First blog post

Finally, after registering for 23 Things for the last 2 years, I am now writing my first blog and committing to the course. I am not very present on social media. I have a personal Facebook account and that’s it, so I have a lot to learn, starting with how to get over the uncomfortable feeling of talking about myself.

Thing 7 and 8

Still a little behind but I have just been looking at Things 7 and 8. I use Endnote and like it. I pretty much always search for journal articles in Web of Science then export to Endnote which is easy to insert into Word. Sometimes the references don’t come out as I want; all the letters of an author’s surname are capitalised etc but I just manually change it to small case. I think it is the way the publisher has set it up, or i haven’t got the settings right, I don’t know…

Thing 8 – Creative Commons. Never heard of it. I went on the site and searched for ‘clock’ I saw this message though ‘Do not assume that the results displayed in this search portal are under a CC license. You should always verify that the work is actually under a CC license by following the link. Since there is no registration to use a CC license, CC has no way to determine what has and hasn’t been placed under the terms of a CC license’.

At first I thought the images that came up would automatically be OK to use but it seems not necessarily. I don’t quite yet understand why I would go through this site rather than a Google search. But then when I click on the Google searched clock and when I visited the page a little message at the side CCO public domain tells me it is free to use.

Thank you 23 Things. I have learnt something new.

Thing 6

Linked in, Academia.edu and Researchgate… I have a Linked in account and Researchgate but I am sure it won’t come as a surprise to anyone that they are not as complete or up to date as they could be. I accept contact requests on Linked in but I haven’t reached out to anyone, and I don’t accept contact requests from random people I don’t think fit with my field. I have used Researchgate more and find it suits my needs better, although I haven’t used any of them to look for work. Maybe if I was looking for work I would take a closer look at Linked in. I don’t feel the need to set up an account with Academia.edu at the moment as I haven’t heard any colleagues use it and trying to manage the accounts I have is time consuming.

I don’t think of my Facebook account for academic use, but that does not mean to say I don’t have colleagues as contacts. We tend to post and discuss the lighter side of science and it is a nice, more informal way of keeping in touch with researchers I have met at conferences abroad.

10 things behind…

at least. this week I’m on Twitter. I’ve had my Twitter account for at least 2 years and in that time I have followed Dr Christian (embarrassing bodies fame) and Ian Wright (the boyfriend not the football player) and that seems to be it. By some miracle I remembered my password and I’m in. I have now followed PhD comics on the recommendation of the RDP, so thanks for that, and any other recommendations greatly received.  I’m not sure who I care to hear from, that is the trouble. Certainly not celebrities or David Attenborough, I think I am the only person in the UK who does not appreciate his ‘National Treasure’ status. Just followed another one, Jo Sier in Leeds, a personal friend. Am I just going to replicate my Facebook? Will people say anything different on Twitter than they do on FB? OK back to work orientated Twitter things. I have followed Vitae and I’ll log in on my phone. Thing 5 almost accomplished. If anyone reads this what does ‘remember to tag your blog Thing 4 and 5’ mean?

Thing 4. My personal brand.

For my belated Thing 4 I googled myself, can’t remember ever doing it before, but I’m sure I must have. The first thing that comes up is my university of Surrey profile, all good. The next thing is Facebook profiles, I’m on there, a few photos I’ve posted, none of me just random stuff, then I saw a post of Peel tower in Ramsbottom with a comment “Bloody cold up here” that I didn’t post. Strange, it was my name, with a picture of the hill in my home town but it was not my profile picture. Turns out there is another Cheryl Isherwood, similar age to me from the same town and I don’t know her. What are the chances? There are a few more ladies with the same name dotted around the globe but the first one surprised me.

I then looked at Google images. None of me, again, I’m beginning to get a complex now as weirdly there are images of my colleagues from the uni when I searched for me!

There are three other Linkedin profiles the same Cheryl from Ramsbottom, one in Malta and another in New Zealand. The other links were for publications.

i seem to have a personal brand set up for radio ha ha