My name is Liz and I am in the Master’s of Library and Information Science (MLIS) program at the University of British Columbia’s School of Library, Archival and Information Science (started the program in January 2014). I am writing this blog as part of an assignment for LIBR 559M: Social Media for Information Professionals.

I use a variety of social media in my personal life each day. I have had personal blogs in the past but have ended up deleting them all at one point or another. I use Goodreads to track and share all of the books that I read. I also use Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. I know that Pinterest has its critics, but I find it quite useful for organizing things like recipes, things that I like about particular cities, and even historic photos. 99% of the time spent on Facebook seems like a waste (or worse)—but I know that if I didn’t have an account I’d also miss out on a lot of information and updates from friends and organizations. I “follow” a lot of organizations including libraries.

I have a twitter account that I have tried using intermittently but I have never really enjoyed using twitter. For jobs past and present (including for a museum and libraries) I’ve used the following social media platforms: blogs, facebook, twitter, and flickr. I actually really enjoy using social media for organizations/professionally, much more than using it personally.

In my personal life I use Feedly to keep track of various blogs that I follow, including a variety of library blogs and library job sites. For this class I plan to set up a hootsuite account to keep track of blog postings. I’ve heard hootsuite mentioned a lot and it seems like a good thing to know how to use.