real Madrid, other times I tweet about library related things. I am loathe to start a library only Twitter, as I feel that I am not just a librarian – I am the sum of many parts. My Twitter and my Tumblr are a reflection of my whole identity and interests, rather than a specific part of it. A lot of people feel differently, but I just can’t bring myself to compartmentalise my life into different interests and use social media specifically targeted at each area.

Interestingly though, the people that added me and followed me for very different reasons are now becoming aware of my job and my interest in libraries, and I have had a number of things tweeted in my direction from people who think I would be interested in library related news they have come across on the web, which pleases me immensely. Not only am I bringing my interest in the world of libraries to a wider audience, but am also being introduced to things that maybe people in the library-bubble wouldn’t come across.

I am aware, despite my dislike for the idea of ‘personal branding’ that it is something that I need to consider. This is partially the reason that I am doing these 23 Things, to start getting me more involved with the online information community. This is a start anyway… right?