Thing 12:Social media for CPD

I was pleased to see the subject of thing 12 as it ties in very neatly with the research I'm doing at the moment!

Other advantages, off the top of my head, are that of flexibility of time. Social networks are a way of keeping in touch with people at any time, anywhere, regardless of time zones etc. There's a service, I think it's called 'chasing the sun', that provides an 'ask a librarian' service 24 hours a day by hooking up with librarians across the globe in the U.S. and Australia to cover the time when us Brits are in bed.

The flipside of this is that social networks require a lot of work to maintain - you have to keep everything up to date, and if you're on a lot of different networks this could end up taking up quite a large proportion of your day! And of course, if people know they can get hold of you at any time of day, there is a risk of work hours being stretched beyond what they should be.

I think I could be making more contacts through cpd23 - I must go on more people's blogs! If I had more time to spend going on everyone's sites and getting in touch, then I think it would be a good way to get in touch with other librarians at different institutions. I had been a bit sceptical before about the usefulness of some social networks for professional development, but the more I research this topic the more I think it is a really useful tool.

In terms of the last question about the 'sense of community' - yes, I think it does create a sense of community, although in a different way to having a physical community of people to talk to. Bearing in mind that a lot of your online friends may never have met you, there would be certain things that wouldn't be appropriate for you to ask them about. In a professional context though, it's good to know that there is this huge group of people going through similar experiences to you who you could potentially go to for advice or information.