Silence in the Library...Stay out of the Shadows!

Spot the Dr Who reference, I am not that kind of librarian but I am feeling a bit disenchanted. Call it post conference blues. I had a fantastic time at umbrella, met some great people and came back thoroughly inspired only to encounter the cold shower of reality. It's all very well to believe yourself that the library is the heart of the school/college, but sometimes difficult to get that over to senior management, who barely know it exists. Moan over, Umbrella was great, courtesy of the Affiliates Group who gave me sponsored place. Now I have the summer holidays to mull over the lessons I have learned, develop my online presence and formulate my plan of attack for September! That is if the kids, selling the house, and all the other things which rush in to fill my life when I am theoretically on holiday don't completely scupper my good intentions.  Thing 5 is reflective practise - some thing I think I am ok at to the extent that I spend too long examining my own navel rather than getting anything concrete done! Like most things it is all a matter of balance. Although I came back from Umbrella all fired up about Twitter and Facebook, I am still quite a long way from feeling entirely comfortable in this world. RSS feeds is ok, I like reading blog posts from people who interest me (at the moment Alan Gibbons campaigning against library cuts is good to follow) I also like checking out how libraries use facebook (Swansea library is a superb example) but on Twitter I am a follower rather than a tweeter, unless something comes up I really want to retweet or shout about. I seem to be taking the road of following everyone in sight until I realise that many are really not saying anything interesting anyway. Hopefully by a process of selection and judicious pruning I will end up with a list of tweets that is interesting and illuminating. I don't particularly like facebook for my own use but quite a few friends have twigged that I am on it and keep sending me loads of junk I don't really want. I will be interested to see if Google plus is any easier to control with it's groups and circles, although I have seen quite a few comments which indicate it might not be. At least I can choose my friends on facebook even if I don't really need to know what they had for dinner.  Sorry, not so much reflection as mindless rambling, it is the sun, I'm not used to it.