12 Things: Thing 3

Working Collaboratively

Wikis
As a member of EEHIST, I have been using Wikis for a few years. The group uses PBWorks to host a wiki where we can share documents, discuss and collaborate on projects. I think many healthcare staff are aware of Wikipedia but not many I have spoken to are aware of the ability to start your own wiki and use it in this way. It's a great tool when you are part of a regionally dispersed group and eliminates the need for emails to clog up inboxes!

Another wiki I find useful is CATNIP: Critical Appraisal Toolkit Navigating into Practice http://catnipnw.pbworks.com. It is a closed wiki, so you have to request permission to access, but is an excellent resource for critical appraisal.

For medical wikis I start at Webicina - http://www.webicina.com - this is brilliant so do have a look if you haven't come across it before (there is a link on EEL!). It is divided in medical specialties - 38 at last count including Medical Librarianship - and each one gives links to Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, Twitter, video etc. It's great as a starting point, and also for showing to healthcare staff. There are also guides to Web 2, including managing a medical blog and keeping up to date. The founder is Berci Mesko and you can follow him on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/Berci

I also find Wikipedia of great use - especially for critical appraisal / research / statistical explanations!

Google Drive
Again, as part of EEHIST and as an author of 12 Things, I have used Google Drive (was Docs) quite a bit and it's another really useful tool. As part of a work group based around the region it's so useful to be able to work on a document with others, without having to keep emailing it around. You can see any updates made and who has made them. It's useful for sharing, not only with other group members, but also publicly. When HDAS was updated a few months back, I saved my updated guide to Google Drive, shared it using the "Anyone with the link" option. This gave me a link that I could Tweet to my followers - easy!

Meetings
I use Google Calender personally rather than in a work capacity. I have been invited to meetings via Doodle or Meet-o-Matic (not sure which one) and it was incredibly easy to use. I shall investigate if the need arises - as I have just taken on co-chair of EEHIST this may be quite soon!

Thing 3: Online branding

Before reading Thing 3 I hadn't given much thought to my online presence or considered myself a brand at all so this particular exercise has been particularly interesting and it is certainly something I need to give more thought to.

I started this blog because of participating in CPD23 - it didn't take long to come up with the name (can you tell?!) and I had no worries about using my real name as I plan it to be a professional space. I'll have to see how it develops after this programme has finished, and whether it will need a change of name sometime in the future. I was pretty quick to choose a design to start with, but have now changed it to the autumn leaves design. I do see the benefit of having an easily recognisable brand that can be replicated in different areas, such as Jo's penguin and purple flowers.

My main online activity is Twitter and I tweet as DebsL72. I do not use this name anywhere else, in fact I am a firm Deborah everywhere but home! I guess I chose this because when I signed up to Twitter I was a bit unsure as to what it was all about, and thought it would be something more suited to personal than professional. In fact, after signing up I actually didn't use it for a long time, and it was only through the recommendation of Isla Kuhn that I got going with it. I now use it mainly as a professional tool, with some, but not much, life stuff thrown in. I'm certainly always conscious of what I say in a tweet, certainly as I think most people follow me because I'm a librarian and probably aren't overly interested in my home life! I think it's time for a change of username, so I'll need to think about that and tie that in with the blog.

I have a LinkedIn account, but have not really explored this fully - hopefully Thing 6 will get me on track with it.

I'm happy to use a photograph of myself, albeit a few years out of date and wearing sunglasses! I am certainly not very photogenic and it was the best of a bad lot! I'm using the same one on Twitter and this blog, so they should be easily connected, but have a different one on LinkedIn. Probably time for a new photo all round.

So, onto the Google search. Either I have an unusual surname, or I have more online presence than I thought as the first page of results were mainly about me (more likely the surname and I have my husband to thank for that!) The top result was Twitter, followed by Facebook. I only use Facebook for personal stuff, so may need to look at my settings. LinkedIn came up, as did my entry on HLISD, a CILIP biography for the Health Libraries Conference in 2008 and the presentation I gave (with Isla Kuhn) at Lilac2010. The next page had some links to my local activity. There was a Myspace entry that wasn't mine, and a couple of directory type entries (192.com) which are inaccurate.

A Sheep on Happy Hills Farm

There are a few other Deborah Lepleys  but my favourite was the owner of Happy Hills Farm in Florida, which sounds just lovely! It's a sheep farm and as so far I have not added any pictures to my blog, here is a picture of Deborah Lepley's sheep.

So, I feel I have some work still to do on Deborah Lepley the brand, and would welcome any comments.