I grew up in a conservative setting, and in my high school years, I was always wary of the Internet and of the possibility that my name might actually show up somewhere online. I didn’t want to be found or discovered by people I didn’t interact with, and I was hesitant to know that people could possibly find information about me by searching Google.
Once I got to college that mindset began to change, not because I wanted it to at first, but because it had to. All my friends were on Facebook, and that is how they communicated with each other, created events, and made plans to hang out. Without the online connection, it seems like I would have been forgotten and left in the dust.
I soon had several online profiles, and while I kept them private when I could, my online personal brand was being created. In today’s world it is almost a necessity to have an online brand in certain professions in order to make progress in the field, and I believe Library Science is one of those areas. While I still hesitate at being personally accessible, transparency is becoming more and more popular. The idea that transparency can help a company become stronger and gain more customers caught my attention this week, and I am realizing how difficult it is to truly keep things a secret in the business world.
As a possible future library professional, I think that personal branding will become necessary when communicating with potential employers, providing information about an organization, interacting with users or consumers, and more. An employer will expect a professional to be adept in online communication and know how to use tools like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and LinkedIn. While I believe that a person should be careful online and be conscious of the information that is becoming publicly accessible, developing a personal brand as a professional can help an individual in his or her future career.
