23 Things for Professional Development: Thing #5

Looking back over the past 4 weeks, a couple of things stand out for me. The first is Thing 2: Reading and commenting on other people's blogs. As I've said before, I like reading blogs and have been doing it for some time. But I'm less good at commenting on those blogs, and feeling like I have something useful to say. Thing 2 really got me thinking about what comments I could make to introduce myself to other people, and that they would find helpful. It also meant that I got a number of comments on my blog, which was a really nice feeling as I knew people were reading what I had written. I hope that I'll continue to read and comment on other's blogs, as I did find it very rewarding. I admit that the amount of comments I leave has already dropped, so this is something I'll have to work hard to achieve.

The second thing is part of Thing 4: setting up a Twitter account. If you read my original post, you'll know that I was really quite sceptical about the whole thing. Well, I can admit when I get something wrong - turns out Twitter is looking pretty useful. I don't follow many people yet, but those I do have left some tweets I've found very interesting. I have to say that they're usually the tweets that link to more in-depth articles - as I said previously, I like there to be quite a lot of detail when I'm reading information. I also quite like having a couple of personal contacts on there - it means I get some "fun" tweets in with all the work-related info. The one problem now is that yes, it's another place to look for all that info. Although I did find this blog post really useful for giving me some practical advice on how to use Twitter. More on that in a future post!

One final point is that I really appreciate having a week for some reflective practice. Over the past few years I've spent a lot of my time thinking reflectively, and I don't think I'm too bad at it. Although if you're struggling with reflecting I think the "What-So what?-Now what?" model (see the cpd23 blog post for a fuller explanation) is a really good, simple one to help you understand what it's all about. I do really appreciate having the time to think over things reflectively - I think it's important to know what's happening and how you'll use it in the future. I also think we all need time to assimilate all the new things we're learning. Taking the time to reflect means that the things we are learning about are more likely to become a useful part of our workflows, rather than being used for a month or two and then put down and forgotten about.

23 Things for Professional Development: Why?

Firstly, a bit about me... I'm currently working as an Assistant Librarian at the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol. My specialism is working as the Repository Manager, organising and developing the university's institutional repository (it's sneakily called the UWE Research Repository). For those who don't know, instutional repositories are now being used by a number of universities (and other organisations) to promote the research that happens within the institution and, wherever possible (subject to copyright laws etc.), to give free, instant access to that research (for anyone and everyone) via the Internet. I strongly believe in the principals of open access, so it makes the job a fitting one for me.

As for how this blog came about, it's all because of the 23 Things for Professional Development course. When I received an e-mail telling me all about a free online CPD course this summer, I thought it sounded like an interesting thing to do. And I really liked the idea of having a chance to professionally develop myself without having to leave my desk!

Taking a look at the sorts of things on offer, I already felt like I had some knowledge of a lot of them. I already have an online presence, spend a fair amount of my time reflecting and networking, and (don't think) I'm too badly organised. But there always seems to be more to learn, and the things on presenting information and getting involved especially caught my eye.

Additionally, my online presence isn't currently geared specifically towards my professional self. I already have two blogs, but chose to start a new one as part of cpd23. This was so I'd finally have a place to point people I work with in the library world to. Much as I love watching and blogging about movies, it's not very relevant to my work!