Thing 11: Your Professional Brand

The options presented in this Thing work better for me than the Thing 10 options of Twitter and Facebook. Newsworthy updates from my workplace are infrequently positive. I doubt I would attract much of a following with a stream of

Cut another journal subscription today.

Small victory! Admin finally agrees big physics class bad market 

for #infolit outreach, stops calling me "lazy."

As geographically isolated library, really should fund prof travel for entry level hires.  

No, ORCID and LinkedIn are clearly superior platforms for my circumstances. It took a bit of work earlier this year to add my complete list of Library Journal book reviews to my ORCID  profile (imports from RefWorks kept failing, so I finally resorted to a BibTeX converter), but with that wrapped up, adding new ones as I publish them is quick and painless. I never thought about adding a biography before, but that, too, was easy to construct. It's now visible at profile 0000-0003-4677-0046.

My LinkedIn presence is minimal right now, but I can see it’s another platform worthy of tending. A couple of hours over a few weekends should suffice to flesh out the content, and then I can turn to adding contacts. A profile photograph will pose a challenge, however. I really liked the way my unruly mane grew back after my craniotomy, and I’ve been striving to maintain the look ever since. Unfortunately, my stylist retired, and it has been difficult finding someone else to replicate her work. Last year’s headshot will have to serve until the next successful haircut.

Thing 10: Networking Tools

It’s been an intense few weeks grappling with another MOOC. (See my #Rudaí23 #Thing10 tweet: I’m using Tableau Public for the first time--enough said!) I opted to take the easy way out for this Thing. Delving into Facebook will have to wait.

I just started using Twitter in June, with no more specific aim than establishing some kind of presence on social media this year. As a result, I’ve let my account (@oponiak) evolve into a mix of the personal and the professional. However, I do my best not to mention my place of work by name and I’ve included a disclaimer in my profile. My workplace (not just the library, but also the university as a whole) is extremely concerned about “message”--both content and presentation--so I need to make clear that I don’t represent the organization.

Using Google, I searched for site:twitter.com “public list” libraries. Much to my surprise, ALA, my national library organization, appeared on the second page of results. I also searched for site:twitter.com “public list” sla, as I’m considerably more active in the Special Libraries Association. I followed the lists for both organizations.

At this time of year, many SLA units have networking meetings and those announcements are filling the feed. The ALA feed includes a lot of content from the YALSA (young adult) and AASL (school librarian) units. As an academic librarian, sometimes I forget there’s a significant contingent of the profession engaged in youth services.

Much to my surprise, there are also a number of personal accounts included in the ALA list: people who are ALA employees and people who are (or were) officers in various units. Many of their accounts are hybrids, like mine, including personal tweets. I may consider adding a couple of ALA units to those I already follow, but I will probably drop the list as a whole. Other tweeters I already follow provide plenty of political posts and social commentary.