Tuesday, April 13, 2010

CIL2010: Crafting Online Personas

Craig Anderson, Kean University
& JP Porcaro, Virtual Services Librarian, New Jersey City University

Most librarians don't want to reveal themselves on Facebook, but it actually humanizes them and let's the students know their not robots. He has a slightly different Craig for different audiences: family & work have different filters, but they both have filters. You don't have to create a pseudonym, just show a facet of yourself. Brought up The Annoyed Librarian (if you don't know, it's very controversial and lots of theories on who it is).

Privacy settings can help a lot, but consider keeping some of your more "eccentric" interests to yourself. You are playing a role in the community, but you are not necessarily representing your institution. There's a balance there. Many people are putting their Fb and Twitter handles in their signature file, and it is becoming the norm - the way you put your phone number there.

This all rolls up into the concept of Digital Citizenship, and for the most part librarians are the head of the curve, at least compared to other academics.

Stephen Abram mentioned that he's worked for three of the largest employers of librarians (vendors like OCLC and Sirsi) and they build a profile of possible job candidates from their online personas, and if there is NO online persona, they think twice about that person's online savviness.

Stephen recommends setting up a google search of your own name/institution and have it send you alerts when you're mentioned.

see also Murphy and Moulaison’s paper “Social Networking Literacy Competencies for Librarians,” the fundamental necessary social networking skills for librarians are addressed along with strategies for helping library staff feel comfortable presenting a digital face to their patrons, employers, and colleagues online.

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