Thing 3: Consider your personal brand

My personal brand and online identity was something I have spent quite a long time agonising over!  Although my primary aim for starting the blog and twitter was for personal development in my professional work, I was aware the professional networking would be an inevitable by-product of this.

• Name used - I confess I spent quite a while trying to think up a name for online CPD profiles.  I wanted something that included my first name, but didn't necessarily give my identity away.   I'm not very good at thinking up bon mot's, especially when I'd told myself how important it was, and read all the blog posts emphasising the importance of a brand and a name!  In the end I went with my first name and something relevant to my interests: Helen_HQ. HQ in the LoC classification scheme covers Gender, Family and Sexuality Studies books.

• Photograph - Ah yes, the 'what constitutes a professional photo?' conundrum.  I confess I have slightly more piercings than the average person, a couple more tattoo's and occasionally a pink/purple/what I choose streak in my hair.  When I go to interviews it's long sleeved shirts, clear piercing retainers and hair a 'normal' colour.  I wasn't quite sure how to approach the photo for this.  I have initially gone with what I consider one of my 'safer' photos: facing away from the camera etc.  Now I'm a bit braver I'm tempted to change to a photo I prefer I will ponder on this for a week or so and see.
• Professional/personal identity - I'm still getting into the swing of twitter and blogging.  For the moment, most of my posts on these platforms have covered library related themes.  I have a couple of blog posts saved in drafts that cover the 'HQ' aspect of the online name, however I haven't yet worked out whether to post them.
• Visual brand - My theme is to be based around purple (my favourite colour), I also have the same picture of books in the HQ section for my blog and my twitter account.  I intend to use the same photo for blogging and twitter, although I'm not quite set on what photo to use yet.

Activity

I have quite an unusual surname, so I have always been aware of controlling what comes up in Google searches as it could potentially be very easy for an employer to find me.  My LinkedIn profile is the first search result that comes up.  This is good as I created this so I would have an online professional presence.  The other search results concern the few other name-twins that I have (in Australia and the US).  On the second page my role in the library I work in comes up.  My facebook page, blog and twitter don't appear in the results, which I am happy with!

'Supporting Researchers: information, support and community' by Jenny Delasalle

This week I attended a talk by Jenny Delasalle (@JennyDelasalle) on how Warwick University Library supports their researchers.  Below are my notes from the talk itself.  I liked the focus on community and collaboration.  These are facilitated by dedicated spaces such as the Research Exchange and online services, such as Research Match.  We were also very interested in their use of student 'ambassadors'.  These are paid posts, for around 10 hours a term.  Students are trained in what the library can do, and then go into their departments to talk about this.  They also help market events, such as those going on in the Research Exchange.  They found social scientists most likely to apply so had to actively recruit for those from the scienctific disciplines.  Crucially, there was good support from their university who recognise the value of the peer support model.

I also found the integration of web 2.0 very interesting, for example a blog appears on the 'Support for research' page and also their guides (see here) aggregate blogs and other content.  I also plan to look further into their reworking of 23 things to 'Digital skills for the researcher'.

Brief notes from the talk:
What [Warwick Library] offer:

1. Space:

Research Exchange - wanting to build community, enable interdisciplinary research.

Postgraduate hub - with facilities such as 'dissertation station'.

2. Experts

Offer various workshops / courses on the usual topics: literature searching; reference management; citation management; Open access publishing ; social media etc

3. Training:

Research student skills programme has an information strand that the library delivers.

Re-branded 23 things to 'Digital skills for the researcher' (see http://digitalresearcher.wikispaces.com/Course+Outline ).  Instead of having 23 compulsory modules divide into core and optional modules.

Held publisher workshops / visits

Guides on website

They found peer support to be a very successful model.

Research exchange:

Advertised for paid posts. trained students on how to write for the the web, they produce online guides (see http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/researchexchange/ecr/resources) 

4. Disseminating research:

WRAP repository deposit.

5. Community and peer support:

PhD network, including PhD life blog.

Research match - 700 profiles, proactive matching.

Measuring and optimizing social media - a talk by Johannes Neuer of the NYPL

On the 1st August I went to a talk organised by Staff Development on 'Measuring and optimizing social media'.  The talk was part of 'Bodleian Libraries’ Digital Know-How Day' (#BODdkh1).  It was given by Johannes Neuer (@johannesneuer) of the New York Public Library.  Below are my brief notes on the talk.  The library I work for is thinking of expanding their social media use, the talk gave a lot of very useful links for measuring and evaluating Web 2.0.  I plan to investigate these more in depth at a later date.

I found this talk an interesting counterpoint to my MSc dissertation.  One of my main findings was that libraries do not set goals, or measure social media ‘success’ in a quantifiable way.  It was interesting to hear the practical tools used and how he displayed the data.  It was also interesting to hear, that despite the current comprehensive measurement, evaluation and reporting done by NYPL, social media was started experimentally. 

Regarding setting up Social Media JN emphasised the importance of goals.  They should be 'SMART' goals:

Specifc
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Timely

There should be a focus on outcomes and you should actively think about how you are going to measure success.

I made a note of the tools described.  It looks like the most useful one for a library looking to set up a twitter account would be Hootsuite, as you can collect data about when specified words are mentioned in other peoples tweet (eg SSL etc).  You can also collect @mentions.

Socialflow.com was also mentioned.  This website publishes blogs. It was of use in NYPL as they have 150 bloggers.  The website can look at conversations in Twitter and Facebook and send out, or tweet, the most relevant posts.