A New Beginning?

Well, as they say all good things must come to an end and so it is with 23Things. Mondays will never be the same again. I have greatly enjoyed this course and the value of it is beyond measure. It has not only raised awareness, a valuable thing in itself, the exercises have ensured that new transferable skills have been acquired for people like me who are in danger of being left behind. The rapid pace of technological development has given rise to many new ways of communicating and seeking information. Ensconced in our libraries it is so easy for these new innovations to pass one by so a big Thank You to the 23Things team for keeping me up to date.

I have enjoyed most of the Things except Twitter and LinedIn. I don't really understand Twitter, I don't feel that I need 15 minutes of fame nor do I expect anyone to be interested in my ramblings. Is it not just attention seeking? Also by communicating solely online I sometimes wonder if people will eventually never have the need to have a face to face conversation? We have a number of off site students that I never see but correspond with regularly, an occasional face to face conversation would be nice.

LinkIn, I did not like this. I felt that too much personal information was available. As someone I know has just had their identity stolen I have become even more neurotic about security. Furthermore, last weekend a friend had his bank card cloned and someone in Jordon began emptying his account. The downside of technology!

I felt that some of the Things we explored just offered different ways of doing the same thing, although it was useful to try things out. Something I did notice was that most of the examples were from the US (Wiki's for example). I think it would have been good to have more British examples as our American cousins do tend to have different tastes.

I hope I am not sounding too negative as I certainly intend to introduce some of the Things we have used into our libraries. We already use Doodle and now use Google Calendar, Google Documents and will keep our iGoogle pages. For my multi-sited libraries, Web 2.0 is ideal as it enables all the staff to share or access these from any site. We also intend to explore ways of incorporating SlideShare into our Inductions or on our library webpages and will be gauging the interest of having a presence in Facebook.

Web 2.0 and the associated social media are beginning to shape many library services, particularly those whose users are in the 18-24 age bracket. Those of us who have mature students are a bit behind but I think that it is starting to change. Technology itself has shaped the way that libraries are accessed. In my organisation, libraries have led the way. We have for the last 3 years insisted upon an email address for library usage, the colleges now do the same. I have been digitising readings since 2007, this is now seen as the norm. The libraries also introduced Doodle for the many library committee meetings, now we all use it. Google Documents & Google Calendar next..... I know that we are not alone in this and that other libraries have influenced their organisations too. This may be the end but it is also the beginning..................

One last Thing - What are we going to do next summer................................?

A Library Wiki?

I think that this is an interesting idea and I can see many advantages in using it, particularly for local communities or small groups. However, the fact that many will be able to edit the Wiki does mean that someone would need to monitor it. I am the Secretary of ABTAPL (Association of Theological & Philosophical Libraries) and we considered setting up a Wiki last year. We decided against it as no one was able to commit the time needed to monitor it.

I very much like the idea of of the Library Routes Wiki. Illustrating the various route people have taken to achieve their current posts is interesting and very helpful to new professionals. Peoples career routes are often very surprising particularly if it can demonstrate the ways in which librarians are able to transfer to other sectors. I think that this encourages new professionals to think more laterally and illustrates how useful it is to have a wide variety of experience and that it doesn't just have to be library orientated. The CILIP, East of England CDG arranged a workshop last year in which a number of speakers, from a variety of sectors, outlined their career paths. The feedback indicated that this was enjoyed and felt to be extremely useful by the participants.

For my own library however, I do not think that it has a place at present. We have an Intranet and I administer our library pages. Unfortunately as my time is restricted I intend to focus on some of the other Things that have been highlighted first and to see what the uptake is before considering something like this. Promoting Wiki's would take a great deal of time and effort in our community .

If only I had more time!

I am a very enthusiastic podcast listener and have known about Podcasts for a number of years. I regularly download them to either my laptop or creative Zen. I don't listen to a lot of music but I love to listen to plays, poems, missed radio programmes, book readings etc.... I am even trying to improve my French this way. A few years ago I thought about having a library podcast but the feedback I received from both the academic staff and students was unenthusiastic. However, as two of my colleges regularly produce podcasts of lectures for their distance learning students perhaps I should think again. A slideshare presentation might however, be more effective and professional. I suspect that either would take time to produce and as we are short staffed, I doubt if I shall have time to produce something suitable. Unfortunately our users tend to be a bit apathetic with only 2 of our 11 institutions using our Adobe Connect Licence for recording lectures or providing video conferencing - we have a lot of technophobes!

I like YouTube and enjoyed watching the videos. Its amazing what you can find on it - hopefully the film that Libby and her team are producing about CU, college & faculty libraries will be there soon. I could spend ages on this site. My husband finds it very useful when trying to find the correct tempo for ballroom dances etc... or so he says..................

YouTube is certainly a good place to showcase a library and its facilities. However if you are going to do that I think it needs to be done professionally otherwise you might send out the wrong message. A well presented video can be a powerful aid, particularly to those who find it easier to learn this way. I personally think that as people learn in different ways the ideal would be to offer information in a variety of formats. Fortunately this is something that Web 2.0 can offer.

The wonders of sharing.......

I really enjoyed this Thing and can see lots of applications for it. My colleague & I did this Thing together, sending each other documents to edit. We found it quick easy to use and edit although a spreadsheet that we uploaded from the colleges' shared drive altered some of the content. It seems to work better if a spreadsheet is first saved onto a PC and then uploaded. We also found that large files took a long time to download. One thing we couldn't do was to work out how to 'chat' whilst working on a document. Sending messages was fine but we never received each others despite being informed that we were viewing the document. The Help section wasn't very helpful. Any ideas?

As I work across many sites and only see my staff once a week, this will be an invaluable tool. We have already uploaded a number of documents that will make our lives much easier. No more frantic searching for the memory stick, trying to remember to up date the documents on each machine, cluttering up our overflowing Inboxes ..... we will be able to access the document from any where and at any time.

I must however raise two concerns. Firstly security. If someone can access Facebook profiles, I am sure that accessing Google Documents will not be too difficult. I think that it would be very unwise to place sensitive documents on the server (wherever that may be). Secondly, it is important to ensure that documents are backed up - powercuts, acts of God etc.... I'm beginning to become as neurotic as our IT Officer (only joking Mat!).