Thing 5: Online Networks

I created my Facebook and Twitter profiles less and a year ago and I don't use them much - maybe I'm just not that talkative.

 

Facebook is mainly for keeping sort of up-to-date with what my friends and relatives near or distant are up to these days - although it's usually old news when I finally check in. The rest is quite frankly almost always a waste of time - silly jokes and videos, unpleasant political statements, commercial competitions. I have been following a few subject related groups, but I feel there was too much noise, so I left again.

Twitter is ... interesting, but tiresome. I see Twitter's potential and why I ought to use it more to broaden my horizon and discover new things. But the format really annoys me - it's too short, too esoteric and too ugly. And then I'm reluctant to click through to webpages where I'm not sure what I get - I don't have the patience for it. So I usually end up just reading my favourite stand up guy's one liners.

As I said, I feel I ought to search out interesting professionals or institutions to follow on Facebook and twitter - I've heard a lot of interesting discussions are going on there about librarianship, society, politics etc. But I just don't find the time to spend on these two chatty media.

Now, Pinterest ... that's a whole other story!

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Facebook og Twitter har aldrig rigtig fænget mig - måske er jeg bare ikke snakkesalig nok. På Facebook er der for meget støj, så jeg burger det udelukkende som sporadisk oplysningskanal om mine venner og families gøren og laden.
Twitter har sadsynligvis potentiale til meget mere med en bredere horisont, men formatet irriterer mig. Det er for kort, for indforstået og for grimt til at jeg orker det i længden. Og jeg har ikke tåmodighed til at klikke på links, som jeg ikke rigtig ved, hvad jeg vil få ud af. Mediet egner sig godt til stand upperes one liners!
Pinterest derimod - det er en ganske anden sag!

Thing 4: Google

I'm a Google fan, too.

 

Yes, I know the search engine is not a one-stop search tool ... or at least it ought not be, but in reality it very often is.
I also know that the search engine is apparently deliberately deteriorated when useful advanced features are removed.

But when I had a look at the applications available I realised that I use quite a few of them in my everyday work.
Google Translate -- I'm a heavy user when searching for information from all over the world. I look up search terms - how else would I find out what wastewater plants are called in Spanish or furniture in Lithuanian? And I have whole websites translated so I can locate the information I need without too much guessing.


Google Images -- An image search is helpful when I'm not quite sure about the translation. A picture says more than a thousand words, and it tells me that a slurry storage tank is not the same as a slurry tanker - yes, sometimes I need to find out things like that!
I also search for images when I do novelty searches in relation to patent applications. Searching within images can be a great help to establish if the invention I'm investigating is new or already known in some form or other.

Google Alerts -- When I do news monitoring on behalf of customers, Googles Alerts are part of the package.

Google Maps -- Custom maps of e.g.research centres or competitors' productions plants around the world.

Google Scholar/Google Books -- That's a must when you're a librarian :-)

Oh yes, and of course Google Blogger!

I have created a profile on Google Plus, but at the moment I can't see any personal use of it when I'm on Linkedin and Facebook. But the Hangouts app I'll definately keep in mind.


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Jeg bruger mange af Googles apps i mit daglige arbejde - oversættelse, billedsøgning, nyhedsovervågning og meget mere. Uundværlige værktøjer. Men Google Plus som endnu et socialt medie har jeg pt ingen brug for. Ej heller Hangouts - men måske kommer det en dag.

Thing 3: My professional brand

I have been working on my personal, professional brand for a few months now.

I've had a Linkedin profile since 2007, but haven't really it used very much until about a year ago when I started to follow the activities of my connections and participate and contribute myself.

This is me now.



I am very aware of the concept of online branding and I have chosen to be active in this area as I am actively looking for another job.

I try to promote myself as a professional information specialist especially withing business information and to that end I have written a few blog post on Linkedin and try to find relevant information to share with my network - news and opinions that relate to my expertise but is also interesting to people in other professions.

One great experience with Linkedin I've had, was when someone connected to someone in my network asked for an introduction to acces to public data on the internet. When I saw that I volunteered to present the topic at Internet Week Denmark and was accepted by the organisers. That was an opportunity for me to reach further than my daily circles and share knowledge with others with the same interest.

Since May 2015 I have been working on my own blog, Markedsinformation.
It's a blog about how to search for and use market information and data in relation to business and export. This topic is one of my specialties where I have gained quite some experience in the last tens years or more.

Contrary to what I thought before I started by blog, the biggest problem is not to find subjects for new posts - in fact I have a long list of things I would like to write about. The biggest problem is finding the time and focus to actually sit down, do the necessary research and write it into a blog post.

But when it happens I find it quite rewarding to be able to articulate what it is that I know and actually do for a living. Hopefully others can use my advice. I don't have any followers yet - maybe I should start promoting the blog a bit ;-)

I believe in the long term investment it is when you engage yourself in a network like Linkedin. If you are persistant it will pay off in the end with new connections, opportunities for collaboration or maybe even a new job.



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Jeg har været på Linkedin siden 2007, men har kun været rigtig aktiv inden for det seneste års tid.
Jeg arbejder aktivt med at brande mig selv som professional informationsspecialist med speciale i forretningsinformation. Til det formål har jeg skrevet nogle posts på Linkedin og forsøger at finde relevante information at dele med mit netværk. Linkedin har også udvidet mit netværk og ført mig til muligheder for at nå længere ud og møde andre med samme interesser.
Siden maj 2015 har jeg skrevet på en fagspecifik blog om markedsinformation, der giver tips, tricks og gode råd om at søge og bruge markedsinformation, som er frit tilgængelig på nettet.
Jeg tror på effekten af en langsigtet indsats, der giver chancen for nye kontakter, samarbejdsmuligheder og måske endda et nyt job.

Thing 2: Why I became a librarian

Even if my life depended on it, I couldn't tell you what I was thinking when I sent my application to the Danish library school back in 1990. 

Yes, I read a lot of books and visited the public library a lot, but that was not the reason - at least not consciously - and I never persued that line of the profession after graduation. I guess I just had to choose some kind of education and librarianship became the one.

But I never regretted my choice!

The traits of the profession suit me very well :-)  The combination of fundamental and universal skills of handling information and the never ending challenge of keeping up-to-date with technology and resources.

I have worked mainly in private companies as an information specialist, servicing colleagues in R&D, sales and marketing or the strategic department with research and information management of different kinds.
I love it that my work has a direct commercial value.

I started out as a school librarian, though. My first job was managing the library at a Norwegian upper secondary school. I stayed for four years and it was a great all round experience as a librarian being responsible for everything from aquisition to teaching information literacy and setting up exhibitions and other activities in the library.

From there I got the chance to move into the corporate world, first in the wind energy business, then in a multinational food company and finally a law firm.

For the last five years I have worked in a quite unique position - at least here in Denmark - as I have been part of a business service embedded in a public library. We are specialized in performing information searches on behalf of all kinds of companies all over the country. And I get to do all kinds of different research: How are the pharmacies organised in Sweden? Can you identify special printing companies in the Baltics? I need the annual reports of a company based in Singapore, can you help me? How about Dutch housing associations?

It's funny end extremely rewarding every time I dive into a new, unknown area and come up with exactly the information my customer needs. It's like a treasure hunt where I get to use all my skills and experience and always learn new things to use next time a question like that turns up.

I want to stay in a job like this but would prefer to be part of a company again and help colleagues instead of customers.

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Jeg kan ikke for mit liv huske, hvorfor jeg sendte min ansøgning til Danmarks Biblioteksskole i foråret 1990. Det var ikke fordi jeg læste en masse bøger og tit kom på biblioteket - selv om det var det jeg gjorde. Men en uddannelse skulle jeg jo vælge, så det blev som bibliotekar. Jeg har dog aldrig fortrudt det.
Professionen passer mig godt - kombinationen af de grundlæggende kompetencer i informationshåndtering og så den evige teknologiske udvikling.
Jeg har primært arbejdet i private virksomheder, hvor jeg har hjulpet kolleger i udvikling, salg og marketing eller strategi med informationssøgning. Jeg kan godt lide at mit arbejde har en direkte kommerciel værdi. Jeg brænder for at hjælpe virksomheder til udvikling og vækst.

What is this blog about?

This is my Rudaí23 diary and I'm excited to get started.

I've signed up to the Rudaí23: A 23 Things Collaboration.
In 23 lessons I'll discover or revisit online tools that hopefully will enhance my professional life.

I am generally very interested in web 2.0 technologies and do my best to keep up-to-date, but there's never enough time to explore everything is there? So for me this is a great opportunity to commit myself to going through a selected list of tools - including ones I'd probably never have looked into on my own.

Read about Rudaí23 here.

It's the Western Regional Section of the Library Association of Ireland that's behind it, but all information professionals around the world is welcome to participate. Thank you for setting up the course, I can see you've put a lot of work into it already :-)


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My native language is Danish, so every post will also have a summary in my mother tongue.

Rudaí23 er et online kursus i 23 udvalgte værktøjer inden for web 2.0 og sociale medier. Dette er min online dagbog, hvor jeg sammenfatter mine oplevelser og det jeg har lært undervejs i kurset.
Jeg glæder mig til at komme i gang og være forpligtet til at lære nyt og sætte mig ind i aspekter, som jeg måske ikke ville have gjort af egen drift.