creating & managing your scholarly web presence

Creating & Managing

Your Scholarly Web

Presence

Virginia Tech Libraries

Googled yourself lately?

Why manage your web presence?

• Augment your networking

• Find collaborators and a community

• Make yourself and your scholarship more visible

• Eliminate professional and scholarly

misidentification

• Measure and assess scholarly impact

• Contribute to your profession and discipline

• Engage in meaningful professional discussion

• Understand that you already have an online identity

• Make the conscious decision to develop that identity

• Search for what’s already out there

• Consider the false dichotomy of personal v. professional on the web

• Think about personal branding (proactive online identity

management)

• Think about scholarly identification

• Utilize tools for personal branding and scholarly identification

• Be aware of security and privacy issues

• Follow up, maintain your information, and be vigilant

How to begin…

Searching: Tools

•

• Google

• Pipl

• Spokeo

• Social networking sites

“…the line between personal and

professional no longer exists…”

(Markgren)

Two concepts

Personal Branding

Scholarly Identification

“The public expression and projection of an individual’s

identity, personality, values, skills, and abilities.” (BNET)

• Keep consistent:

• Visual image

• Identification

• Message/vision

• Skills

• Goal

• Interests & passions

“A personal brand is a by-product, not an end itself.”

(Kim)

Personal branding: Example

Bobbi Newman:

aka Librarian By Day

Various social media

outlets, same name

and photo

Personal branding: Tools

Other Stuff

• Your vision and mission

statements

• Consistent headshot

• Unique image or

graphic

Technology

• Facebook

• Google+

• LinkedIn

• Slideshare

• Twitter

• Tumblr

• WordPress, Blogger

• Goodreads

• Delicious

Looking for an easy way to be consistent? Use IFTTT.com

IFTTT stands for “if this, then that,” which will let you change

images and messages across multiple social media platforms

Scholarly identification

As researchers and scholars, you face the ongoing

challenge of distinguishing your research activities

from those of others with similar names. You need to be

able to easily and uniquely attach your identity to

research objects such as datasets, equipment, articles,

media stories, citations, experiments, patents, and

notebooks.

--ORCID (http://orcid.org/content/initiative)

Researcher profiles & identifiers •

• VTechWorks

• Google Scholar Citation profile

• Mendeley

• Academia.edu

• Nature Network

• Scholar Universe (ProQuest)

• ResearcherID (Thomson Reuters)

• ORCID

• …and others

Online portfolios/websites

(What is) the future of the CV and the resume (?)

Creating a personal space to showcase your ideas, vision,

work, and experience requires little more than a computer

and an internet connection

ePortfolios are now required in many higher education

institutions enabling students to:

Showcase their relevant work/coursework

Demonstrate a range of skills

Have a positive online identity

Online portfolios: Tools

Site building tools

• About.me

• Re.vu

• Google Sites

• Kafafa

• Wix

• Weebly

• Hint: pay attention to the domain name

• Free sites often give you the option to upgrade to a unique domain

name that you have purchased for a minimal annual fee

• If you can, use the name you’ve selected for everything else

Measuring scholarly impact

NO ONE CAN READ EVERYTHING. We rely on filters to make

sense of the scholarly literature, but the narrow, traditional

filters are being swamped. However, the growth of new,

online scholarly tools allows us to make new filters;

these altmetrics reflect the broad, rapid impact of

scholarship in this burgeoning ecosystem. We call for

more tools and research based on altmetrics.

--Jason Priem, Dario Taraborelli, Paul Groth,

Cameron Neylon (altmetrics.org/manifesto)

Altmetrics

Steven B. Roberts's 103-page tenure package features the

usual long-as-your-arm list of peer-reviewed publications.

But Mr. Roberts, an assistant professor at the University of

Washington who studies the effects of environmental

change on shellfish, chose to add something less typical to

his dossier: evidence of his research's impact online.

http://chronicle.com/article/Rise-of-Altmetrics-

Revives/139557/

June 2013 Chronicle article

Altmetrics examples

• Google Scholar

• Figshare

• ImpactStory

• Mendeley

• ReaderMeter

• Slideshare

• Twitter

More reading: http://www.mendeley.com/groups/586171/altmetrics/

Professional Impact: ImpactStory article

dataset

Discover,

Share

and Cite

Anything:

Figshare

Balancing security and privacy

issues • Protecting your computer or other devices

• In a recent Consumer Reports survey, 1/3 of households surveyed experienced a

malicious software threat, costing them $2.3 billion and causing them to replace 1.3

million PCs

• 30% of survey respondents who have bank, medical, and other sensitive data on

their phones do not secure their phones

• Protecting yourself and your personal information

• 15% of survey respondents had listed location or travel plans on a social network

• 34% had listed their full birth date

• 21% of those with children had posted children’s names and photos

• Removing information from the web

• Is difficult, if not impossible

• Consider the Digital Tattoo project: http://digitaltattoo.ubc.ca/

• Can be requested of Google:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=164734

Maintenance & vigilance

• Constantly keep an eye on what is out there about you—

make sure that you catch any incorrect or bad information

• The work you put in to developing an online identity will

be lost if the information is not maintained and kept up to

date

• Additionally, think of this step as an “assessment” step—

who’s looking at your stuff, and why? This can inform

your future online identity development

Maintenance & vigilance: Tools

• Google Alerts

• Google Me on the Web

• Google Scholar Citations

• Google Analytics

• Look for statistic options in other software, such as:

• WordPress

• Slideshare

• About.me

• …Many social media tools and profiles have a statistics option—

look for it, and utilize it!

Google Alerts

Google Me on the Web

Google Analytics

Final Thoughts

• Creating and managing your online identity doesn’t have

to be hard or time consuming

• Often, just a little work will pay off in big ways

• Many of the tools we looked at are incredibly flexible, so \

capitalize on that

• Balance security and privacy with the information you post

about yourself, AND OTHERS

And, don’t be surprised…

Quick Discussion

What was the most helpful thing we discussed today?

Which tools do you already use or want to know more

about?

What tools do you use that you didn’t see up here?

Other questions?

Additional References •ACRL New Members Discussion Group. (2011). Tips: Personal Branding and Digital Identities for New Librarians. Retrieved from

http://connect.ala.org/files/66007/acrl_nmdg_alamw11_handout_pdf_68737.pdf

•Betancourt, L. (2009). A guide to protecting your online identity. Mashable. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2009/04/21/protecting-online-identity/

•Bell, S. (2011). The WHY of your brand. LibraryJournal.com. Retrieved from http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/communityacademiclibraries/888893-

419/the_why_of_your_brand.html.csp

•BNET. (2010). Personal brand. Retrieved from http://www.bnet.com/topics/personal+brand

•Bradley, T. (2011). 7 hints to stay safe online. PCWorld Business Center. Retrieved from

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/218243/seven_hints_to_stay_safe_online.html

•Consumer Reports. (2011). Online exposure. Consumer Reports Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2011/june/electronics-

computers/state-of-the-net/online-exposure/index.htm

•Digital Tattoo Project. Digital Tattoo. DigitalTattoo.ubc.ca. Retrieved from http://digitaltattoo.ubc.ca/

•Farkas, M. (2010). Your virtual brand: online presence for professional success. American Libraries, 41(3): 28. Retrieved from

http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/columns/your-virtual-brand

•Kim, B. (2011). Surprise—a personal brand is a by-product. Library Hat. Retrieved from http://www.bohyunkim.net/blog/archives/1048

•Levine, J. (2009). Who is managing your online identity. The Shifted Librarian. Retrieved from http://theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2009/02/18/who-is-managing-your-online-

identity.html

•Markgren, S. (2011). Ten simple steps to create and manage your professional online identity: how to use portfolios and profiles. College & Research Libraries News, 72(1):

31-35. Retrieved from http://crln.acrl.org/content/72/1/31.full

•Miller, R. (2011). Around the web: online identity management. Notes from Newman: HNFE Research & Resources. Retrieved from

http://hnfelibrarian.blogspot.com/2011/02/around-web-online-identity-management.html

•Putnam, L. (2011). Web reviews: where to start creating your online portfolio. NMRT Footnotes, 40(4). Retrieved from

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/rts/nmrt/news/footnotes/may2011/online_portfolio_putnam.cfm

•Rubenking, N.J. (2011). The best free antivirus software. PCMag.com Retrieved from http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2388652,00.asp#fbid=kHnXan2I05x

•Salpeter, M. (2011). How to improve your online identity. U.S. News, Money. Retrieved from http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-careers/2011/03/30/how-to-

improve-your-online-identity

•Schawbel, D. (2009). Personal branding 101: how to discover and create your brand. Mashable Business. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2009/02/05/personal-branding-

101/

•Swoger, B. (2011). Managing your scholarly identity. The Undergraduate Science Librarian. Retrieved from

http://undergraduatesciencelibrarian.wordpress.com/2011/01/12/managing-your-scholarly-identity/

Contact Information

Rebecca Miller, millerrk@vt.edu, @rebeccakmiller,

rebeccakatemiller.com

Andi Ogier, alop@vt.edu

Purdom Lindblad, purdom6@vt.edu