Technology in Practice. Finding Your Voice

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by PDXScholar Portland State University PDXScholar Library Faculty Publications and Presentations University Library 4-1-2010 Technology in Practice. Finding Your Voice Meredith G. Farkas Portland State University, [email protected] Let us know how access to this document benefits you. Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/ulib_fac Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Citation Details Farkas, M. (2010). Technology in Practice. Finding Your Voice. American Libraries, 41(4), 28. This Article is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Library Faculty Publications and Presentations by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TECHNOLOGY I In Practice Finding Your Voice Blogging for career advancement and networking H aving a professional online portfolio is a great way to show off your technology skills and provide additional information to potential employers that doesn't fit into your résumé and cover letter. However, this alone won't give them a strong sense of who you are, nor will it help you develop a professional network. Adding a blog to your professional presence provides you with a great way to network and distinguish yourself from the crowd. Blogs are easy to start; you could be blogging five minutes from now! While you can install blog software on a server, there are plenty of free, hosted services like Blogger and WordPress. Most blogs have a WYSIWYG editor, so you don't need to know HTML to format text or add media. It's also a nice medium for your readers as they can subscribe to your blog's RSS feed and have the posts delivered to them without visiting your site. Putting jou into your blog a o 00 Blogs are known for being an informal medium and offer great opportunities for a professional platform where your personality can shine through. The authors of most popular library blogs put their own spin on professional topics and manage to blend the personal and professional seamlessly. That doesn't mean that you have to talk about your private life; it does mean letting your audience get to know you by Meredith Farkas and what you The authors of sphere. When you think about comment on somemost popular professional one else's blog, you library blogs topics. can include a link It can take manage to to yours. If the autime to find thor or her readers blend the personal and your authentic find your comment professional seamlessly. voice. When I interesting, they'll ñrst started, likely visit. my posts merely rehashed news stoYou can also comment on people's ries I'd read. Over time, I started to posts through your own blog. When include my own thoughts on topics you link to another blog post, the and my posts became more like per- author will receive a notice that his sonal essays than news stories. The post was mentioned by you. This is best blog posts spark a conversacalled a Trackhack and is how peotion, so writing things that are ple can track conversations across thoughtful and thought-provoking multiple blogs. You can also have will attract readers. your new entries auto-posted to Within the world of libraiy blogs, Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, and there are various genres and formats. other social media sites you might Some bloggers focus on a narrow use. All of this will make you more range of topics (like scholarly comvisible to other social media users, munication or instruction), while which -will help to increase your auothers tackle any topic that piques dience. their interest. In term.s of format, As with any writing online, it's some posts are brief and contain important to be judicious about mostly links to useful resources, oth- what you're posting. Getting too ers are longer essay-type posts, and personal, too negative, or revealing still others resemble journal articles too much about work or job interand include citations. Make sure that views can be damaging to your repuyou are passionate enough about your tation. Being authentic, passionate, choice of topic(s) and format that you and thoughtful will not only attract can see yourself continuing the blog people to your blog but also distinforyearstocome. guish you as someone who cares deeply about the profession. I A blog looking for a reader So, once you've written a few blog posts, how do you get people to read them? Beyond posting interesting content regularly, a great way to increase your visibility is to take part in conversations across the blogo- MEREDITH FARKAS is head of instructional initiatives at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont, and part-time faculty at San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science. She blogs at Information Wants to Be Free and created Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki. Contact her at librarysuccessiSgmail.com. Copyright of American Libraries is the property of American Library Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.