#cpd23 Thing 3 or why can't you just let me be me?

Right, please dismiss the words that follow as completely naive, but I've been moved to write about library branding after being inspired by all the fabulous blog posts I've read on the subject, such as those from Library Wanderer, Blog On and rampersandk. The same as the first two, when I google myself and check my online identity, there are millions of people with the same name as me as I also have a very common name, but it was mostly taken up with a certain wedding dress designer. Despite being intimidated; some of the posts made me feel like I was facing a 150mph serve from Andy Roddick, some were more subtle like a sliced Nadal backhand; I feel I have something to say on the matter. I am coming from an entirely different angle, I won't use another tennis reference, I promise. Wimbledon has finished now and I must let it go.

I work in a business school where branding is obviously very important and not only for our students, we even have a department trying to maintain a consistent image. This has its own problems. How can you have one brand for everyone, for an entire organisation with all its departments? So my trick is don't try and just be yourself. Here's Will Young, unashamedly being just that:

It has nothing to do with branding, it's just called Who Am I, is one of my favourite songs and a fantastic video. It's a song about being honest, unashamedly, unequivocally and uncompromisingly yourself. As I was a late developer in this sense, not developing my own identity until I was sixteen; before that I was just a sheep, a clueless sheep; I am now adamant that I won't be anything less than myself. Plus I am very impressionable and my sense of self is very shaky. For example, my boss was trying to convince me last week that my second favourite film of all time, The Princess Bride, doesn't even exist and I almost started to doubt my own mind!


A lot of people have been concentrating on themselves rather than their job or their organisation's brand and this is where it gets tricky. I find it very confusing if I think of myself in terms of my job when putting things out there in the public sphere; the lines can be so easily blurred. I have my own Twitter @judgesarah account and maintain our @JudgeInfo account too, we have our own site and I have a blog and I email as myself and as part of my job, that last one from the same address. The way I see it, as long as you aren't representing your organisation, you can be yourself. Whether it means I have different names for my Twitter, my blog, my facebook, is all for the better as you are catering your "brand" to the specific audiences. If you haven't seen it yet, here is a video of Phil Bradley's brilliant CILIP Wales speech comparing web 2.0 applications to the various incarnations of Doctor Who.



Twitter for me is predominantly my work image, though I can't help a few more personal things coming through, my blog is simply for anyone who cares to happen upon my random musings and facebook is now unfortunately all old school and uni friends. So it makes sense that they will all be different. You can't admit that your favourite TV series is Alias in a place where your colleagues or students will see it, actually... I would, but most wouldn't. That's why having students friend you on facebook, like one did to me very recently, is a contentious issue. Even I, who claims to be open and honest in all things, in writing this post, have realised that I unconsciously "brand" myself.

So I guess, you need to tread carefully when it comes to branding, consider your audience and the people that will see what you're writing or creating. The idea for this post came to me when I thought of Merlin; like the eponymous wizard, you need to think about what you reveal to whom. And yes, as all the people who've read my blog posts before will know, I did mean the title to rhyme so much. That's just me. I reference popular culture as much as I can, namedrop my favourite actors, films and music, litter posts about LibraryThing with Shakespeare quotes, use Travis songs for the titles of my posts and I rhyme whenever I can. And I have no plans to change, if only on here...

The playing's the thing, wherein you'll get the most out of LibraryThing

During Cam23 when I first looked at LibraryThing, I said, and I quote, “I feel I'm missing the point on this one.” Never were truer words spoken, or written, as not only did I most definitely miss the point, I didn’t even contemplate it. I’m actually glad I did because now I’ve returned to it, all the little niggling issues seem to have been ironed out, or are less annoying now, in the grand scheme of LibraryThing; it’s much ado about nothing. I don’t think I realised the possibilities of its practical application for libraries, but when our blog was created, it opened up the opportunities as we weren’t constrained by CamTools limited setup. I have delayed this blog post, initially because I started using it for more things, then because I needed to create themed lists and now because I’m hoping to use the widget. Once that has been figured out, then I’ll publish this post. So if you’re reading this, everything has been sorted. Read on to find out how.

LibraryThing for me started off as a way to keep track of all the new books, one of my responsibilities. I used to create a monthly Word document which listed all the newest, in both senses of the word, books that had come in. It featured a picture of the book cover, the book’s details and the shelfmark. Using Photoshop, I then created an A3 poster of the most important or interesting books that had come in that month with all the same details and a description, usually taken from the back cover or flyleaf. As much as I love the quaint way of doing things, as well as going about things the hard way, when the blog came into existence, I realised that my posters and Word document weren’t suitable anymore. In fact they were obsolete, old-fashioned and just looked plain wrong on our brand new shiny platform. Nevertheless I carried on regardless, not thinking of LibraryThing. That is until, like Gregory House, a chance comment from someone provided me with the answer. I am now a total convert. I may doth protest too much, but despite its limitations and frustrations, it has since taken root in some of my other responsibilities too such as ebooks and faculty publications. It’s made my life, well, my job, so much easier. But in getting to this point, it made my job so much harder, not to mention more stressful and to tell you the truth, it still is.

LibraryThing may be very easy to use and set up, but to make it work the way you want it to is a whole other matter. This is the time-consuming part, but once that is done, it is simple. Here is my LibraryThing comedy of errors:

• I created an account, made a list and then started adding the books. However simply typing in an ISBN isn’t enough, you first have to select from the range of different sources. I found Amazon is the best and am patriotic so I’m using the British site. It seems to have the majority of the books, apart from the ones that don’t have ISBNs or are very obscure. The sole annoyance is when they don’t have a cover image, you can either select one from a range of options as the default is a bland, blank and dark cover, upload an image or use one from the web using the image address.
• Once you have selected the correct book, most of the information is imported for you. So you only have to add the classmark and make any necessary alterations to the title and author/editor fields.
• The first major issue I had was working out how to put the LibraryThing lists onto the blog. I spent weeks and weeks in a winter of discontent trying to find a way round the JavaScript limitations on wordpress.com, on the help pages, both WordPress and LibraryThing forums and emailing them direct. It was a tale of woe, so in the end I gave up on the widget and posted a simple link. At first I thought when we transfer the blog to Wordpress.org, there would be no problems at all. But I must have jinxed us as the special WordPress widget doesn’t work properly either; the book link in the widget also won't take you to the place you want it to go to: the book's home page rather than the details. I burned, I pined, I perished, but to no avail. LibraryThing takes a lot of tweaking and patience, as Miranda Hart would say, "Such fun!"
• Another problem is direct links to ebooks. You can’t post a simple link into any of the fields, but it took a week or so before I discovered a solution; you can put html code into the reviews or comments fields. That’s when I discovered LibraryThing has even limited the code so you can’t make the link open in a new tab or window, so it will only open in the same tab or window unless you right click. This is annoying, but you can live with it. You will find your expectations broken like that a lot when using LibraryThing, slowly wearing you down like Rafael Nadal breaks his opponents' spirits; “it has to do that” turns into “that’ll have to do.”
• Finally, each list has a permanent link which you can use. The lists can be customised as you like it, so that it appears with all the relevant details including ebook direct links, the tags and the classmark. Annoyingly, it won’t automatically appear and you have to accept the ‘suggested viewing style’ before it will, otherwise it uses a default style which includes basic details; tags are incorporated, as well as the standard title, author and date, but not the comments field so none of my links. The default also includes the star ratings and entry date which are most likely irrelevant; fair is foul and foul is fair.

Now instead of the documents and posters, I simply update the LibraryThing link on the blog so it goes to the latest new books list and write a short blog post, usually including any particularly interesting books that have come in that month. When we migrate to the new blog next month, I’ll just have to update the widget so it shows the latest books.

I have since branched out from the new books and created a comprehensive list of faculty publications: those books written by members of our staff. I also have started to add a list of ebooks, but it quickly became too unwieldy. Instead of creating lots of lists categorised by theme, I’ve discovered the tagging feature and spent the best part of a week labelling each book with the best descriptive tags possible, tying them in with all the other books on the list, whilst simultaneously trying to keep them relevant, concise and clear. This was no easy task as I had to remember what my tags were, juggling them all in my head, or referring to the ever increasing tags list, doubling back on myself each time I created new tags and using the subject field on the catalogue to help me with the less classifiable books. As some of the titles cross over into the other lists, and there are a few that are a faculty publication, new book and ebook, I soon found I had to tag all 304 books I have added so far to the LibraryThing lists. That’s why it took so long. Now you can simply click on a tag and see all the books that have that tag. However the tags will initially work within the particular list you’re in; you have to select the ‘All collections’ list to search them all. Once I have added all the ebooks on though, it will work to its full potential. It makes browsing the lists so much easier. LibraryThing may have a catalogue of flaws, but as a catalogue, it’s flawless. All's well that ends well. My job is made easier and it makes our students’ lives easier too, the rest is silence.