From chained books to linked librarians

Following my previous post, which was about my entrenched opposition to using Facebook at work, I can blog about LinkedIn with a refreshing lack of prejudice.
Having looked around the LinkedIn site and read the article from State Library of Ohio, I found it attractive, chiefly due to a sense of purpose. LinkedIn knows what it's there for. It's there for business, with just enough personal chat to make it friendly.

I have no idea whether it's an effective means of business communication: few of my friends had heard of it. One friend was actually on it, she was advised to join after completing a Skills for Enterprise course. She hasn't actually gained any clients from it but finds it is a useful way of seeing what's going on in her world of small business start up and connecting with other professionals (= competitors) in her local area. I would certainly look at it when updating my CV, you can see the language people are currently using to describe their jobs and activities.

But even more useful would be LinkedInLibrarians, just for librarians/information sector workers or whatever. It may even exist, or there may be something out there that performs the same role. Anyone know of anything? I know there are Facebook groups, web pages, Twitter etc but I do prefer the professional style of LinkedIn.

Facebook and libraries

My attitude to Facebook has been the same for a while: I use Facebook for real life (it is possible to have one outside of work, honestly) and I don't intend to create a sanitised version of that life, not even to attract future employers. I wouldn't try to contact a work colleague or library reader via Facebook any more than I would turn up at their home. This attitude clearly isn't going to be useful for networking but I'm happy to use other means to get in touch with people.

However, many librarians see Facebook as another opportunity to pursue their elusive customers. "Facebook is used by lots of people, so let's use it to contact them." Well, so is Tesco, but I don't plan on camping out there with a library poster.
I'm not yet convinced of the need for a Tower Project Facebook presence. There may come a time when a cool professor laughs at my antiquated email request to meet her in the tea room, and I'll have to FB her instead but I'm not there yet. Other people are doing it very well, judging by the Facebook pages for eg. Jerwood Library at Trinity Hall, and the Classics Faculty Library.

Library Thing

I seriously considered demanding an official exemption from this Thing. A site where you can spend your (constantly shrinking) non-working hours cataloguing books? You might as well ask Tesco checkout staff to scan in the barcodes of their kitchen contents every night. So I admit this may have influenced my opinion of LibraryThing. But my initial impression was that it wasn't great.

It was slow: when I searched, the "loading" bar kept appearing as if groaning under the effort, then there were further strained pauses while it sorted the results.

It didn't have catalogue records for the books I own. It's probably workable if you only own books published after about 1980. I did like the idea of the book covers but I couldn't find any for books that I own. Some people include DVDs, which is confusing. There are subject groups that interest me but I don't see myself discussing ancient history with someone called bookmonk or hyppo. I tried looking for records for books in the UL tower, with some idea that we could use the dustjacket images in publicity for the Tower Project, but still no records.

However, I had the idea of looking for books I might want to read or own and I have to say it was a lot more rewarding. There were far more records for modern books, the majority of them with dustjacket images. It's a visually satisfying way of keeping a "wishlist" online. I put together a possible reading list of books by Jon Stallworthy, who dazzled me by quoting three times from Horace in as many minutes at Tuesday's Sassoon exhibition opening and generally looking like an Oxford don, probably played by John Gielgud.



Then I noticed the Currently reading option and thought that might be something I'd like to talk about. So I've put my current reading there and I'll see what happens. Will I be contacted by other Lindsey Davis fans?

Vanessa is on holiday