Last night I attended the CILIP ILIG and CILIP in London AGMs which were followed by an entertaining talk by Phil Bradley on traveling for librarianship and social media. The talk brought back memories of a talk I gave four years ago at ALA about making the most of working overseas, secondments, conferences, and if you couldn’t go, to use social media. Little did I know how much moving and traveling I would do in the years since (I’ve moved internationally twice since, and travel around 120+ days a year).

Little did I also know how overwhelmed I would be by social media four years on. I was an early adopter, and that helped me build an international network, find work, speaking opportunities, and to keep learning. Recently I’ve had a number of discussions with people about how many of us are now trying to find filters, delete accounts, or are taking digital sabbaticals. We’ve seen a flurry of books on information overload from The Shallows to The Information Diet, to Too Big to Know. That we now call Inbox Zero, reading fiction books from end to end, or getting through a long article achievements is astonishing.

I took a break from blogging in 2005: foretelling what was to come with today’s social media?

I really think those who use social media lightly (one or two accounts, friend or follow fewer people) have a great advantage. They’re not getting caught up in hype about new sites. They have inbuilt information filters. They’ve found what works for them and social media is not a problem that has to be managed.

Phil argued that librarians must be advocates for access to social media for their jobs if access to Twitter, Facebook and other sites is blocked in the workplace. I agree and don’t believe any sites should be blocked for librarians or our users, but it is difficult to find arguments that will work in all workplaces. “I need it for my job” in my experience, didn’t work so well as developing a good working relationship with IT staff. I will be interested to see what CILIP come up with in their proposed guidelines, other associations are working on this topic too.

I tend to think that with many of us owning a computer at home, or a phone (you can access Facebook through SMS if you don’t have a smartphone), if there are library professionals in the UK who have not yet signed up for Twitter or Facebook et cetera it is probably because they have not yet found a compelling reason to do so, or have chosen not to. A site being inaccessible from work is not the barrier it once was, unless you are setting up an official social media presence for the library. I know many high profile librarians who know a lot about social media, privacy, networking, and decided that a social media presence is not for them. If you want to be on social media, like many other forms of professional development, you will have already found a way to make it happen.

Things are different in countries where it can be difficult to get access to steady electricity, let alone a fast Internet connection, yet I never cease to be stunned by how many librarians I know in Cameroon, Haiti, Peru and Ukraine who are avid Facebook users.

As for me, I’ve unfriended, unfollowed, unsubscribed, filtered, deleted and culled. I want less, but I want what’s important not what just happens to be out there everyday. Dunbar’s number is proving to be a great rule of thumb. It’s time to put social media to work for me, rather than me working to manage social media.