Brilliant!

Twitter first – and then links from my project for Arcadia (organised a conference on Internet Informed Patient). Then Academia and linkedin. So far, so professional, and then comes Facebook, which I do try to keep for personal things rather than work (and manage too, not least cuase I hardly ever update my profile!)

It’s only when you get to page 2 & 3 of results (and who would ever get that far?) that you see this blog, and some of the contributions to conferences I’ve made, and papers I’ve written, etc. What does this say about me? (or my ability to raise my profile electronically?)

Have to say that my “brand” is not something that I’ve spent hours considering, which is particularly odd since I’m quite likely to make snap judgements about other people’s blogs/twitters etc.

So that’s what people see, but what do they think?

comments very welcome – I can take it!

I’ve just tried google-ing “ilk21″ – this blog is much higher up – hmm was that a branding fail? is my email id better at promoting itself than I am? And what happens when I move job (not on the horizon at the moment, but it might happen one day) – how will my “brand” have to evolve when ilk21 ceases to be meaningful? will “I” cease to be?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/greenuk/3071062344/

so in terms of the themes of name, photograph, professional/personal identity, visuals….

I think I might be in danger of having a confusion with the difference between ilk21 and isla kuhn, I’m fairly consistent with my photograph (taken on lovely holiday in France a couple of years ago) and I like the fact that it’s not a straight “head shot”. Pretty much all my  online hits are work related, but of course a bit of personal me comes out (it’s inevitable, really isn’t it?). I could have spent longer on the bells and whistles on this blog, but the clean lines appeal to me.

Since when did the BBC start including QR codes on it’s programmes? I was quietly watching Simon Hopkinson’s The Good Cook, thinking how delicious his porcini pasta looked when a QR code popped up on the screen!

when did this start happening? links in TV programmes to take you to the recipe website? very fancy!

Was very glad that I’d heard Laura from West Suffolk Hospital Library talk about her QR code innovations at the last TeachMeet in Cambridge, and had got a QR reader app on my iPad, so I could have a play. Don’t know if I’ll make the pasta receipe but I’ll certainly be experimenting more with QR codes in the library .

From Flickr: http://tinyurl.com/5s94j8x

More photos from day 1, day 2 , day 3 and day 4 of EAHIL conference

Plus useful links to inspirational 23 things / Learning 2.0 programmes: http://www.delicious.com/hblowers/learning2.0libraries

Finding, and keeping up with, inspiring people is key. So having a netvibes page of RSS feeds from interesting blogs (either from libraries or individuals) is great but you’re only ever hearing from the same people. Do I hear the dreadful clang of an echo chamber?

CPD23 and cam23 2.0 is going to be great for me as an opportunity to widen my horizons – to find new inspiring people. Perhaps they’ll be new people I don’t know yet:  like EAHIL journey – who’s going to the same conference as me in a couple of weeks time.

Or perhaps it’s through people I know/know of in “real” life, but might get to know better/differently in blog-world: Deborah’s CPD Blog – cause I know she does some great teaching in her medical library in Chelmsford. Or The Ayre Line – since I’ve crossed paths with him back in our Leicester days, or the Health Informationist since I follow him on twitter and he’s a big name in medical library circles.

but what about people outside health/medicine – really important to look beyond the subject side of my job, and look to learn from people who are doing the same generic teaching/service that I do (the research skills, the reader services, the general teaching/training skills)? I might need a couple more posts from people outside medicine to see if they’re going to be talking about things that I can learn from – it’s tricky so early in the game to spot the people that are going to drop the bombshells of learning. But I’ll be scanning around and hoping to read as much as I can of the (jings!) c.600 bloggers who are working their way through the CPD23 and cam23 2.0 programmes

more thoughts on UHMLG later.

.. so later that day.. I thought I’d reflect a bit on the presentations at UHMLG – the ppts of which I’m sure will appear in due course at http://www.uhmlg.ac.uk/. the most interesting presentations I thought were about the new competencies which would be required of librarians/informationists/whateveryouwanttocallus – the need to stop going on about the same old skill sets but actually go out and get the new skills that will convince the researchers that we can actually contribute something positive and constructive to their work, rather than just saying that a literature search is generally a longer, slower process than they can be bothered with. there were 2 research project going on, talked about by Antony Brewerton (warwick uni) and Rachel Kotarski (BL) which were particularly talking about this: respectively RLUK Subject Librarians: Skills Set Investigation and JISC Defining a new role: the embedded Research Information Manager I’m sure there are plenty of people already out there providing bibliometric support, bibliographic software training (I do this at least) and actually do involved as a member of the team? But where are they? ( pause, waiting to be inundated of “here I am” type responses!) It’ll be really good to see best practice examples when these 2 pieces of work are published in full.

The fabulous @glttrgirl was talking about another new competency: Digital Professionalism

I think this sort of thing is really interesting – (and is the sort of thing that will be address to some extent by Week 2 Thing of the CPD23 programme). There are a number of strands that have got me thinking – recruitment (are we actually testing on competence to carry out particular tasks, or do we just assume that they can do things like blog, keep up to date, take an active role in CPD etc?), traditional problems but in a new environment (eg bullying in an online environment, or helping doctors understand all the issues of talking in public (ie facebook or twitter) and potentially talking with patients in public)

and are we making massive assumptions about the level of information literacy in students/professionals before we start offering them additional support. We assume they know that plagiarism is a bad thing, but do they know it extends to images from the internet? Are students/professionals really aware of the permanence of virtually everything they put online?

and lots of other very good stuff – very very interesting!