I have a love/hate relationship with blogging. I love to read blogs and I am at least curious, if not yet completely convinced, about the benefits of writing them. What I don't really understand is how anyone finds the time to do either.
I am a librarian and have worked in the UK health sector for seven years. I'm signing up this Summer for cpd23, aka 23 Things for Professional Development, an online programme aimed at improving one's understanding of Web2.0 technologies and using them to reflect on career development.
In Thing 1, participants must write about why they are taking part in the course. I suppose, among other things, I am curious to see whether I can really make blogging, tweeting and other social networking work for me in a professional context. Apart from "will I find the time?", I'm also interested in finding out how many of the issues that I deal with day-to-day will be suitable for public consumption. Problems with one's users, one's colleagues, one's suppliers, etc. would seem to be largely off-limits... Will I be able to reflect on work in a meaningful, interesting way, without being able to spell out the details? I wait to find out.
I have recently been appointed as the head of a large NHS library and knowledge service and have an awful lot to learn. For that reason, the benefits of reflection, reading and engagement with CPD are enormous for me at the moment, and these are things that I have struggled to make time for throughout my career. Should I even be spending the time to write this now, I wonder, while watching my email inbox rapidly fill up? It really is hard to carve out that time for personal development, and hopefully cpd23 will be the push that I need to do just that.
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