Managing your online presence and using it to support your research

1. Managing your online presence
This presentation contains content from Dr Helen Webster ‘s The Researcher Online:
Building an Online Identity. The slides are available here:
http://dh23things.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/the-researcher-online-building-your-online-identity/.

3. Aims
Not to teach tools, but to have:
• an understanding of the ways in which social and
digital media platforms can enhance and be
embedded in your work as a researcher
• an understanding of the issues raised by social
and digital media tools, potential pitfalls, good
practice and impact.
• knowledge of unconventional publishing methods

4. Consider three aspects of managing
your online presence
• Your profile as an individual
• Your outputs – the academic content
that you create
• Communicating and connecting
And doing it all legally!

5. Why should I bother with an online presence?

7. Assess yourself
Who are you online?
Image: John William Waterhouse, Echo and Narcisssus, Wikimedia Commons

8. Activity
Write your name on a post-it note.
Now pass it along, 2 people to your
left.

9. ...now Google your partner.
• Analyse the results and draw up a
profile of information and impressions
about that person. Don’t forget to
check the images tab!
• Now pass it back, 2 people to your
right...

10. More info about you out there...
http://www.nowlookhear.co.uk/katiepiatt/digital_identity.html

12. 60% internet users are not
concerned about the amount
of information available
about them online, and most
do not take steps to limit that
information.
http://www.pewinternet.org/2007/12/16/digital-footprints/

13. Why think harder about this at all?
http://www.welivesecurity.com/la-es/2012/08/13/google-reputacion-linea-usuario/

14. Tips for managing your digital footprint
Discover it
Clean it up
• Get rid of old accounts you no longer use (such as
MySpace or Bebo)
• If you find something that could damage your
reputation, take steps to have it removed.
Restrict it
• Adjust privacy settings
• If there’s something you don’t want to lose
control of, don’t put it in the public domain –
even privately.

15. Unconventional Publishing
Why might you consider stepping
outside of traditional academic
publishing routes?

16. Some possibilities….
−Does not demand such crafting of hardcore prose
−You can explore other tones and types of writing
−Become more aware of audience and readers
−Learn how to manage colloquialism and levity –
contrasted to the “dutiful absolutism” of academic
work
−Becoming more nimble
−Stops yourself worrying that hours spent writing or
thinking in what you might consider to be
‘unacademic’ ways eg poetry, short stories, reviews,
essays, blogs, etc. is wasted time

17. Promoting your published work

18. Excellent example of Researcher
2.0
Amy Cutler
http://amycutler.wordpress.com/
Thanks to Dr Rob Macfarlane for his
recommendation

19. Managing an online
presence: connecting
Lyn Bailey
Librarian
Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge

20. How do you communicate & connect?
cc licensed flickr photo shared by ☺ Lee J Haywood

21. What do you want to get out of
networking?
• Advice – career, research, teaching
practice, feedback
• Information – new reading, contacts
• Opportunities – jobs, conferences,
collaboration
• Support – community, interaction
• Help – new perspectives,
collaboration, sharing

22. Benefits of online networking
• Access at any time
• Contacts beyond the institution,
across the globe and across
disciplines
• Lighter touch – relationships at
different levels
• Ongoing discussions, not fixed to a
particular event or person

23. Use Social Media to connect
• Social Bookmarking
– Share links relevant to your subject (blogs, papers), subscribe
and create online bookmarks, e.g. Delicious or Pinterest
• Microblogging – Twitter
– Follow academics, researchers, groups and societies in your
subject areas, livetweeting at conferences
• Blogging as a scholarly activity
– Create a blog for colleagues or students
• Comment
– Start and join in discussions on sites e.g. Mendeley,
Academia.edu, LinkedIn
• Digital file-sharing platforms
– E.g. slideshare, Youtube

24. Build your online networks: Twitter
Create and subscribe to
Twitter lists
Check who other people follow
Search via
#hashtags

25. Managing networks on Twitter
Hootsuite – different
columns, also stream
different usernames.
Here @lettylib &
@cflcam
Tweetdeck – again
numerous columns make it
easy to track info quickly,
e.g. favourites, hashtag
search, or tweets from a
single user

26. Build your online networks: Facebook
Join/create groups in your subject
Create page for
academic promotion
Like pages from
societies/groups/
institutions

27. Build your online networks: LinkedIn

28. Be social!
cc licensed flickr
photo by Miss Vio
• Interact
• Ask questions
• Respond to queries
• Share ideas/information with others in your
network
• Collate and pass on responses

29. Any questions?

30. Contact Details
Lyn Bailey
Librarian
Faculty of Classics
Email: lkb24@cam.ac.uk
Twitter: @lettylib Tel: 01223 335154
Libby Tilley
Librarian
Faculty of English
Email: eat21@cam.ac.uk
Twitter: @LibTil Tel: 01223 767296
Jenni Lecky-Thompson
Librarian
Faculty of Philosophy
Email: jel52@cam.ac.uk
Twitter: @LewyLib Tel: 01223 331889