THING 23 - MAKING IT ALL WORK TOGETHER

Am I really at the end (almost)?!?

This is another interesting module. A while ago I did think about linking all my social media accounts I use and other online things I'm interested in, putting everything in one place to visit rather than having lots of websites to remember and so, with that intention, I opened an About.Me account.

And I looked at the steps for creating a profile, adding links, etc. and basically stalled. I couldn't see the advantages of spending my time replicating what was already available publically on other sites.

Unlike some people, I don't think I use a vast amount of social media and yet I manage to stay fairly up-to-date with events and news. I have a Twitter account and the things I tweet tend to be mainly book/library/literacy related. My tweets are linked into my Facebook account and I set it up like this as I realised that what I was sharing on Twitter (such as reports and research), I also wanted to share on Facebook. However, my Facebook account is private, set to friends only, as I also post family and work-related news which I wouldn't want out in the public domain - although I'm always aware that ANYTHING put online is never completely private so I'm careful about what I say. In addition, I have a LinkedIn profile - and I soon realised that About.Me wanted the same sort of information, jobs, etc. and I couldn't be bothered replicating it. I suppose I could have left those fields blank but then what would be the point of creating another social media site that was basically empty? And I don't want to share all my social network links in one place because I don't want everyone to have access to all of them ... so, again, what would be the point of putting in a link that was then closed to people.

At the moment I have no problem in keeping up with the social media I currently use. I have set things up so that I get Hotmail alerts from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest whenever I'm mentioned personally. Plus I'm online the majority of days and if I'm not then it's because I choose not to be and am purposefully taking a break from it.

As my desktop is my "weapon of choice" Flipboard wouldn't be any use to me. I may expand on my About.Me account in the future and if I was in any sort of freelance type of work then I would certainly ensure I had a wider social networking profile. But my paid day job doesn't require this, there must be lots of wonderful school librarians out there who are doing amazing jobs without being online or engaging with social networks. What I am thinking of doing (the "next" project maybe), is creating a website where I can link my social media that I'm happy sharing with the public, add links to my blogs, Pinterest, Goodreads sites, etc. plus perhaps use to expand on my more creative activities such as photography and painting. Something that shows the wider aspect of my personality. I'm also aware that I have never created a website before and this is an area of my CPD that I want to explore; I'm hoping to start my Fellowship portfolio soon so it would be a good addition to it.

The only problem will be that the lure of my to-be-read pile is likely to be much stronger ... which is probably why I'm a librarian rather than a web designer!