CPD23 Thing 6

Virtual Networks

I am a regular Facebook user. I like it; I can use it on my terms (in other words ignore it for days or weeks and check in when I like, as often as I like). I can just read what others post or post constantly myself. I have used it to connect to my far-flung family and friends. And reconnected with some friends from high school and college.

Although I did start using Facebook because of a library colleague and originally had mainly library land friends it soon became a way for me to share life with my family and then my friends. I regard my FB account as largely personal, although I will often post things that are library and work related.

I do not really use it to network professionally. I did like the CPD23 fan page. My library uses Facebook to promote the library (with separate pages for kids, teens and general library).

I do not use LinkedIn and have been thinking about why don't. First of all, it would another online presence to maintain (with another user name and password to remember!). Second, it just isn't fun. At this stage if I am going to be doing things beyond my regular job duties it needs to have some element of fun and LinkedIn does not appear to have that. If I were job seeking I would have a different feeling about it and I can see that it has real utility in the job world and professionally.

I would rather continue to use Twitter and perhaps this blog to promote my professional face. I am considering posting non-library cont ed posts, such as about what we are going through to change ILSes.

I use ALA Connect (the ALA version of CLIP communities) sporadically. I am a virtual member of an ALA committee (ALCTS Planning) and we use ALA Connect to work on documents (our new chair has been posting documents for us to review for the past week!) and share information. I don't use ALA Connect as much as I could or should. Although there are networking capabilities set up in ALA Connect I haven't found many people use it that way (or I do not know the people using it that way).

I have been interested to hear about Google+ and took a quick look at it the other day -- but that it is by invitation only (the same way that Google has done with other things it has started) so I was only able to look at the demo pages. It could be interesting to use. I do like how it seems to enable you to separate out family, friends and work people. It seems to have gotten fairly positive reviews and I'll watch it with interest.

I am all in favor of online, virtual networking but it needs to have fun mixed in with it to get people using it. And we need to find ways to balance personal with professional.