Thing 5 : We have no time to stand and stare

For Thing 5, we are asked to consider reflective practice, and to do some.

It's never a bad thing to be self-aware, of course, but the criticisms of "vanity", "self-indulgence" and "navel-gazing" often levelled at the blogosphere are a bit of a deterrent to me. I don't really expect everyone to be interested in what I have to say about my own experience.

So far, with the CPD23 things programme, I've learned a bit about blogging, and this is soon going to be put into practice when we launch our exciting new blog at work for SCOLAR (Special Collections & Archives). I'm only a peripheral member of the SCOLAR team, doing some of the cataloguing and with a relationship with one part of its collection which goes back several years before SCOLAR was even a gleam in anyone's eye. I'm very familiar with my own bit of the collection, but I am sure that there are lots of people even within our own university who don't know what it contains, so I'm looking forward to sharing snippets about it both within our own organisation and beyond. The idea had been floating around for a while, particularly after last year's success in acquiring the Cardiff rare books collection, and it is hoped that the blog will be a way to share news about the collection with the wider world as it is catalogued. The final impetus for being able to do this came in part from the fact that three of us are doing CPD23, and suddenly what seemed difficult to set up was proved not to be.

My own blog, so far, has only been used for the CPD23 things programme, and I have not yet made it very visually appealing (I also realise that I am actually very nervous about using ANY images, and quite paranoid about copyright, but I'll get over that!) Viewing stats have declined steadily with every post - I hope that's because there are so many blogs to read and not because I'm getting more and more boring.

Social media has enabled me to feel connected at a time when child care makes actually going anywhere quite difficult, even at work. No sooner had CPD23 introduced a new set of people to Twitter than lots of people seem to have semi-abandoned it for Google+. I've set myself up on Google+ but haven't got the hang of it yet - my only "circle" is a librarians' circle, and the only people in it are also Twitter followers so far. Something else to get to grips with! Same with RSS feeds - hoping they are going to be useful but needing to remember to change habits can be a drawback.

I think, on reflection, that I have always been reasonably comfortable with the first two steps recommended : recall, evaluate. It's that third step, "apply" what you have learned, which can be the stumbling-block.