Skip to main content

Blogger security

Reading this article referred to by James Mullan, I can see a lot of sense in it. Although I deliberately don’t blog anything provocative, and I’ve not made great attempts to hide my identity, I feel I’m reasonably anonymous, unless I choose to give away more information / contact others.

But meeting with a colleague from another sector last week, she told me how she’d been looking for a quote about Facebook for a presentation, and found a post on a blog which seemed to say what she wanted…then she saw the name of the blog, read the profile…and a few things added up to confirm that the blogger was me. Now, that’s not a problem, I know her, she knows me, and I’m happy enough to be identified as the author of this blog (what my employers view on that may be is unknown, as yet!), but it just shows what a small world it really is…especially in the legal profession in Scotland! If I’m identifiable professionally, what about personally?

In my personal blog I’d though I was very careful about giving away personal information…but thinking about it now, I realise you can discover the first name of my partner, our cats, what city we live in, what area of that city, where my parents live / where I am from….actually, you know, I think I might be making that an invite-only blog VERY soon! One stalker in a lifetime was more than enough for me, thank you very much!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

When mentoring malfunctions

Mentoring's one of the standard activities that you'll come across in the information profession. We're very caring and sharing like that, wanting to support people in their professional development. As you start your career as an information professional, you'll regularly hear the advice: get a mentor. Or, as you advance in your career and seem to be doing well, you'll be advised to become a mentor. This is fine: yes, both being mentored and being a mentor can be excellent relationships, and very useful for both parties involved. But.....mentoring relationships are like any other relationships: they can go wrong. And they can go wrong in a whole lot of ways. I've heard of mentors and mentees whose relationships have malfunctioned due to mismanagement, wrong focus, disinterest, and inappropriate behaviour. Like any other relationship, bullying and abuse can happen in mentor/mentee arrangements, but it can be very difficult for the participants to escape t...

Time to shut down?

I've been thinking a lot recently about what my blog is actually contributing. I'm not a leading 'thinker', I'm not an investigative reporter, I'm not really great at anything, I'm just, well, here. It's been great for meeting other law librarians, both in the UK and internationally, but do I actually really contribute anything useful or new? I don't think so, to be very honest. So what's the point of me continuing this blog? I can now post (hopefully) useful stuff to the law.librarian collaborative blog, which I would otherwise have posted here, so this blog has become kind of surplus to requirements really. I started it to post items I thought were relevant to my field, so I could refer back to them easily, but law.librarians does a far better job of it together than I could ever do on my own! I may continue to post items of relevance to Scots law only, or the more fun / frivolous that doesn't really fit on law.librarians, but I think that...

Careering along

When I look around at the activities of information professional groups, it seems that there’s a disparity. There’s quite often a lot of support and funding available for those who’re just starting out in the profession, but a desert of nothingness for those of us who’re “just getting on with it”. If you’re a new professional, you have lots of groups to support you as you progress in your early career, various prize funds available for essay and report writing, access to bursaries for conference attendance, eligibility for awards for being new and enthusiastic. But what do you get when you’re past that bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed first 5 years (5 years seems to be the approximate cut-off point for becoming “established” and no longer new). What happens when you’ve already received a bursary from an organisation earlier in your career and so wouldn’t be eligible for one now, meaning you’re not able to attend events or training? When you’re heavily involved in a project but not at ...