Since the late 1990s I've been making things under the moniker A/V Woman, most obviously my website, which itself is old enough to make babies. So here's one.
When I first dabbled with twitter I used the name @KingConstance by way of an OED-inspired, Sarah Grand-related pun. When I started tweeting about libraries I created a new twitter account: @SaintEvelin : it's a title/name form that riffs on the @KingConstance account (the avatar nods that way too) while also being a tenuous pun on my first names. I suspect, too, that @AVWoman was being used by someone at the time, though maybe I'm making that up. Maybe I just wanted a further separation there.
At the same time as setting up @SaintEvelin, I set up the Succentorship without Sneers 'blog: http://saintevelin.blogspot.co.uk/ (this 'blog, essentially). Both have served me very nicely, I'd like to think.
But I've tired of late of the SaintEvelin pun, not least because I'm not called Evelin. I'm also wanting to do something more with my website (I'm not entirely sure quite what of yet, but that's something to look forward to). And I'm feeling that A/V Woman is a perfectly good alias for a technologically minded librarian to hide behind. I've been a bit quiet recently, both on here and to a certain extent on twitter too, so now seems as good a moment as any to put the swap into action.
I made the twitter-switch at tea-time yesterday. Most twitter platforms these days make more play of the screen name than the handle, so switching handles isn't as obvious as it used to be. This has its pros and cons, but I think for the most part the avi and the screen name carry the brunt. In the interests of consistency I won't be swapping these. Not at the moment, anyway. I can cause more confusion in the long term this way!
Twitter is very good at handling a handle switch. Continuity is pretty seamless. The biggest drawback is if you cold-call me on my old moniker, but see the previous paragraph. I think I'm the last person left who tweets by text message. But I'm determined not to miss any messages. To account for this I've set up a holding account on my old handle. In a month I'll switch it to some other use, but in the meantime it's a neat way of occupying the void (it also staves off any would-be scavenger, keen to don my shedded skin to the further confusion of all involved). Later I'll still mop up the off-chance with a tweetdeck search column.
Then there's the 'blog. I could've just swapped the domain over from saintevelin.blogspot to avwoman.blogspot, but again I'm concerned about continuity. And in this case continuity is all the more important: I must've made it to someone's news feed, and I know there are one or two links to my 'blog from hither and thither. I don't want to lay waste to such connections. So I've trod a little more carefully in that regard.
So it is that this tabula rasa at avwoman.blogspot.co.uk is not as violent as it might have been. The old posts are still there at the old address, and the search box in the side panel will lead you back into its depths. More importantly, I'm posting this entry (and any that might follow) to the Succentorship without Sneers RSS and Atom feeds. So while this post is the first at the avwoman domain, and sits on a different page to my previous posts, the newsfeed remains a continuity of service. I think that's important.
All this adventurous plumbing being done, it will be time for me to weld it all to the website, which is kind of the whole point. But I'm still a lot hazy on what might go there. Until then, my apologies to you all for the mucking about. I'm as bad as those Olay/Ulay people, I know.
You may now updated your bookmarks...
TLFKASE
