Social networking

Social networking has certainly taken off in the last few years and I am sure that many wonder how they managed with out it. It has replaced the art personal interaction such as letter writing, phone calls and meeting people. Where perhaps one once wrote to an individual, one can now write to many and never move from the comfort of a favourite chair. Whilst it is a great way to communicate I cannot help but wonder if something is being lost and if things will eventually turn full circle once the novelty has worn off? Although we can chat away and network for hours, how well do we know these new found 'friends'? Will the professional contacts made make any real difference to one's career? I would be very interested to know if there has been any studies into this area of social networking.

Mentoring - a Mentors view

I have been a CILIP mentor for 6 years and have found it to be a very rewarding experience. I decided to become a Mentor because when I was a young 18 year old trainee I had a wonder Mentor myself. His name was Mr Sainsbury and he was the Deputy Borough Librarian. Unfortunately he died a few months after he retired and just after I qualified so he was not able to follow my subsequent career. His mentorship was unofficial (no CILIP Mentors in those days!). It came about because we always got to work early so we used to sort the newspapers and journals together (all supplied by a local newsagents). He was a very fatherly figure and took a keen interest in my career. He not only provided encouragement and made suggestions but was also able to transfer me to a variety of departments that ensured that I gained experience in all aspects of the public library service. He was a wonderful man and really gave me a good grounding in librarianship.

In recent years I have also been an unofficial mentor to a number of young librarians. I think that the environment that we now work in is changing so rapidly that if one is able to pass on information, encourage or support someone starting out in their career then I shall be doing good and giving something back to the profession that I love. Having someone who is genuinely interested in your career can make you fill a bit special and its great to be able to receive support and to talk through ideas. Mr Sainsbury was a kind, generous man who taught me a great deal. I am sure that he would be proud if I am able to do something similar for the next generation of librarians.

Career Development

I qualified many years ago under the old system during the Library Association's day. It was easier to become a librarian then as it was not seen to be a graduate profession.

Chartership was achieved by just working in a professional post for 12 months - no portfolios etc... with few librarians thinking about CPD. However seeing how important it was to obtain a Masters if I was to progress after having a career break, I embarked upon the Aberystwyth distance learning course in the mid 90's and more recently I have achieved a PhD in information science. I am not sure what I shall do for the remainder of my career as I have worked in a variety of sectors: public library, FE & HE. Unfortunately fate has intervened and has meant that I have had to think about this more seriously. So watch this space....................................
    

The end of pens and papers?

Goodbye to all this?

Evernote is an interesting tool. I can see that it has great potential particularly at a conference. It will save you carrying a lot of notes around or produce the necessary documents if you have forgot to bring them. I like the flexibility it has and that it isn't limited to one computer. I am not sure how much I will use it though, perhaps it is just a matter of getting use to working a different way. It is certainly worth knowing about. The current awareness that cpd23 is providing is fantastic. Keep up the good work. Its back to the garden now........

Whats occurring?

As I am on leave this week I am pleased that Thing 8 is easy. I am a great fan of google calendar and have used it all the time since I was introduced to this last year. I find the reminders a great help in ensuring that I am at the right place at the right time. Once I got into the habit of remembering to enter meetings etc.. it has worked well for me. I am sure that there are other programmes out there but this seems to work for me. Now when am I supposed to return to work................?  

Professional involvement

In the past I have not seen the value of becoming involved with CILIP etc.... how wrong I have been. In the last 5 years I have taken a more active interest. Wanting to give something back to the profession now that the offspring have spread their wings, I first became a CILIP Mentor, then a CDG committee member and more recently have become the group's treasurer. I am also the Secretary for the Association of British Theological & Philosophical Libraries. I must confess I did not realise how rewarding these actives could be and wished I had found the time years ago. I have learnt new skills, made new friends and gained a tremendous amount of confidence. I would certainly recommend becoming involved particularly if you are a new professional as you will be able to increase your network and acquire a lot of useful skills. These days networking and a wide ranging portfolio are essential if you want to achieve your full potential. I wish that the opportunities now available were around when I was working towards chartership etc... 

The list of possible organisations is certainly useful and there are two that I shall explore more fully. I am sure that I am not the only one who finds it difficult to keep abreast of the the large number of organisations that are appearing almost daily. That's why awareness courses like this are great. Well done all :) 

Is there anyone out there?

Very interesting Things this week. Although I signed up to LinkedIn last year I have not really use it until the last few months when I have had a number of 'link' requests so have used it a bit more. This weeks Thing seems to be about LinkedIn v Facebook. I would agree with Reid Hoffman that Facebook is for home and LinkedIn for the office. I have accounts on both and have always taken the view that LinkedIn is my professional networking whilst Facebook is for keeping in contact with friends. My husband says that his company actively uses LinkedIn for recruitment, training etc.. .  I think LinkedIn is invaluable for becoming better known particularly if you have a business or a particular skill to promote.

Although I tend to think that Facebook is really a 'social' space I can see the value of promoting the library service or having a presence on it. Saying this I think that it is really important that the library Facebook page is not allowed to stagnate and should be updated at last twice a week to keep it fresh and interesting.  We intend to setup a Facebook page for our libraries for one term to see if this method of communicating information would be of benefit to our users.

I have not used LISNPN but can see it would be of great use if I were a new professional - I wish this had been in existence when I first qualified (some time ago now!). I must admit I did feel rather isolated and this site would have been brilliant.

I was interested to learn about the LATnetwork, I think that this could be really useful. I have thought for sometime now that library training should have some element of teaching experience incorporated. This is particularly useful for anyone working in education - librarianship has come a long way from stamping books.

I was not aware of Google+ but am not surprised that they want to introduce something like this - world dominance springs to mind. I think one of the problems is that there are now so many networking sites that soon we shall need a guide to where to start. I think that these sites will have to start to specialise in order to make their site stand out. It also gets confusing for a novice like me. Soon we shall spend all our time in front of a computer, the art of old fashioned face-to-face conversation might become a Thing of the past!

Reflections

What an interesting blog. I have got a bit behind so have only just started Thing 5. A very thought provoking and well written blog post with some very useful links. I am always telling my colleagues that they should reflect on the courses attended etc... but rarely do it myself in written format - its about time I did.
I agree that applying a new skill or ideas is sometimes the most difficult aspect of reflective practice especially if you do not use this newly acquired knowledge straight away. Writing about ones experiences also helps to re-enforce what has been learnt and to reflect on how these new skills can be incorporated into ones current post at a later date can also be beneficial.   

To date I have found it really useful to go over some of the things that we learnt last year. I have certainly gained some new insights and have been inspired to learn more. The new links have provided essential current awareness as Web 2.0 tools have moved on in 12 months. I have tried to introduce a few of the things I have learnt into my everyday work life but have found that this can sometime be difficult to do as there is never enough hours in the day. Regrettably my hours are to be cut due to the current economic problems so I shall have even less time. I am however determined to try and shall continue to endeavour to bring our libraries into the 21st C.

Fun and games

I have certainly had fun and games today setting up a new Twitter account, RSS feeds and a Pushnote account. Our IT officer has things tied down so much that its difficult to download anything. Although I set up the Twitter account last year the system did not want to let me in so I had to set up another and that was where the fun started. I finally managed to gain access after much frustration by setting up a new account. I have a couple of followers already from the US - gosh!

I am still not convinced about this medium. I can see that it could be useful if you want to find some information quickly but I guess it is only as good as whats available. I like the idea of being able to add videos and links as it is a very quick way of disseminating information. Only having 140 characters also means that it is quicker than writing a blog. I equate Twitter with mobile texting. 

I added the RSS feed for cpd23 blog so now I have a quick way of finding it which is great. I got into a bit of a muddle with adding the feed as I still had the old one on my iGoogle page and it didn't want to download the new one. Fortunately my colleague was on hand to help me out.

Pushnote: I signed up to it but unfortunately I cannot download it yet, I need to talk to our IT Officer. I think this seems quite a good idea to be able to share good site and warn your friends of rubbish ones. I am not sure how frequently I shall use it but it is good to at least have that facility.

Who am I?

This is extremely interesting. I must confess I have not put much though into my brand (it no doubt shows) and the recommended articles have given me much food for thought. I think that I shall have to work on this, particularly my LinkIn profile. I have been meaning to update that for a while so pehaps this will be the spur that I need. I did Google myself and to my surprise I found that I had about 5 pages worth. Thinking about my blog page I'm not sure that this wishy washy blog reflects my personality - or perhaps it does?

On another note, I attended an excellent session on medieval manuscripts last week and as part of the homework I was directed to the following site which I must share as I think it is a hoot and is perhaps an indiction of my type of humour

To blog or not to blog....?

Have completed the second task - obviously. I must confess I have not blogged since last year although I do regularly look at other peoples. Have changed the look of my blog a little although it is still not as fancy as some of the ones I have seen. There are certainly some very creative people around. I still feel very much like a novice as there seems to be more sites, gagets etc... than ever around. Still practice makes perfect and I shall get plenty of that over the next few months.

23Things 2011

Last year I ended 23Things with a final blog that lamented the ending of the course, this year I would like to say hurray - its 23Things time again. I shall not be lost this summer for 'Things' to do!

Thank you team for offering this again with extra's. I intend to work through it all again to act not only as a fresher but to try the things I opted out of last time. I also intend to try some of the 'Things' out on the staff and students. Breaking my leg last September meant that my plans were not realised, hopefully I can rectify this during the next academic year.

I completed Thing 1 by setting up a new iGoogle page - I had completly forgotten how to do it so it has been a great refresher exercise. It has ended up looking very similar to the one I created last year - now what does that say about me I wonder?

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!).

A golden opportunity?

Marketing I must confess is something that I have little time to undertake. The new social media does however offers more imaginative ways to do this but I believe that it would be just as time consuming. I heard a lecture by the librarian from a very large prestigious US university who although very enthusiastic about the new media, was also pragmatic. In her university, so much time was taken communicating with the students via Facebook, Twitter etc... that they had to have a dedicate PC that they took turns to man. She reported that she often spent a large part of the day corresponding with her students electronically and had very little face-to -face contact with them. She also reported that it had been impossible to fulfill the expectations raised because they did not have enough staff. I felt that this was very sad.

For our students, many of whom are part-time, face-to-face contact is very important and highly valued (their words not mine). The sense of community is an important aspect of our students training thus coming into the library, using the facilities and browsing the shelves is all part of that experience and helps them feel part of the college. If everything can be provided virtually the library experience will change and how long will our physical libraries last in times of financial constraints? Meeting students and talking over coffee/lunch is also a good way of getting to know students, understand their needs and break down barriers. I have found that being visible is a great PR tool.

So far I have not used Facebook to promote the library, I feel that this would be invading their social space. I like slideshare and can think of some possibilities for this. I do however intend to canvas the users opinions in regard to the different social media methods later this year so watch this space.....

Cite it right!

I found this quite difficult not least because I am unable to download programmes onto my computer at work. However our IT Officer was to hand and was very helpful (this is just in case he is reading my blog!). I do not think that Zotero is as user friendly as some of the other programmes we have been using. It took me a little while to come to grips with its idiosyncrasies - it did not help that I am not able to download FlashPlayer and watch the video . I therefore found Isla's document (Medical School Library documentation) very helpful. The down side is that the programme seems to slow down Firefox, thus it takes longer to load.

Once mastered, I can see that the programme will be very useful to researchers. The tags seem particularly good as they allow the quick retrieval of similar items. I also like the fact that you can create citations quickly and easily - I wish that this had been available when I first began my research. In a personal capacity I will find this programme useful, how many of our students will be as keen is difficult to predict. On a basic level we already provide our students with digital course readings that are organised in folders and I supply the citations. I shall however try and raise the awareness of Zotero to both our lecturing staff and postgraduate students and place it on our intranet's library pages. It will be interesting to try and gauge the uptake at the end of the year.

Big Brother....?

Is it me or is this scary? The more I progress through 23Things the more I have become security conscience. I Googled my name and was quite shocked at the information available about me online. It probably has not helped reading Larsson's - Millenium Trilogy (I would certainly recommend it). Linkedin provides too much personal information for my liking, there is such a thing as identity theft!

I was glad that we did not have to sign up for this for 2 reasons. One is for the above and the other because of account fatigue. I now have so many accounts and passwords that I don't know if I can remember them all. Discussing this problem with our IT Officer he has recommended a very secure piece of software called KeePass. You can type in all your usernames and passwords whilst only having to remember the master password, brilliant!

Do we need a Face?

Facebook is a very interesting concept. Allows the sharing of information, photos etc... finds 'lost' friends etc... Great for personal networking but is there a place for it for libraries? I joined Facebook sometime ago to keep in touch with some of our students. As the average age of our students is 35+ many are actual friends. One is a Navy Chaplain on active duty so Facebook plays an important role in maintaining contact with home.

Facebook is a great site for ministerial students as they have always depended upon the networks that they form whilst in college. At one of my colleges all academic staff and students are encouraged to join. Ministerial life can be lonely for some so the importance of a forming a network of peers has always been promoted by the training colleges. Facebook has taken this to another dimension with its facility to share photos, prayers etc... However, I question its use for communicating and promoting libraries. I can understand the reasoning for wanting to getting the library involved, i.e be visible where the action is, but I am not convinced that libraries have a role in that social space. Many of our part-time, off site users are not into social networking and prefer 'good old fashioned' email. I am however always willing to try new Things so despite my skepticism will try and canvas popular opinion with a survey at the end of the Michaelmas term.

If you are wondering about the significance of the graphic - I saw a Winters Tale on Saturday and one of the acts finishes with toppling of 2 large bookcases full of books. The books & leaves flew everywhere. Although it was very dramatic, I felt some sympathy for the person who had to pick up all the books and reshelve them!