Thing 6 - Online networks

I will confess i am not the worlds most natural networker. I am the awkward one in the corner trying to pluck up the courage to say hello. Most people who know me would probably find this difficult to believe as i am also the chatty one, always have been, my school reports always said at the end 'Aline is a chatterbox'. Somehow, I still find it hard to talk to my colleagues for networking purposes. This is where online networks can come into there own, it does make it a little easier to get involved.

I am on Facebook but so far i have used this mostly for keeping in touch with friends and family. I am also on Linkdin though as yet i haven't networked or really participated in any discussions. I do however use a number of JISCmail discussions to follow current practises and find these very useful. In particular the e-forums held by the Cataloguing and Indexing groups are very useful.

I think that this is an area that i need to develop more and as i stated before online networking should in theory make this easier. I have had a brief look at Cilip communities and will be looking at this further in the future. Time to take the next step and get more involved!

Thing 5 - Reflective practise

Well, i find myself a little behind. So i will keep my comments on reflective practise brief. I have been utilising this technique (or trying too) for the last year for my Charter. I found the whole process really useful as it gives you a chance to really think about why and how you are doing things. This at the end of it all seems to be the main point and a very useful thing to do. As has been suggested time is the big problem and i found the easiest thing was to schedule an hour each week (usually in the morning before things really get going) to think about my week, courses i have attended, or tasks, meetings... what ever has been going on and really think about what my aims and goals have been, have i achieved them and ultimately what could i do better, smarter, is there a different approach to take. I have found that this is the most productive time in my week as it allows me to plan for the next week. I also try to use this time to look into and reflect on professional developments, what have i learnt this week and how can i use this knowledge in the future. Some times i end up asking more questions than getting answers but this is all part of the learning curve and is how we all develop.