Reflective practice

Wow, I cant believe we are up to Thing 6 already on the Rudai 23 course.  So far, I have enjoyed it immensely and have learned so much about the application of social media tools within a Library environment.  I really like the Hangouts tool in Google+ and can see great potential for using it for training purposes.

LinkedIn, I am not so keen about, I can see how it can be useful if one is seeking a job or trying to build up contacts. I feel it is probably one social media application, I probably won't use as much.

It has been interesting reading through some of the other blogs and what surprised me the most is the reasons why people have chosen to work as librarians.  A theme seems to be emerging of people accidently falling into the profession. What I mean by that is, some blogs have mentioned sitting in their college library, studying for their primary qualification, seeing the librarians at work and then exploring how they became librarians.  It also seems that people developed an automatic love for the profession.  I know it was like that for me, I got the library bug after working for the summer in my local public library.  It is interesting that people have preconceived notions about what a librarian does which can be quite different from reality on the ground.

A question I often get asked, when people find out that I am a librarian, is do I read much? I have to confess that I don't read as much as I would like. As opposed to when I was a young teenage bookworm, devouring every book I could get my hands on.  I don't have the time for that now, so maybe life has taken over.

How many librarians read avidly now?  A librarian's role has diversified so much that we are now expected to be experts in so many different areas.  It can be overwhelming but I think the secret is to keep learning, develop new skills and maybe set aside some quiet time to catch up on the reading!!