Before I fulfill the promise of the post’s title, let me update you on my so-called TwitteRetreat. It lasted about three days, during which time I really didn’t check in with Twitter at all. On the third day, I popped in once, remarked on the strength of my compulsion to get back in the ring and left for another day.

The following day, I came across a situation where I needed the counsel of my trusted network. They came through and then some. I knew right then I wouldn’t be able to stay away forever.

So I’ve renegotiated my relationship with Twitter. I’m only following the conversations intermittently, during down times. I’m being more selective about updating my own status. I’m only monitoring direct messages and replies to my tweets. This has allowed me to stay part of the community with far less moment-to-moment commitment. It’s far more manageable and I’ve had little trouble letting go of the things I’m missing and am not trying to catch up on conversations gone by.

Anyway, a situation arose on Friday that I found perplexing and which reminded me that, at the end of the TwitteRetreat post, I’d committed to saying more about how I manage my social networks. I received a friend request on Facebook from someone with whom I was not familiar. Not all that unusual and not something I shy away from.

On both Twitter and Facebook, I have an informal rule that I be conversational with anyone who wants to be part of my social network. Many of you reading this know that already. I want to feel connected in some way to the people who I see in my friends list on Facebook or my followers list on Twitter. It’s really a pretty low threshold for calling two people connected and it usually consists of me sending a message to the requester asking the following two questions: “Who are you? Why follow me?” On Facebook, the second question is “Why be my friend?” This is known affectionately (or otherwise) by some as “The Quiz.” I point out in my messages that these questions are meant conversationally, not curtly. Hard to do much with 140 characters interview-wise.

The responses I get to the questions are varied, but the vast majority of people at least answer. Some people are really appreciative of the message and my efforts to engage. One person told me that they actually respected me more for asking. It is, admittedly, a hoop of sorts, as I’m not interested in people who are just padding their numbers. In every case where the person has responded with something more than “Facebook said we should be friends,” I’ve been able to sustain enough interaction and conversation to consider the person part of my world. The relationship has meaning and context.

And now, back to our story. So I sent this person my usual introductory message, including the quiz. A day or so later, when I was dipping back into Twitter, I noticed the very same person requesting to follow me on Twitter. “OK, this person really wants to engage me,” I’m thinking to myself.

Twitter, unfortunately, does not allow me to direct message someone who doesn’t follow me (which is a good policy to avoid spamming and such, but I’d like an exception for when someone you don’t know is requesting to follow you).* So in order to make an another attempt to chat, I accept the request. And because I always follow people who follow me, I also start following this person at the same time. I send the new follower a direct message saying that I’m going to skip the usual quiz, since I expect to chat on Facebook. No response.

A few days later, I saw that this person was sending out tweets, so I thought I’d make another attempt at interaction. “Hi there. Still haven’t heard from you here or on Facebook. Don’t want to conversate? ” Without directly quoting the response I got, the person essentially said “Not really. Want to save Facebook for real faces. Have had great conversations here.”

Mind you, I’d have taken a conversation in either place, but now this person has done two things: 1. Indicated that, despite seeking great conversations, they don’t want to talk to me. 2. Wasted my time by telling me they want to be my friend, when in fact, they don’t. And why would you ask to friend me on Facebook, if you are saving Facebook for real faces?!?!?!

I was blown away. With Facebook, it’s trivial to ignore a friend request, which was my next move. On Twitter, the situation is a little trickier. In order to attempt conversation, I had to accept this person as a follower. Once it is clear that I don’t really want this person as a follower, I have no choice but to block them. I really hate doing this. I’m sure this is a perfectly nice person with whom I have no interest in creating static. But I don’t want people to be part of my Twitter conversation who aren’t willing to engage me personally. Period. Your approach may be different and that’s great.

This is actually the third person I’ve blocked for similar reasons. When I mentioned this on Twitter, a very interesting discussion emerged. I was asked about how I define my social network and how this compares with my approaches to Flickr or this blog.

Flickr is an interesting case. I actually have no control (to my knowledge) of who adds me as a contact, but I have complete control of which people I consider friends or family members. Most of my pics are only available to friends and family. For someone to be considered my friend on Flickr and thus have access to images of my personal life, I expect to have already established a relationship with them somewhere else, whether it’s on Facebook or Twitter, via the comments on this blog or somewhere out in the real world. Flickr is not, in and of itself, a place where I network. For other people, it is.

And that’s the main point of what has become yet another too-long blog post: everyone has a different idea of where social networking happens and what it looks like. I surely have a different philosophy than most of the people who read this blog. But it’s essential to me that I connect directly with the people that I consider to be within my social networks. It’s the primary element that gives it any meaning at all.

* Jessamyn West has indicated to me that Spaz will allow you to direct message someone who doesn’t follow you, but my attempts to do so were fruitless.

Meredith Farkas tackles the issue of what to tell newcomers to the profession when they ask how she’s done so much in so little time in the profession. Seeing as I’m clearly suffering from logorrhea this weekend, it made more sense to talk about it here, rather than in her blog comments.

The ultimate question from the post: “What advice would you offer a new librarian looking to start speaking, writing and networking on a national level?”

There’s a part of me that says they have the wrong goal in mind (excepting the networking part). As Meredith said, most people who are seen as movers and shakers didn’t set out to be movers and shakers.

But there’s the other part of me that says there aren’t any barriers to writing on a national or global level, so what’s the issue? Just do it. That’s how I got started. There are so very few impediments to self-publishing online that it’s unfathomable that anyone who wants to be writing isn’t doing it.

But as I said, I’m not sure I can recommend focusing on speaking and writing as a goal in and of itself for the new librarian. Following the sage wisdom of Walt Crawford, first have something to say. Figure out what gets you excited in the profession (or outside of it!) and write about it. Get that blog started. Share your passion. Share your experiences. But remember that the writing, while immensely valuable, is not the experience itself, at least not for most newbies.

At the same time that you’re writing, join conversations, whether on other blogs, Twitter, wherever. And when you join those conversations, don’t forget to tell people what you’re doing and where to find you. Self-promote. Tactfully, yet shamelessly. We’re notoriously poor self-promoters in this profession. It’s an undervalued, misunderstood skill amongst library professionals.

Soon, you’ll find that you’re the one starting conversations. And that’s when you’ll know that you’re starting to find your unique voice. Those conversations are often the ones that turn into mainstream articles or conference presentations.

And if you plan on speaking, you’d best be submitting proposals, because until you’ve established yourself as a speaker, people aren’t going to come looking for you.

If I can be said to be on the right path to “making a name for myself” in library land, I attribute it to two things: good timing and, exactly as Meredith said, “seeing an unfilled need and filling it.”

Good timing, because I started my blog over five years ago, when there weren’t nearly as many voices in the blogosphere. I was noticed simply for listening to Sonic Youth, which I’m not sure is a realistic expectation these days. [Note that said post from Mr. Cohen was my first taste of librarian-related fanboy giddiness.]

That link from Library Stuff was really the beginning of everything else that happened to me outside of my day job. It crystallized the potential of the blogging medium and emboldened me to keep going. Not long after, I stumbled into something of a niche searching for new library blogs. This led not only to my stint as the LIS Weblogs editor at DMOZ, but to LIS Blogsource (big ups to all five of you who remember it!) and to my first national conference presentation, talking about blog search.

And again, good timing when it came to seeing a need and filling it. Librarianship needed a podcaster. I needed something to obsess over. A library podcaster was born.

“Anyway, enough of me talking about me,” he said self-referentially. In the end, I agree with Meredith: Writing and speaking have been benefits of being passionate, curious, motivated and willing to put myself out there. I didn’t set out to be a writer/speaker. I still don’t think of myself that way. In fact, one of the main draws of librarianship was the opportunity to “do the research and not write the paper.” But that’s a different blog post for another day.

I’m posting a short excerpt from Sarah Long’s article on recruitment, as I suspect there are some people who will disagree strongly with the premise:

“The average age of librarians working today is between 46 and 50. It’s easy to deduce that there will be a great number of retirements in the next few years.

There is much concern in library circles about what is going to happen as the retirements take place. Recruiting more people into librarianship seems to be the obvious answer.”

I may talk about this issue in my next full show, but suffice it to say that this does not correspond to my experience either as a job seeker or as a person in an organization with plenty of retirement age staffers.

Look for more CiL audio commentary later tonight…

After some reflection, I wanted to ramble a bit more about using an agreed-upon tag to collocate resources related to the upcoming Computers in Libraries conference. Writing this post also gives me the opportunity to test out the MT TechnoratiTags plugin, which couldn’t be much easier to implement and use is proving to be more of a pain in my buttocks than I had imagined.

Anyway, I must admit to some frustration at the lack of feedback and discussion about using a common tag across the various folksonomical sites, such as Flickr or del.icio.us (sorry for the lack of hypertextuality, but it’s late and I’m lazy). Still, I’m confident that this is a good idea and that, as information professionals, we need to insert ourselves into the folksonomies turf and show what we can do with our “Information Organization and Access” skills. We’re already lagging behind other efforts in this domain. Exhibit A: the Northern Voice blogging conference. They had the complete package: a conference website built as a blog, updated before, during and after the conference; an aggregator featuring all of the participating bloggers at the conference; AND organized tagging. Granted, there was no discussion about the tags, just an edict from Ronald Tanglao declaring northernvoice to be the tag of choice, but the results are undeniable. Here are the aggregated results of the northernvoice tag in Technorati, Flickr (658 photos!) and del.icio.us.

Applying this to content related to Computers in Libraries seemed like such a commonsense idea to me, but I realize now that I may have been presumptuous on a few different levels.

First, in all likelihood, no one reads this blog anymore given my extended hiatus and lack of worthwhile content. Totally understandable, although those of you who kept me in your aggregator were immediately alerted to my return. There are also probably some who are only subscribed in their podcatcher and therefore miss any of the text content (any feed I subscribe to with my podcast aggregator, I also subscribe to in Bloglines).

Second, most people aren’t going to this particular conference and therefore couldn’t care less. OK, fair enough, but I’d still like to know what term you’d use to search for content related to the conference. I like to believe that we do this kind of collocation for the particular benefit of those who can’t be there in person, making those perspectives essential.

Third, most people, even in the blogosphere, are not necessarily “early adopters” and therefore haven’t really participated in any tagging-based sites. Thus some education might be in order, although I don’t fancy myself the ideal candidate. Still, I’d be happy to guide anyone who expressed interest.

As the Northern Voice conference demonstrated, consensus tagging is only one part of the picture, but it’s the part I’ve tried to motivate, however unsuccessfully. I’d love to see Information Today (or anyone with the skills/resources, for that matter) take up the reins and demonstrate that the LIS world is not going to be left in the dust when it comes to organizing digital resources.

Incidentally, with the publication of this post, there should be a Technorati tag page for cil2005.

It’s interesting to see jessamyn and Sarah Houghton both addressing a topic I posted here over a year ago, namely, the Distributed Library Project.

Despite my sentiments, the project is growing legs. In addition to the Bay Area effort (linked above), there’s a wiki related to a British effort in developing the project. On the wiki, there’s a Slashdot comment that I quoted which, to a degree, makes it seem like I am the “incensed librarian” being referenced. Not exactly, but it could have been me, if I had been clever enough to come up with a Distributed Lavatory Project.

Anyway, I think my initial reactions to the project still apply. So read ‘em, if you’re so inclined.

I was reading a fairly interesting New York Observer article about the culture of the Netflix queue, of which I am an active participant, when I came across the following passage (bold is mine):

“I hector people to use it, kind of embarrassingly,” said Robert Levine, a former senior editor at Wired, now a freelance writer. “A friend of mine was complaining she was late in returning a DVD to Blockbuster, and I was like, ‘Why would you want someone charging you a late fee?’ It’s not like the late fees are so financially onerous, but they send you a notice that it’s late in the mail. And then you have to go in and pay. If they could just take the fucking late fee from my credit card, it’d be fine. But then you have to go into the store and wait in line again. I mean, it’s like getting in trouble with the library. I don’t understand why anyone puts up with it.”

I’m sure I don’t need to analyze the faults of Mr. Levine’s analogy for you, but his comments raise a compelling point: why don’t more libraries allow patrons to pay their fines online? Why, if we are going to maintain financial penalties, do we not provide all possible means to settle up? Isn’t the burden of having to pay the fine taxing enough?

Am I the only person finding many fewer recognizable names on the Council Ballot this year as compared to last year’s? How am I supposed to select 34 people from a list of 93 unknowns in some sort of reasonable time span? Especially when everyone has the pro-library platform. Oh, so you “plan to support initiatives to increase funding for libraries?” Funny, so do 92 of your closest ballot compatriots. What an unbelievable coincidence! “ALA should be a strong advocate for libraries.” Wow, controversial and edgy. Really taking a stand. “Better salaries for librarians.” Well, at least you’re talking to me, rather than at me.

In the end, I’ll probably just repeat last year’s methodology: public librarians rule. If name recognition has any bearing on the election (and I find it hard to imagine that it doesn’t), I’ll bet Michael McGrorty has a legitimate shot at election. Which reminds me, I need to send him a library card.

It was one year ago today that I made the following senseless remark:

“Oh great, another blog.

Oh yeah, he’s engaged too.

Well, now he’s married, he works and he owns a home. What a difference a year makes. The people I’ve met and opportunities that I’ve been offered as a result of my modest publishing efforts here at Open Stacks have far outdistanced any preconceptions I may have had. To those of you who’ve inspired me, a heart-felt thank you.

So let’s honor this anniversary with some good old-fashioned congrunting. Warning: This post published late at night without proper editing. Read at own risk.

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OK, as promised, a laundry list of experiences, reflections and comments from my recent adventures in D.C.

Preface: Conferencing is all about networking and I met some amazing people at this conference. I’ve mentioned before that after almost a year in the blogosphere, I’d never met a single one of my online acquaintances. Can’t say that anymore and I couldn’t have been more pleased to share company with all of my cybercolleagues.

So without further adieu, an extended recap of the first day of CiL.

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