The other day I was thinking about changing the name of my blog or, more specifically, dropping the “Curious Child” portion. Why? Because this is not a blog about being a children’s librarian or anything remotely having to do with children. I don’t even like children. Just ask my, um, children. I also want the blog title to reflect other aspects of my job. I am the University archivist and an history instructor as well as a librarian. But, ugh, coming up with a title for all of that? Who has the time or the energy? What with the children and all?
So how did I come by the Curious Child thing to begin with? Long story. And I really hope this does not lead to a lawsuit by His Royal Purpleness (because I so totally heart him and it would kill me to think that he thinks this is anything less than flattery). Anyway, I had registered for a course on social networking with Meredith Farkas through InfoPeople and as part of the course we had to set up a blog. At the time, I was seriously going through an I-love-Prince-so-much-I-can’t-stand-myself phase so I decided to put my celebrecrush out there and include it as part of my blog title. I honestly had no intention of keeping the blog or having it develop into what it has become (a place for me wax poetically about all things library related). But I have kept the blog and it did grow into something more than I expected.
So skip ahead and I am now wondering Who am I? Not just who am I as a person, but who am I as a professional and is this an image that I want to maintain? Honestly, I think it’s a bit late to think about changing everything (again with the whole time/energy thing and my lack there of) so I did the next best thing, I changed my tagline. It now reads: ”Random musings on my life as Queen of the Histolibrarianivists.” And I think that about sums it up. I’ve made a change without changing the brand that has become me.
I didn’t consciously go about developing a personal brand, it just sort of happened. And now that I am aware of me as a brand, I want to make sure that I am careful about cultivating and maintaining my image as both a professional and as an individual. There are a variety of tools available for helping you to monitor your brand and see how others view you. Try them out and see which ones work best for you.
