What does an online identity REALLY need? (Or, Growing Up Online)

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Yesterday I wrote this post about stepping back from the conflict in librarianship, and making a new website. There was also a part about changing my online usernames, and the difference between playing at having an online identity and actually having one. It was the last bit people particularly responded to, and I said in the original post that I might write a-whole-nother blog post about it, so here it is.

The background is, I've changed both my blog name and URL (from thewikiman.org to ned-potter.com) and my Twitter username (from @theREALwikiman to @ned_potter).

Creative Commons Image by Jack Dorsey - click the pic to view the original on Flickr

Playing at having an online identity versus actually having one

I began life online in 2009. As I've written about before, I saw Jo Alcock's presentation about blogs and twitter at the New Professionals Conference we both presented at, and was completely convinced by her argument that getting online was A Good Thing To Do.

At the time I thought I really needed an angle for an online presence - a specific driver and purpose - and I thought I really needed a sort of 'nom-de-web'. I wasn't thinking in terms of online branding because I didn't know anything about that, I was just looking for somewhere to slot in.

Over time, my feelings about how important that stuff is have changed somewhat. My angle was writing about a wiki I was setting up - I grew tired of that after about 3 posts, unlike the audience, because there WASN'T an audience (it took me 2 years to get 100 subscribers to this blog, then less than a year to get to 1000 after that - the life a new blog is a lonely one). So I quickly learned you don't NEED a special hook for your writing, you can just write in librarianship and will eventually find an audience (and even writing without an audience can have benefits). My nom-de-2.0 I was pleased with because it was distinct and easy to remember, and it did have value in that way. But it was playing at 'having a brand'. I used to sign posts -thewikiman at the end until quite recently, not sure why, but which I look back at with embarrassment.

Now, five years after first getting online, I have an actual online identity and I want to use my own name for it - hence the recent changes. I'm not saying that having a tag or online name is a bad thing, by the way - just that the way I did it was naive, and based on not understanding the world I was getting into. When I began blogging, blogs were the centre of the online universe in librarianship. Now Twitter is the centre. And Twitter is a personal medium - it's about being you. Not 'developing a brand' - for individuals anyway. My favourite quote about the ever-controversial subject of building a brand is this one (read the post this came from):

“It’s a mistake to think of personal branding as an end itself. A successful personal brand is a by-product of the successful pursuit of one’s own interest, contribution, and networking in librarianship.”

— Bohyun Kim

This is spot-on. In fact sometimes you see people doing the opposite of this, and focusing first and foremost on 'developing their brand' and it simply doesn't work. It turns people off. They position themselves outside the dialogue, which is the opposite of what we should aspire to do with social media.

Anyway, to the point of this post!

What does an online identity really need?

I'd be interested in your views on this in the comments, as it's not immediately obvious to me what an online identity really needs, and in what order of priority.

One thing thewikiman was good for was consistency - it was my username across several platforms. This made it easy for people to find me, and easy for me to monitor links to my stuff (when I typed 'thewikiman' into Twitter, I saw all the links people had posted to my blog, my slideshare account, my Netvibes page - none - in one easy step). So even though I'd recommend the same username across loads of platforms, I've messed that up by changing mine on here and on twitter to two subtly different variants on a theme, which now don't match my YouTube or Slideshare accounts. So for me it turns out not be THAT important after all.

Professional focus is another useful thing from an online identity. If, for example, you're on Facebook for social things, a separate identity for the more work-focused Twitter and LinkedIn could be useful. But if you agree with me that doing things under your own name is a good idea, then that makes focus an all or nothing sort of deal. (I'm not on Facebook so this is less of an issue for me personally.)

Findability is important. As individuals we don't want to be worrying too much about SEO and that sort of thing, but the fact is if someone sees me at a conference and googles me, I want them to find me and not other Ned Potters (like the used car salesman from Essex where I grew up). A distinct online identity helps findability - 'thewikiman' is the search term which over 800 people used to find my old wordpress blog, according to the stats, versus just 81 for 'ned potter'. But findability at the expense of using your own name? For me it was probably worth it back then, but less so now that I have a decent network.

Visual branding I think is not important. It feels like it probably should be, but it isn't. The purpose of branding... actually I'm not going to go into that here, this post is already too long! I'll come back to it at some later date. But basically, having the same shade of green for your website, your twitter background and your business card isn't actually going to have a meaningful impact on your life. There is an argument that the same logo / avatar across several platforms would increase how easily people recognise you from one online zone to another, but again, Twitter is the most important medium and that demands a picture of you as it's a personal medium. So logos are sort of out. Or at best, hard to weave in.

A consistent voice is probably much more important than the rest of the things I've listed put together. If you say things people want to hear in a style that's recognisably yours, THAT'S your online identity - the rest of it is so much window dressing. But for me, the gain of having a larger network on twitter or reaching more people with this blog (like those powerhouse bloggers you see with insane audience sizes) is not worth the loss of posting random nonsense 90% of the time on Twitter, or only posting on this blog when I feel like it rather than on a consistent following-building schedule.

I don't want to be at the behest of my online identity, essentially - which means I reach a smaller group of people than I otherwise might. That's fine, though - for me. Everyone has different needs, and everyone is in different places with what they're doing professionally.

Not adjusting who you are for other people is the final one I can think of. For short-term gain, by all means shape yourself to suit an audience. But ultimately, you're better off attracting the RIGHT audience, as hopelessly cliched and optimistic as that sounds. It's better to let a smaller group of the right people come to you for YOU, than it is to build an online identity on compromise, at the expense of your soul... The kinds of opportunities you may lose probably weren't worth having anyway. (I'm writing this assuming you're a perfectly nice person, not some psychopath with hateful views on everything, by the way. If you fit in the category then censoring yourself is definitely the way to go...)

So, growing up online, having a meaningful online identity - what are your thoughts?

#BLAle14 Tuning out the white noise in library communication

A lot of the communication between Libraries and academic departments is just white noise, unless we tailor and personalise it. This takes a large amount of time, but the returns you get are absolutely huge - and this is the basis of my #BLAle14 keynote, a version of which is here:.

Tuning out the white noise: marketing your library services from Ned Potter

For context, here's the Twitter back-channel during the presentation - divided into sections so you can read along with the slides if you're especially keen. There's more on the conference itself below the Storify.

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The BLA

I became a Business Librarian this year, when I took over looking after the York Management School alongside my other departments in January. I also took over our membership of the Business Librarians Association and have been looking forward to the BLA Annual Conference, which everyone told me was excellent. And it was! I had a great time, it was great to catch up with old friends and make new ones, and I very much appreciate Nathan and the organisers inviting me to speak. As I said in my talk, I've found the BLA to be an extremely useful and helpful organisation to be a part of, so if anyone reading this looks after a Business School but isn't a member, I'd recommend signing up.

I was only able to attend two days of the conference but for me the highlights included:

• The National Space Centre where we were lucky enough to experience a Key Stage 2 film all about The Stars and that in the Planet-arium
• Very nice accomodation as part of the conference venue which made everything extremely easy - it's much more relaxing never having to worry about travelling from a hotel etc, so other conference organisers take note
• A very interesting presentation about The Hive in Worcester - the UK's first joint public and academic library, from Stephanie Allen. I have to admit it never even occured to me that a public-academic library was possible, but although it sounds complicated Stephanie made a pretty convicing case for it being a great idea. It sounds like a great place - generally I have no interest in Libraries as places but I'd quite like to visit The Hive...
• Joanne Farmer showing us Northampton's very nicely done video on employability (which she scripted)
• Andy Priestner's very engaging talk about how UX in Libraries is very much a thing now - here's Andy's presentation on Slideshare, take a look .

I was sad to miss Aidan Smith's presentation on Occupye, used at Birbeck to show where there is seating free in the Library - this won the best short paper prize.

I thought the organisers did a great job, and it was the first conference I'd been to since LIASA so it felt great to be at that kind of event again. Thanks for having me!

Blogging: the three main options and platforms for hosting a blog

The issue of where to host a blog is fairly complicated for people new to the medium - particularly the differences between wordpress.org and wordpress.com. I often have to write a condensed version of the advice below in emails to people as follow-ups to blogging workshops, so I thought I'd put it all in one blog post in case others find it useful too.

Why does the platform matter?

Every blogging option comes with its own advantages and drawbacks. On a basic level they run on a sliding scale from quick, logistically easy, and ugly / annoying to use at one end, to more complicated, faffy, and nice to look at / simple to use at the other. Often the more basic solution starts off okay and then becomes problematic later on, but you can migrate blogs to new platforms without too much fuss, so if you set up a wordpress.com blog on a whim and it turned into something significant and valuable, so now you want to upgrade to wordpress.org to get rid the weight-loss ads which have started appearing on your posts, then fear not, you can do exactly that.

All blogging platforms have some things in common. They all have a basic word processor interface for typing in posts, they all give you stats on how many people are reading your posts, they all give you ready-made options to help readers subscribe to, search, and share what you're blogging. All allow you to pay for a URL and so call your site the slightly more credible-looking yourname.com rather than yourname.wordpress.com or similar.

You could show all of them to someone in the year 2000 and their jaw would drop open at the sheer POWER and SIMPLICITY of what you can do in 2014 FOR FREE and with no knowledge of code / building websites. They're ace. They're an opportunity.

I have not included Typepad in this list because it's a paid for service - it's very good but, having tried it out, I don't believe it represents the kind of step up from the free options below which would warrant a monthly cash investment.

Blogger

Blogger.com is a Google product. It is sometimes frustrating and pernickety to use, and is the least aesthetically pleasing option. It looks dated, both to the author and the reader. However, it is free - and at the time of writing, you get no adverts on your blog posts unless you choose to put them there yourself.

Setting up a Blogger account is the most straightforward - if you have a Google account, you effectively have a Blogger account whether you've made use of it or not. Just go to blogger.com, log-in, and click create blog (further instructions here). I use Blogger to power my Library Marketing Toolkit website - I chose it because it is free, doesn't require the logistical hassle of self-hosting, and won't display unwanted ads. It took ages of tinkering to make the site look relatively nice though, and it still looks pretty 90s.

Blogger is quickish, powerful and a relatively straightforward way to build a website - you don't HAVE to use it as a blog, even. 10 years ago this would be the greatest most useful thing ever - it's only because there are easier and more attractive options now that we don't now celebrate its glory.

I recommend Blogger to people who are dipping their toe into blogging but aren't yet sure it'll be a major part of their professional lives, and who need the credibility that comes with not having ads. If you don't mind the potential ads on your posts, then option two, wordpress.com, is a better bet.

Wordpress.com

Wordpress.com is, like Blogger, free and easy to use. Wordpress hosts the blog for you, so there's no need to self-host the website. Compared to Blogger, it is basically easier to use, less frustrating, more flexible, more fresh and modern and nice looking, and great.

The only major downside is that after a certain popularity threshold (I'm afraid I've not been able to pin down exactly where this threshold is) you get ads on your posts, which you can't control or turn off. As I say, if this isn't a problem for you, go for this option, it's great. A second more minor downside compared to Blogger: at the moment you can't use Google analytics with it, and there are occasional issues around embedding dynamic content.

I used wordpress.com to power the Buy India a Library site - it was ridiculously simple to create that, literally in less than an hour, and without needing any knowledge of HTML etc. I also used it for my band's website, below - again, this took a tiny amount of time considering it looks nice and works well.

Wordpress.org

In many ways wordpress.org is the gold standard option - it affords the most flexibility and the most control. You can set your site up any way you like using a greater number of free themes, or by paying for a 'premium' theme, or by designing your own - this thewikiman site is a wordpress.org blog, with a theme I created, writing the HTML.

Two other things there are much more of with wordpress.org than with .com or Blogger are analytics - you can get hugely detailed statistics about who is visiting your site, for how long, when they're from, what makes them leave and so on- and plugins, which is to say the little widgets which appear in the column down the right-hand side. Whether it's Twitter and Facebook sharing buttons, or embedding a Twitter feed or YouTube account, or being able to print these posts to PDF, or displaying the most commented upon posts - all of these are plugins which I didn't create myself, but which already existed and I just applied them to this blog. And you never get ads, or indeed anything, placed on your blog, which you don't put there yourself.

There is only one downside: HASSLE. It is a hassle to use wordpress.org because it is 'self-hosted'. So while Blogger and Wordpress.com blogs sit on the blogger.com and wordpress.com sites without you having to do anything, you need a host server for a wordpress.org blog, onto which you have to install wordpress software. It is possible to find free hosting, but it will put so many limitations on its not worth having - so that means paying for hosting, and paying for the domain name. In my case it's £96 per year for the hosting, and £20 for the domain name. I used to have a cheaper hosting package, but I used up all the bandwidth before the end of each month (due to the amount of people visiting this site) so had to upgrade - although now I hardly blog anymore, I should probably look at going back to a cheaper package.

Wordpress recommends these hosting companies, but personally I recommend Clook very highly indeed. Great service, good prices, wordpress.org can be installed automatically without any technical know-how, and the tech support is completely fabulous. I once tweeted in passing about how my blog was down due to server maintenance, and Clook saw the tweet, looked into it, saw there was a problem with my blog specifically, fixed it, and THEN tweeted me back to say it was sorted! All without asking me any questions or telling me to stand by while they investigated; I hadn't even logged a request with technical support online or actually solicited their assistance. They're ace.

The other hassle is maintenance. Wordpress.com blogs get everything taken care of by Wordpress - the .org version you have to upkeep yourself, installing updates (which is a simple, automatic process) of both the software itself and your plugins.

In my view all of this is worth it for this, my main site - but not for any other projects I'm involved with thus far. If you don't mind the fact that you have to be more proactive in set-up and maintenance, and can afford hosting, it's the best option by far, in my view.

(Bonus option: Tumblr)

Tumblr began as a short-form blogging platform, somewhere between a traditional blog and the instant communication of Twitter. People can use it however they want, but personally I think you need to be on Tumblr for a reason - it's not a direct equivalent to the options listed above, but something a little different. (The BL's mechanical curator is my favourite reason for a tumblr so far...)

Tumblr is a self-contained community in the way the others are not. There is a ready-made group of people for you to join in with, and by far the fastest growing group of users - because it massively popular with a younger demographic, Tumblr continues to grow incredibly rapidly. But you need a Tumblr account to comment on a Tumblr post, so it's not the ideal medium for reaching and interacting with as wide a group of people as possible. By all means set up a Tumblr if you have something offbeat which suits the 'brief and often' nature of the medium, but if you're setting up, for example, an academic blog, I would recommend choosing wordpress or blogger.

So! There you go. I hope someone finds this helpful. Any questions, leave me a comment.

Good luck.

Twitter tips for improvers

Here's a new set of slides I've just uploaded to my Library's slideshare account:

Tips for Twitter IMPROVERS

from

University of York Library

I think the key to good feedback in a workshop is probably 10% about the content, 10% about the delivery, and 80% about whether it is pitched at the level the participants expect and require. That's probably an exaggeration but you get my point. I've blogged on here before about how I run sessions around Web 2.0 and academia for the Researcher Development Team at York, and in the last couple I've really felt for a small number of participants who were at a stage beyond the level I was pitching at. The workshops are introductions so participants literally set up, for example, a Twitter account from scratch - so anyone who is already past that point but wants to know about content and tone, is doing far too much thumb-twiddling for my liking, until later in the session.

With all that in mind, as of next academic year we're reworking the workshops, and in each case I'll run one 'A beginner's guide to' type session and one 'Improvers' type session, so people can get exactly what they need out of the workshops. We didn't have time to arrange that for this terms' workshops, so I produced the slides above to send on to participants of my introductory workshop, for those who wanted to go further. In January when the next set of workshops run (I don't do any in the Autumn term, because AUTUMN TERM), I'll flesh this out into a proper interactive 1.5 hour session.

Have I left anything important out? One of the things I love about Slideshare is that you can update and reupload slides over the same URL, so you don't lose that continuity (and your statistics). So if there's anything you'd add to this, let me know in a comment, and I can eventually make a new and improved version to put online in place of this one.

My advice to Tweeters: ignore advice to Tweeters...

I think guides for tweeting well are most important for organisations - it's key that companies, businesses and public bodies get this stuff right, and they often don't. For individuals though, I'm increasingly of the mind that unless you specifically want Twitter to DO something for you which it currently isn't doing (and the slides above are aimed at researchers who specifically want to grow their network in order to find more value in it), it's not worth reading 'how to tweet' guides (of the kind I used to write myself) and trying to change how you approach it. There's plenty of good advice to be had in these, but it's not necessary to follow any of it - apart from not being unpleasant or otherwise making people bad about themselves. If you want to tweet about your lunch every day, why should you stop doing that just to retain followers? I think it's better to be yourself and have a group of followers who are prepared to put with that, for better or for worse...

Number of followers isn't an end in itself. A smaller group of engaged followers who want to interact with YOU is far better than a huge group for whom you have to put on any kind of show. So while when writing in print it's important to adopt a style appropriate for the medium, I consider Twitter to be much closer to spoken communication. As long as you're prepared to deal with the consequences, why not just be yourself?

Is the Library degree the best use of your resources? Imagine what else you could do with that time and money

Edit:  Despite my clarifications, people are still misinterpreting my original post as a proposed 'solution' to the problem of the Library degree, so I've rewritten this to stop that happening. ====

To embark upon a Library Masters in 2014 is a huge undertaking. Assuming you do it part-time, whilst working to support yourself, you’ll spend between ten and eighteen thousand pounds over two years, along with, at a conservative estimate, 1500 hours of your time.[1]

The question is, does the Library degree really represent the best use of this investment?

What if you were to spend the same amount of time and money on a self-structured curriculum of study, events, conferences, training, and building an online portfolio, whilst continuing to work in an information role. Would you not emerge as a more rounded, knowledgeable, and relevant information professional?

I think you would. If someone were to try it, the results would certainly be interesting. This is not, however, a solution to the problem.

The problem with the Library degree

I have many issues with the MA/Msc in Library & Information Management (or similar) as it currently stands, in the UK. For the record, I completed mine, via distance learning, in 2009. It was fine, I didn’t hate it, it wasn’t a bad degree in any way. My views on the degree are based on my own experience, and based on talking to others – I realise they may not be universal complaints. But here are the main ones anyway:

1)    Much of the content of the courses does not seem relevant to actually being an information professional

2)    There is one degree that is supposed to cover, in one year of full-time study, all aspects and types of librarianship, including public, academic and special librarianship (not to mention the myriad other potential careers under the information umbrella). As far as I can tell these disciplines are very different from each other

3)    Many of the courses contain modules they contained 10 years ago, despite the information world having undergone seismic shift in that time. Anything you learn on a library degree is likely to be out of date in two to five years anyway

4)    Having completed a Masters in another discipline prior to getting my Library one, I did not find the latter to be postgraduate in nature. It was just like a very short undergraduate course

5)    The piece of paper at the end – the degree certificate which allows you to apply for higher graded jobs for which a qualification is an ‘essential’ on the person spec – seems far more important than what you learn on the course itself

6)    The difference between a ‘qualified’ librarian and an ‘unqualified’ one is very rarely the qualification. It’s more often that the unqualified librarian’s circumstances are such that they have been unable to do the degree, rather than that they are in any way a lesser librarian

7)    The process by which CILIP accredits degrees and the institutions which offer them does not seem to be in any way rigorous, based on the experiences of colleagues who have attended certain institutions…

8)    To add insult to the injury of the points above, there are many more qualified librarians than there are posts for qualified librarians – meaning that in my own institution alone there are several very talented new professionals who have gone to the time and expense of getting the degree, but who are nevertheless in the same roles they were in whilst they studied

Most importantly, the degree is so expensive that it is actively excluding people from good jobs – we are putting a financial price on progress in our profession, and for what? A degree that isn’t particularly relevant or, in some cases, even particularly enjoyable to complete. I don’t think it’s acceptable that we’re all of us complicit in such a flawed system. Employers, students, CILIP, people like me who recognised the issues but did the Masters anyway just to get the piece of paper – we’re all part of the problem with the Library degree.

If you are going to create a professional environment in which a ten thousand pound degree is necessary to earn more than £25,000 a year, then the degree itself needs to be a LOT more meaningful than it is at present.

What do we do about it?

If it were up to me, I’d do two things:

A) re-design the Masters to be a Problem Based Learning (PBL) degree, which would allow a much closer connection between study and the reality of library work, and

B) issue some kind of nation-wide edict forcing all hiring library managers to give proper value to the second half of the sentence ‘Library qualification or equivalent experience’ which appears on so many job specs.

There are actually a pleasingly high number of hiring managers who do 'B' already, although it's not that wide-spread. But 'A' is a lot trickier.

I am writing (or was writing - we'll get there eventually!) an article with Alan Carbery about rethinking the degree as PBL. I find PBL incredibly difficult to explain succinctly - basically it's student centered learning, that is used in a lot of Medical Schools around the UK (including the one in my own institution). It's really very different from the traditional HE pedagogy. Here's an excerpt from what the BMJ has to say about it (read the whole page here)

In problem based learning (PBL) students use “triggers” from the problem case or scenario to define their own learning objectives. Subsequently they do independent, self directed study before returning to the group to discuss and refine their acquired knowledge. Thus, PBL is not about problem solving per se, but rather it uses appropriate problems to increase knowledge and understanding. The process is clearly defined, and the several variations that exist all follow a similar series of steps.

It sounds like it shouldn't work, but it does. Students absolutely love it. At my University it is also used, with great success, by the Law School, and it is their approach specifically that I'd like to see emulated with libraries. Here's what the Law School has to say about it:

You and your colleagues decide how your firm operates and determine how to divide up the work.  Through the process you will build working relationships with each other and learn how to deliver on your responsibilities.

For each case you will identify the legal principles involved in the problem and unravel the legal and contextual issues that lie at the heart of it, which will typically involve more than one area of law. All of the problems will be simulated real-life examples brought to you by virtual clients.

In many situations you will have to interact with other student firms, sometimes working alongside them, sometimes in opposition.

For me this notion of operating in firms with real-life examples is key. Based on UCAS applications etc the Law School tailors each firm to suit the personalities and talents of the people involved.

Imagine arriving at Library School and being divided up into Libraries, and then given real-life, pertinent, and up to date examples of problems Libraries face. You'd work cooperatively with your peers (and in the era of constant-contact media, Google hangouts etc, distance-learning shouldn't prohibit this) and deal with things which you really will have to deal with when working in a qualified library post. Issues around web-design and social media, around marketing and communications, around copyright, data protection and FOI, around managing budgets in difficult economic circumstances, around whatever is relevant and important, year on year. It's not just that it allows Library Schools to cover contemporary issues, it's the manner in which it is taught, which seems to relate more directly to the real world. Here's another quote, from the Law School's guide to students on their use of PBL:

The key role of the problem is to trigger your awareness that these issues exist, and create an interest in them by highlighting their real-world ramifications. Once this has happened, the problem then gives you a context which you can use to identify exactly what you need to learn in order to understand the problem and address the issues which it raises.

This, to me, sounds like the kind of approach which has the potential to produce Library Masters graduates who are significantly more qualified, aware, relevant and prepared, for the real-life world of libraries. In fact it's a bit like what we all do with our CPD anyhow.

Clearly this would be a massive shift in how things are done. Any library school attempting to implement this would have to completely scrap the existing degree and build a new one from the ground up. But I'd argue that needs to happen anyway; perhaps a new teaching method would add much needed impetus and inspiration.

I'd be interested if anyone reading this who is familiar with PBL, or with teaching on current Masters courses, has a view on this! Is it the kind of thing we could realistically do?

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[1] You are notionally expected to spend 100 hours of study per 10 credits on the Masters – assuming you do the dissertation as well, there are 180 credits in the degree, so the total figure is 1,800 hours. I don’t believe anyone has ever spent 225 full 8-hour days studying for a Library Masters, so I reduced it to 1,500 hours, although that still seems fairly fanciful.