The end of 23 Things is both a light at the end of the tunnel and an equally tough finish line to cross.
I’ve enjoyed continuing to blog as part of this project, but I also know myself.I need a concrete deadline or structure to keep me focused, so I can complete the project.This is why I know that online university classes are not the way for me.Yes, I realize that sounds ironic considering the venue, but a “do at your own pace” course is one that is very difficult to make a priority while working full-time.To quote Scarlett O’Hara (and who doesn’t in library land), “tomorrow is another day”.Part of this Thing is a SWOT analysis.This is the type of thing that I’d rather run a marathon than do, and I don’t run.
I think that the goal of this project has been to look critically at ourselves and what we can do with the tools that are available to us.The Personal Development Plan (PDP) can be a big undertaking and I’ve done it in some ways with annual goals to learn about areas that I want to focus on for that year.In 2010, I focused on grants and grant writing and this year it’s been legal resources for the public library.I’ll review the 23 Things and a general PDP in developing my goals for 2012.I think that analysis paralysis can set in when reviewing a PDP for your work life and the time between my blog posts is evidence of that.23 Things has been an intellectually stimulating project and I’ve enjoyed researching most things, but focusing on my professional future isn’t an area that I feel the need to publicize to the world at large.This is perhaps a rare statement in this world of sharing the minutia of everyday life.
Thank you to all of the contributors who have made this project so enjoyable.
Part of this Thing is to make a list of activities and interests, without limiting it to your work life.For example, I may have an interest in hiking (I don’t) and that might be something that I can integrate with work.Looking at the two parts of my life separately, I wouldn’t think about doing a program on hiking trails in the local area.
Promoting me has never been a strong suit of mine.In fact, part of the delay in writing this blog post has been the thought of going back over the paperwork from my work life to try and remember projects that I had worked on that I really enjoyed.That’s a lot of paper to sort though.When I read through this Thing again, I realized that I can quickly think of things that I like to do, and need to reflect on how I can incorporate them into my work.
When you are job seeking, that’s usually when you start to update your resume.Part of this Thing is to review your work life and keep your resume up to date.That’s good advice, even if you are like me and not currently looking for a new job.It makes you think and streamline your resume to present the most accurate and current view of yourself for a potential employer.It’s also an opportunity to do a little “here’s what I’ve done good” bragging, without having to say it yourself.
One of the areas that I’ve mentioned in the blog is legal resources.That’s an area of library research that I’ve always been interested in, while another area has been in staff training, which goes back to the work that I did more often in a previous job.I’ve incorporated that interest into offering a class on legal resources for public libraries to my co-workers.I also enjoy working with publishers to arrange author programs for my library, and part of that work is networking, which has never been my strong suit (perhaps I’ve mentioned this).Networking has always been a four-letter word for me, but I’m working on developing this skill as I realize that it can be very helpful in your work and for your institution.
This Thing is not a one-time thing, but an ongoing project, and a good one to have at the end of the project, so we have things to do after we officially finish the 23 Things.
Thing 21 is still a work in progress, but I wanted to try and keep up the momentum for crossing the 23 Things finish line. I’ve talked about volunteering with the national and local library organizations in Thing 16 (Advocacy) and Thing 7 (Professional Organizations).
When I was an undergraduate, I studied law as part of my Bachelors degree (not a LLB or J.D. for Canada and the States, respectively).During my summer breaks from university, I worked as a researcher for a law firm, basically the type of work that articling students do.I’ve always have an interest in legal studies and when I started working at my first librarian job, I had some time on my hands and I started volunteering at a law library in New York City.It was great experience and I learned about US law treatises, court decisions, reporting services and legal databases.Coming from Canada, I was familiar with some treatises, particularly on labour law, but the US Court system is very different. The experience was wonderful and in my current position, I am teaching a class for my colleagues on resources for family and landlord/tenant law as part of our staff day.I can share something that I really enjoy and combine it with my interest in training.
In the public library, we get questions about legal topics with some regularity, but we have to be careful in providing access to the materials without offering opinion on the legal issues themselves.We aren’t lawyers, but we can direct patrons to the public access law libraries that are mandated for every county in New York as well as information on low or no-cost legal services.
So as I mentioned in my last post, Suzy Alexander started me on my library career.I attended library programs like lots of other kids my age, and in one program we made a puppet from fabric (Suzy is Kermit-ish green) and yarn (Suzy is blonde) with accessories for facial features.My dad may still have Suzy somewhere at home, but I can picture her like it was yesterday.
Two other programs that I remember from my local public library were author events, something that I schedule regularly as part of my job today.These authors were “local” in proximately, but both well-known authors in Canada – Alastair MacLeod, who it turns out was a good friend of my uncle and Farley Mowat, who lived nearby in the summer months.I still have the Alastair MacLeod book and was able to get another one signed many years ago in New York City at a reading sponsored by the Canadian Consulate, which has a great newsletter of events by Canadians in New York called The Upper North Side (www.uppernorthside.com)
Once I got to high school I became a page at the local public library, which as I mentioned in Thing 10, shares a facility with the high school library.After that I worked at my college library and the Library of Parliament, which was great for doing research for my degree in Political Science.Working in libraries was something that I had done all along, but hadn’t planned on making my career.After university, I ended up applying to library school with three friends, two of whom ended up going to library school at the same time that I did, but at two other library schools.This means that among the three of us, we attended 50% of the library schools in Canada.It still amazes me how many colleges/universities that there are in the States.I used to drive past at least 4 or 5 on my way to work in New York City.
I graduated from the University of Western Ontario’s GSLIS (then the Graduate School of Library and Information Science) which allowed you to take additional courses each semester and graduate in 12 months, which I did and then headed to the Queens Library where they needed librarians.Quite a few Canadians were working at Queens at the same time that I did, thanks in part, to the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement.I worked at Queens in a number of positions and was the Head of Adult Services when I left.Tech-savvy husband and I decided to move out of the city and had been in upstate New York on vacation and really enjoyed it.We both found jobs quickly after we arrived and have been working in public libraries every since.And to think, it started with a story time craft!
Taking a look at the Library Routes wiki (http://libraryroutesproject.wikkii.com/wiki/Main_Page ) has been interesting, particularly since I’ve been reading the blogs of some of the contributors throughout the 23 Things project.I decided to read about those outside of public libraries just to get a sense of how people have ended up in academic and special libraries.This has been very interesting, and I’m always impressed by those who can write about their experience in entertaining and informative ways.It’s “to each his own” for libraries and making something interesting, that might not seem so at first glance, is a great and sometimes rare, skill.I’m often amazed by people who found libraries later in life and had never considered it until someone else mentioned it.
Prezi is a tool that could work very nicely, if you have the time and money to setup the "higher" (read not free) accounts that allows you access to bells and whistles. I tried it out after watching the online tutorials and was able to add links to indicate in which order items came to the forefront of the "slide" to use the venacular of PowerPoint. I can see if being useful, and being based online it is very portable for presentations. That said, I don't see a great deal of need for it for the moment.
One of the interesting things about the free version of the software is that all presentations are visible to everyone. I guess if you were a consultant, you would likely pay for the upgraded software, otherwise all of your work would be available for the world to see.
Next up, Thing 20, my route to librarianship. It all started with a puppet named Suzy Alexander!
It’s hard to believe that we’re up to Week 13 of the 23 Things project. When we started this back in June, 23 things seemed like a huge undertaking, and now we’re only 4 things away from finishing. Quite a feeling of accomplishment, I must say.
This week we are to think about what we’ve done (in a good way) and any changes that we’ve made in our work lives as a result. As Julie Andrews likes to sing “Let’s Start at the Very Beginning”. Or rather, I was going to look at each Thing, but decided that would be far, far too boring to be a good blog post. One thing that I’ve noticed in checking out the next Thing each week is that the cpd23 blog works much better with Safari and Firefox than it does with Internet Explorer. Can you tell that I’ve been converted to an Apple person at home?
Thing 2- Check out other 23’ers blogs
Along with thinking about libraries and writing blog posts about them, this has been the fun part of the program, reading how other librarians here and in the UK are responding to the same topic each week. Some of the blogs have been greatly amusing and I have found quite a few people with similar senses of humor (humour). Reading about the latest developments in citation software might not be the most exciting topic in the world, but by sharing their views and engaging the reader, we become interested in the topic. That humor extends to the title of your blog post as well. I find this is true of blogs that I read on any topic. If I see a title and it looks entertaining, I’m more likely to read it. I’ve tried to incorporate that in a blog that I contribute to at my library.
Thing 3- Personal Brand
I’ve standardized an email address, blog and twitter feed, but I don’t spend a lot of time working on marketing myself. Networking has always been somewhat of a four-letter word for me, but I understand that it can be useful if you are looking to get better-known in your profession or looking for new opportunities in your field.
Thing 4- Twitter, RSS and Pushnote
I’ve found more 23’ers blogs to read through this project and have added them to my Google Reader. No one wants me to pontificate about Google, so I’ll leave it at all. I haven’t spent a lot of time using my Twitter feed, but tech-savvy husband (TSH) uses it and the Twitterific App to keep up on events/random thoughts from a lot of people/organizations. Even with the App it seems that there is a lot of fluff to scroll through in order to get to useful information (and of course everyone’s idea of “useful” is different).
Thing 6- Online networks
I can now check LinkedIn off of my “to-do” list. It’s early days for this one but so far so good. One thing that I notice about a lot of the online networks is the lack of documentation on how to use the service. Not every service is easy to understand and just because Facebook is so popular, doesn’t mean that it’s intuitive to use it. I’m talking about you privacy settings!!!!
I use the social networking site Ravelry for information about knitting, patterns, projects, stash listings, and it doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles that some of the other sites do, but it’s much easier to use and the smaller the learning curve, the more likely I am to keep coming back to the site.
I’ve enjoyed reading about 23’ers traineeships and the chartership process, though it really doesn’t apply in the States. Librarians should always be inquisitive and want to learn about new things, and this is one area that I am very interested in, as I have enjoyed doing training for librarians and wish there was more of this available at the local level. Smaller conferences might be a way to do this, as we have been doing at our staff development day. With shrinking staff, it is difficult to find the time to have people leave the building to attend programs. Webinars are a help as you can attend one at your own desk and don’t need any travel time away from the office.
Thing11- Mentoring
I guess that this ties in the Thing 10 (isn’t it amazing how that works) as training and mentoring are two things that are appreciated by the librarians lucky enough to have them, but there isn’t always support for them.
Thing 16- Advocacy, speaking up for the profession and getting published
I feel like I just wrote about this. Ah yes, I did!
Thing 17- Prezi
I took a quick look at this in advance of getting the “official” assignment and it looks interesting. There is an iPad App for this one, so TSH might be interested in it. The iPad2 doesn’t have flash available; so some of the fancy, smancyness of it might be lost.
Thing 18- Jing, screen capture, podcasts (making and following them)
Jing might be a way to highlight a specific part of the library collection or service. Podcasts might work for something like a regular book feature (new books, treasures from the backlist), but wouldn’t work as well for a lot of the new technology as it would work better as a video. The Columbus Metropolitan Library has some great videos on the Overdrive eBook service.
I remember reading on a New York Times blog that if your site has misspellings, Google is less likely to list it at the top of the search results and if you are lost to Google, you are basically not going to be found online. This can be a problem in the instant-gratification world that we live in, as people want to be the first to post on a topic, grammar and spelling be damned.
I’ll avoid the discussion of my home team at the moment until I’m sure that they’ll make the playoffs (Go Sox!).Perhaps Arsenal will start winning and I can start watching “proper” football again.
Today, we’re here to talk about advocacy for our profession and getting published.I think that academic librarians have more of a “publish or perish” concern- those who are lucky enough to get a tenure-track position.In terms of getting published, that hasn’t been something that I’ve particularly sought out in my career.This blog could be considered part of getting published, and it’s been a great experience and given me an opportunity to think about the profession at the macro level, which I’m not able to do often in my everyday work.
In New York, we have a “Lobby Day” in March when librarians and customers/patrons from across the state come together in Albany (our state capital) to talk about libraries and the value that they provide to the public.I’ve gone to Lobby Day and it’s amazing to see the turnout of customers who share their stories with the assembly members and senators.It’s that enthusiasm for libraries by patrons that are so effective, rather than just hearing numbers from library staffers and trustees.
Public libraries are a rare group that isn’t for a specific group or membership, rather they are open to everyone, whether or not they hold a library card.They serve all constituencies and do outreach to the community to make their services known, but it’s always difficult to find the people who don’t use the library.It’s fine for us to promote our services in brochures in the library and social media tools like Twitter and Facebook, but you are “preaching to the choir” as they have to find library in order to follow your feeds or read your brochures.
When our library was planning a vote on a new building, our Friends group mobilized the community and offered to have supporters go to people’s homes to explain about the need for the building and the budget proposal.This allowed people to ask questions in a comfortable setting and have their specific questions or concerns answered.The Friends did mailings, printed up lawn signs supporting the vote that were distributed to high profile locations throughout the community and had a phone bank to make sure that people remembered when the vote was being held and where.Because of a record turnout the year before, the budget vote was moved to a local mall where turnout was even higher than it had been in the previous year.The Friends group is wonderful and a huge supporter of our Library, which has the annual budget vote this coming week.Our library is a tax-district library and registered voters from the towns that we serve vote on the budget and elect members to the Board of Trustees.
The Friends have a great quote from Eleanor Crumblehulme, in the library display case this month.“Cutting libraries in a recession is like cutting hospitals during a plague."
Though it sounds like Bing (not my favorite search engine), Jing is actually a tool that you can use to do screen captures and videos to highlight your library's resources. This past summer at our library, we were lucky enough to have a girl scout working on her Gold Award do some videos of our library's collections and programs which we've added to our YouTube channel along with another great Summer Reading Club introduction from our children's librarians. The one from last year featured a friend of mine approaching the circulation desk in her wetsuit. You'd have to see it to believe it.
I've used Jing today to highlight some of my favorite podcasts that I subscribe to through iTunes. I read and respect greatly the TV critic, Alan Sepinwall, formerly of The Newark Star-Ledger and now with HitFix.com Alan introduced tech-savvy husband (TSH) and I to The Wire, David Simon's fantastic show about cops and drug dealers in Baltimore. Definitely worth catching on DVD, perhaps available at your local library. Jing works very similarly to the cropping tool in Word 2010 and Paint Shop Pro that I've used in the past, but has video capability that neither of these tools have included.
TSH also has his own podcast of his radio show that he does at a local university, which is great as we live too far from the station for me to be able to listen to on the radio, but I can stream the show live and/or listen to the entire show as a podcast.
Lastly, as summer ends in the Northeast, I get back into one of my favorite sports, curling. Yes, like the Olympics. Growing up in Canada, curling is huge. I'm a member of a local club and am looking forward to getting back on the ice and listening to Dean Gemmell's "The Curling Show" podcasts.
Working in a public library, I don’t have the same need for reference or bibliography software in the way that my colleagues in academic or special libraries would require. I read through quite a few blog posts from other 23’ers and decided to try Mendeley.
So what did I learn?Oh, the name comes partially from Gregor Mendel.I seem to remember something from high school biology and pea plant- Mendelian genetics.Doesn’t seem that relevant to the task at hand though.
I picked a subject and found articles from a database at work and saved them as PDFs.So far, so good.Once I added them to the folder, I was able to add the folder to Mendeley.For some reason, there weren’t many details on the articles listed that I had selected and I had to add the author, article and journal title, etc.This doesn’t seem like a real time saver.Perhaps if I had a real need for this type of research, I might spend more time learning the idiosyncrasies of the software, but for the time being, “it’s been nice visiting” Mendeley, but I don’t want to live here.
Yes, I’m skipping 14 for the time being.Please be kind -We’ve had a hurricane and an earthquake in the past 6 days, neither of which is common where I live.
Conferences are a great place to meet colleagues from other libraries and types of libraries.For me, I always feel invigorated when I go back to work after a conference.I’ve been attending them for the better part of 20 years and have presented at a few as well.The ALA annual conference, which changes location every year, but is often held in Chicago, the organization’s home base, can be an overwhelming undertaking.The New Members Round Table is a great place to start if you are new to the profession or just new to conferences.They offer information about what will be taking place during the conference, suggestions on getting involved in the organization and general helpful tips.The conference “program guide” is a hefty 200 pages plus, so it can cause analysis paralysis when trying to decide what to attend and how to get from point A to point B.The shuttle buses, provided courtesy of GALE, are a huge help when you are trying to navigate in a large city.One of the big things to note when you are new to ALA is that you can’t be in two places at once.It is a certainty that there will be two or more programs that you want to attend, at the same time, in hotels 5 miles apart.You have to make a choice which to go to, and hope for the best.It’s frustrating if you’ve traveled to a far-flung hotel to see a program on X, only to find out that you should have gone to hear program Y at a hotel far in the opposite direction and without time to get there before the program is over.It’s happened to all of us and you just have to take it in stride.
The most unique conference that I ever spoke at was one where I was talking about the Queens Library’s Job Information Center with a PowerPoint presentation that I had created and had to have translated into Russian as the conference was for Russian speaking librarians.If it wasn’t for the numbers at the bottom of the page, I would have been hard-pressed to be able to explain anything that was on the screen.Luckily there were translators for those who didn’t speak English.
On organizing a conference- the state conference in New York is known as NYLA (New York Library Association) and has been held for many years in Saratoga Springs- home to thoroughbred horseracing.Since it is often in the same place, it can be difficult to find volunteers for some of the committees.The staff of the Queens Library once acted as the Local Arrangements Committee – from a distance of about 200 miles.That’s one of those times when you just have to dig in and do it.Do we know the best restaurant in Saratoga? No, but I often say about librarians- may not know about a subject but we know where to find it.And so we did in Saratoga.It can be fun and you are helping out with colleagues from around the state.The next time I served on local arrangements for Saratoga, I lived much closer and actually had good suggestions for those who needed restaurant recommendations.
Since I’ve gone over to the dark side with Google,it makes sense to try out Google Docs.A librarian I know is also a member of the 23 Things project (Hi Polly!) and has a consulting business on libraries and technology.I’ve contributed to a Google Doc that she has created for a workshop and was able to make additions to the document easily. My tech-savvy husband (TSH) was able to add information on Dropbox to my Google Doc for this blog post and I was able to see each revision of the document, color-coded by user, though I couldn’t see all revisions on the screen at the same time.I tried to add TSH and another of my email accounts to share the Google docs and it sent him the email, but not me.Hmm, I wonder why?Ah yes, you have to have a Google account to use it.Good for sharing with colleagues if everyone has an account.That’s a problem with a lot of these tools.You have to make others join the club.Not everyone is going to want to jump on the bandwagon with each new bell & whistle.Some of the tools that we’ve used in 23 Things are things that I’m very unlikely to use after the program is over, though I have enjoyed learning about them.
Having created my first Google docs, it strikes me as the same idea as Wikipedia.Anyone can change anything, at any time- per the document owner's selection of editors.I’ve looked up my hometown in Wikipedia (and who hasn’t), and at one time or another saw something there that didn’t seem quite accurate.The democratic nature of Wikipedia means that anyone can update an error that they see, but incorrect information can be placed there deliberately.I remember having a professor in university talk about the right books to use for a paper, as he did not agree that texts that I had used had correct information (or at least in his mind).That’s similar to what we do today when we explain to kids that you can’t take everything you read on Wikipedia as gospel.Wait- everything on the Internet isn’t true?
The American Library Association created wikis for recent conferences and “local arrangements” so that people who live in the host city can include information on weather conditions, where to go and not go and places that shouldn’t be missed when visiting the host city.It’s a great way to share and can be a big help when you’ve never been to the host city before (or maybe even if you have).Library Journal does this in print and on their website, but the wiki is very handy and includes a number of people’s opinions on the city.Where librarians used to have to drag out a map (“hello muggers”) and figure out how to get somewhere, now the wiki and Google maps allow them to navigate the city with ease thanks to their smart phone.
How does Google have the time to keep us all up to date?
In upstate New York, we felt a bit of Tuesday’s 5.8 earthquake that was centered in Virginia – a distance of about 500 miles.If this has happened 50 or even 20 years ago, we would have read about it in the newspaper (remember newspapers?) or that night’s news broadcast.This week though, when we felt the quake in our office, we were able to go online and people were tweeting about it in the same amount of time that it took for the quake to happen.
Libraries are information centers and as such we are able to find information about current events as they happen.In recent disasters, most notablyin the days and weeks after Hurricane Katrina, local libraries were a place to get information on government assistance and send emails to family members to update them on how they were doing and where they were staying.
For this project, I feel some camaraderie with others working through the 23 Things even though I’m physically very far removed from the librarians working on it as the majority seem to be in the UK.Reading through their blogs, I find myself nodding in agreement with their observations on each Thing.
While we haven’t used social media for professional development, we have used to for Readers’ Advisory.We promoted a special event for our Facebook friends and then invited them to post on our wall the last three books that they had read and enjoyed, and we gave them the title of the next book to read.We started with one event; with the Adult Services librarians working together to come up with the titles, and plan on repeating it as it was fun for the librarians and the patrons really enjoyed the choices that we recommended to them.
So another week, another toy App to try. I added Evernote to my iPod Touch and dove in. Hmm, the instructions are very basic, and I didn't see much difference between it and another App, Remember the Milk. It's a list/note-taking apparatus that ties together notes from my iPod to my laptop and any other computer where I download the software, and includes options for including URLs and taking photos of things to include in a note (if I had the newer version of the iPod Touch that my eight year-old nephew has!).
I've only been working on it for a day or two, but I don't see it becoming part of my work or home life in the near future. Perhaps I'll have more of a chance to play with it if we have another catch-up/reflections week. Why am I so far behind and playing catch-up whenever we have a breather week?
Graduate traineeships, Masters Degrees, Chartership, and Accreditation
In the United States and Canada, you are considered a “librarian” once you have completed a Master’s degree at a university accredited by the American Library Association.There are librarian technician programs, but most people find their way to librarianship after completing their Bachelor’s degree and sometimes after a Master’s degree in another subject (English, Zoology, English, Political Science, English or History)The two-year program varies somewhat from college to college, though the program at the University of Western Ontario, where I got my degree, you can do the entire degree in twelve months by taking an additional class in each of the three semesters.Western includes an extensive co-op program where library school students can do one or more semesters and work at a paid, full-time position at a library, often a government library in Ottawa or Toronto, and then return to school the following semester.
While in high school I worked at my local public library, as so many of us have, and worked at the university library and the Library of Parliament, while in college.The public library in my hometown is unique as the collection is shared between the town and the high school, with the “public library” hours starting after school and on Saturdays. Ina public library you have the opportunity to work on a wide variety of projects, and reference questions may involve equipment, such as copier or printer repair that they never teach you about in library school.
Training for librarians in the States and Canada revolves around getting your Master’s degree, and then librarians can work in most libraries, though school librarians have a separate but equal specialization as a “school library media specialist”.Having worked in academic, public and special libraries, I have really enjoyed all three, particularly the Library of Parliament while completing my political science degree and most crucially, public libraries, where I have spent my professional career.
I’ve been very lucky in my career to have had a wonderful mentor, who has become a good friend as well. Before moving to upstate New York, I worked in New York City for the Queens Library and found a great mentor, to whom I was introduced to when she was new to the library and looking for a librarian to coordinate the activities of her department. I worked for her for two years, and have been friends with her for more than ten. One of my projects involved organizing tours for groups visiting our library and New York- it was part outreach, part “Julie McCoy, your cruise director”.
One of the nice things about working in a large library system is the opportunity to learn about a variety of jobs that are available to librarians. Many libraries work with demographic information for planning collections, developing programming and writing grants, but few can have a staff member who works on this exclusively. Working in a large system, there is always staff turnover and librarians who move on to new jobs and responsibilities. This is less the case in the current economy, but has been the case in the recent past. I enjoyed my time at Queens and advanced through the system to the head of adult programs for a 63-branch system. I don’t think I would have thought about that position without the encouragement of my mentor.
Even with the so-called “graying of the profession”, I don’t see as much of an emphasis on mentoring that I had early in my career. It could be the nomadic existence that many librarians are forced to live, in piecing together jobs to create full-time employment. This trend began before the current economic climate, but has increased dramatically in the past few years. At a time when new grads could use the support and encouragement, mentoring is more of a “that would be nice” thought, rather than a concrete part of job training or career planning.
Once again, a Thing that I use regularly. I've been a paper girl and a Palm Pilot girl and go back and forth over the values of each over the past 10 years or so. When I started using a Palm Pilot, I loved it. I hotsynced it with my computer at work, and away I went. I even had the portable keyboard to go with it. Then it crashed. I didn't think that I was ready for another electronic calendar, but my husband bought me a Handspring. It worked well, though not as well as the Palm Pilot, but alas it also crashed. I returned to my Filofax and life was good.
Again, my husband dragged me back to the future with Google Calendar. I like it and it's easy to check remotely for both his schedule and mine, and like any organization tool - it all comes down to inputting the data. I'm more likely to update my paper schedule and can do it more quickly on the go, without a computer. However, if I want to coordinate both of our schedules, the Google Calendar is one stop shopping. And it doesn't get wet if something spills in your bag!
Some topics are harder to make fascinating than others ...
Professional organizations can be very helpful to you at various points in your career, particularly when you are just starting out and want to get experience in the field and exposure to committees and conferences, opportunities to "get your name out there" and any time when you are job hunting.
I've been a member of the American Library Association (ALA) for more than 15 years. Through committee membership, I've developed programs for the national conference and met with colleagues from other types of libraries to share ideas and learn about libraries from their perspective. I always come back from these conferences with new ideas and a renewed enthusiasm for my chosen career.
ALA is the main national organization for librarians in the United States, though there are specialized associations for school librarians, academic librarians, law librarians, medical librarians, etc. There is less of a formal continuing education (CE) competent to state and national conference in the States and I've enjoyed learning, through the 23 Things program, more about chartership in the UK. Interestingly enough, in New York State, there is a new CE requirement for librarians who are getting their public librarian certificate going forward.
ALA has been pushing to retain older (retired) librarians as members and have discounted their dues by 50% while allowing them to keep committee memberships and voting rights. It's an interesting approach to membership, but one that I believe will be detrimental in the long run as fewer younger librarians will want to join an organization where they will have a harder time getting committee appointments and wonder why they, at the lower end of the salary scale, are subsidizing their older and/or fully retired colleagues. This has been an issue for me in the past, and I consider what I am planning to work on that year before deciding on whether or not to renew my ALA membership.To date, ALA has decided to stick with this fee structure for retired librarians, while dues for the other membership categories have continued to increase.
When I began the 23 Things project, I believed that I'd have to do all of the things in order. I'm a linear person, what can I say. Reading through the first of this week's Things, I see "If you've already completed Thing 4 ..." I can do things out of order? Brilliant. This week's thing is already a success.
LinkedIn comes up again this week, and as I mentioned in my previous post, it's on my "to-do" list. I would prefer to come up further down a Google search, rather than have a poorly organized representation come up instead. I followed the link to Ms. Lauby's article and it's a great resource for getting comfortable with a new social networking site. The difficulty with many of these sites is that you can't take them for a "test drive" before committing yourself to becoming a member though I don't agree with Groucho Marx's joke "I don't care to belong to any club that would have me as a member"
I have remained steadfast in my campaign to not become a member of Facebook, despite requests from friends to "join the club". My husband has let me check his account periodically so that I can see what family members are doing, but it could become a huge time drain if you were checking daily (or more frequently) to see what all of your "friends" are up to at that exact moment. Google+ could become the same type of thing, though it does appear to be easier to separate interests into different circles. That makes sense to me though, as your work colleagues might not be interested in your home life or hobbies, and likewise, your friends may not care that it's the birthday of someone you know at work.
For this week's Thing, we're to reflect on the project and think about what we've learned to date. I've enjoyed reading about each week's Thing on Mondays, though I'm falling behind in doing the research and posting on the topic. Thankfully, there are some Things coming up that I've worked on previously, so I will be able to play catch-up soon.
It's a bit like the light at the end of the tunnel. For Things, we are now up to 11, so I definitely could use a catch-up week. Looking ahead, Santa’s come early as we have a catch-up week next week.
I've started following a number of people and organizations on Twitter, but I haven't made logging into Twitter to see "What's new?" a daily ritual. I'm still using Google Reader to do that. I remember hearing that it takes 21 days to form a habit, so there's still plenty of time.
I'm still working on the personal brand part of my professional life and have LinkedIn as a "to-do" along with some of the other social networking tools. As a proud non-Facebook person, I have been adjusting to Google+ and learning how it operates, a bigger learning curve than many of my 23Things colleagues would face.
One approach to the reflective practice is Plan-Do-Review-repeat. I think as librarians, we are accustomed to planning and doing, but finding and taking the time to review is much more difficult. This project not only suggests taking time to do that, but approves of it as a worthwhile process. It's always nice to get approval.
As Meatloaf likes to say, two out of three ain't bad. Poor grammar aside, this week's thing includes two tools that I make use of regularly, twitter and RSS (for me Google Reader).
I've used Twitter mainly to follow my library's activity and other feeds on topics that I want to learn more about, for myself and my work. I have been following the CPD23 twitter feed, my library's Twitter feed and several others through my Google Reader. Since starting this project, I've "branded" a Twitter feed for myself, mainly to use to follow others, but it would be a way to promote the blog when I've updated a post.
I originally used Bloglines as my RSS feeder and it worked really well. Then, like Mark Twain, the reports of its death were an exaggeration. I had switched to Google Reader at this point and didn't go back. One of the nice features of Bloglines is that once you read a message, if you don't note/highlight it, it disappears and you don't have to see it again. With Google Reader, I can view new items or all items, but I haven't found a way to see all new items and only those items that I've starred.
I wasn't familiar with Pushnote before reading this week's Thing, but it does seem like another way to use one tool to do a connect with a number of sites in the same place. Any tool that makes things easier without having a large learning curve could be a help in keeping up with what is going on in the larger world of librarianship.
To paraphrase Judy Garland, I’m somewhat under the radar for my online presence, but with this project, I’m taking the bull by the horns.Along with my blog, I’ve established a blog-specific email address and twitter feed.I see the twitter feed as a way that I can keep up with what I’m interested in, rather than a broadcast tool for my views.Like all things on the Internet, it can be subject to change.
I liked the idea of consistency of naming across all online tools and this can be a challenge if you are well-established in one area and are not able to register that identity in another (ie, your preferred twitter handle has been taken by someone else).This is probably a bigger problem for celebrities than for the rest of us “regular people”.
The personal/professional identity
Once I had my blog in place, I wanted to be able to use it to express myself professionally, but also personally, if I was so inclined.I liked Jo Alcock’s “profersonal”approach.
Activity
As I don’t have a Facebook account, I haven’t found me near the top when I Googled my name. I have found professional listings for me and also found another woman in the same general geographic area with my name.I’m not worried about her though, nuns are pretty safe.I didn’t find me on the first page of a Google search, but is that a bad thing?Yes, people don’t tend to go too many screens deep when they are perusing the results, but since I’m not promoting a business or myself, do I need to be in the Top 10 list for my name?It’s not always a good thing to be on Letterman’s “Top10” list.
The post title remains the same, but the project is new.
Having recently completed a “10 Things” project with our local 3Rs in upstate New York, Thing 1 for the 23 Things project was easy, I have a blog. I hadn’t really planned on starting a blog before embarking on that project, but I must admit, it was very easy, painless and enjoyable. I hadn’t wanted it to end, hence the decision to start the 23 Things project.
Part of Thing 2 is to check out the blogs of some of the other librarians who are also involved in the project. With so many people taking part, it isn’t easy to decide where to start. Working in a public library and reading a number of blogs by librarians in the United States, I decided to read a few from those in other types of libraries.
Natalie’s CPD23 seemed like a good place to start: http://nataliescpd23.blogspot.com/ and I find that I agree with her on some of the social networking tools though I am a convert to RSS feeds.
Bear Bachoochie http://www.bearbahoochie.co.uk/ has combined Things 1-3 into one post. That’s an efficient way to do it and would allow me to play catch-up much more quickly. One on the other hand, the more you blog, the more often people will come to your site to see what’s new.
On the public library front, there is http://thefalseprotagonist.blogspot.com/. I love the title of this blog and like the author, enjoy reading blogs with a sense of humor (or should I say humour for the Brits and Canadians out there). Having grown up in Canada, I sometimes manage to combine US and Canadian spelling on words and then Word really doesn’t know what I’m trying to write!
As part of the “Googlization” of the world, I found out that I could add blogs, twitter feeds and any URL to my Google Reader. I remember quite a few years ago when “push” technology was the newest bell/whistle and you wouldn’t have to go to websites, the information would be pushed to you to review at your leisure. Google Reader allows me to add a link to any website and see when it has been updated, without having to go around to a large number of sites at the same time. This is a much more efficient use of time. I use the Google Reader for both personal and professional sites, and once I joined the dark side and started using it, it made it much easier to track and categorize sites. One-stop shopping as they say. In fact, I decided to jump further into Google and joined Google Plus recently. I have resisted joining Facebook, but since my husband, also a librarian, invited me to join Google Plus, I took the plunge. Within minutes people had found me. Interesting and scary at the same time.
Great program on Sunday at the ALA Annual Conference. Laura Lippman and her husband, David Simon, were the speakers at the PLA President's Program. David Simon mentioned that it is "infuriating" that 100K copies is a bestseller in a nation of 300M! Most of the questions after the panel were for Simon, prompting Lippman to good-naturedly ask a room of librarians if anyone here reads!
Laura spoke at our library two years ago and is a huge advocate for libraries and librarians. She comes from a "book" family as her mom was a school librarian and sister owns a bookstore. She's a great speaker and a lovely lady as well.
With the end of the 10 Things project that CDLC sponsored, we were left on our own to explore new technology. But wait, there's more ... Another great project is called 23 Things which gives us more opportunities to learn about new technology. I like the idea that we have a set time frame to work on each "thing", which makes it easier to tackle.
I've just returned from the American Library Association conference and saw some great ideas that libraries have brought to their patrons from across the country. Conferences inspire and renew us and give us opportunities to see the big picture and find ways to share these tools and ideas with our patrons. I feel the same way about the 23 Things Project, sharing with other libraries, both large and small.
Crystal ball-gazing has never been my strong suit, but I think that libraries in the year 2020 will A. still be here and B. have more remote resources than currently exist.
In his interview, inAmerican Libraries magazine, Thomas Frey talks about the often unseen role that libraries can and do play in documenting their communities.The past meets the future in our library as photos from our Local History Room have being digitalized and shared with the world through CDLC’sDigital Collections Project.
When I started library school, I used Pine for my email, and Gopher to do searches. The World Wide Web was just starting to be available (and not widely, either). Remember Mosaic? Looking at Gopher or Pine who could imagine that we could see streaming video and the "telephone" of George and Judy Jetson. Today, it's not only a reality, but it's Skype or Facetime. (I wait to see what will happen now that Skype has been bought by Microsoft.)
At our library, we have patrons who regularly use our wifi signal, before and after we open. They could be surfing the web looking for work, finding articles from magazines and newspapers, updating their Facebook or Twitter account or a multitude of other things. It isn't the libraries role to decide what is "appropriate" use of our wireless signal (within the law), but to offer our resources to our patrons, whichever format these resources are found. Going back in time, fiction was not considered to be a worthwhile use of library funds. Imagine telling readers of James Patterson or Jodi Picoult that we wouldn't be carrying fiction any longer. It won't be pretty!
Likewise, what we offer to the public today may differ in content or format from 10 years from now, but widening access to our resources to our customers is an inherent part of what we do. We may see fewer people coming through the doors of the "bricks and mortar" library, but many more coming to us through our online community. What we do for patrons, helping them to navigate the resources to find what they want and/or need will not change, but how we do it will and that's ok.
We've offered eBooks at our library, through Overdrive, for over a year and the demand is increasing on a daily basis. I've tried the Nook, Kobo and several iDevices with the iPad being the most recent.
The search capabilities are not the best in the world, even with the Advanced search option where you can limit your search to only those titles with copies available. Not being able to checkout any of the eBook titles that we own and having to go on a waiting list are more difficult to explain to patrons. Likewise, explaining HarperCollins decision to limit each copy of their eBooks to 26 checkouts makes no sense to librarians- though I'm sure that it does to the accountants for HC.
Not all titles that are available in "regular" print are available as eBooks either, with publishers Simon and Schuster and Macmillan (including St. Martin's Press, Minotaur, TOR and Forge) not making any of their titles available to libraries. Like all parts of our collection, we are adding to our eBooks as demand and budget allow.
The eReaders themselves vary greatly in "how they work" so I work with patrons, one on one, to help them use their reader. We saw a huge demand for assistance with these devices after Black Friday, Christmas and Mother's Day. I've been using my iPad to checkout titles, and the search screen on the App could use improvement (to say the least!) but this is a great way to find some of the classics and the Project Gutenberg titles are a great help.
I'm not sure if this week's activity is more "I'm ready for my close-up Mr. DeMille" or "Video killed the Radio Star".
There are some great "enhanced content" websites available online which allow you to learn more about a topic. Our Library and the head of Adult Services were recently featured in the "Ask the Expert" section of the Community News paper and on their website.
One of the great things about up-to-the-minute websites is that we can get news in real-time, as it happens. No more waiting until the local or national news programs in the evening. With a constant need to update content, there is always something new to see on news providers' websites. One of the drawbacks to this constant updating, is that you cannot be sure that a video or article that you saw on a website today, will be there tomorrow. In the case of "Ask the Expert", the video is still on the Community News' website in the video section, but you have to click on "View Next 30 clips" twice to find that interview as it was posted on the site on March 27, 2011.
In addition to experts, we have a new library mascot, Tad, the big blue frog. If you'd like to meet Tad, and have a lovely song to sing along with,
The Youth Services librarians have also posted their Summer Reading Club videos on our library's Youtube channel and they are able to take it "on the road" to local schools to promote Summer Reading. Check out last year's scuba diver!
I like to think of myself as being a fairly organized person, so this week's Thing is a fun exercise. One blog that I follow through Google Reader is The Unclutterer where Erin Doland gives you ideas on how to de-clutter your house/life/work and get more time back to do the things that you want to do.
Clutter is in the eye of the beholder, so your idea of clutter might not be the same as hers. One of the fun things that she does each week is post "Unitasker Wednesday" where she finds (or is sent links) to items that only have one purpose and therefore would help add to your clutter. Recent examples include: Woozie (a cover for the base of your wine glass), Pizza saver plastic bags (shaped like slices of pizza) and a Tea-Boy Penguin Tea Timer (it will take your tea bag out of the cup once it's ready).
For the tools that we are reviewing this week, I know that my very tech-savvy husband is a fan of Tweet Deck though I think he finds it less user-friendly on the iPad. He is also a very, very big fan of Google Calendar. It works for both our personal and professional lives and allows us to share other calendars that we have created on one all encompassing calendar, color-coded by which calendar it refers to (personal, work schedule, appointments, activivities, etc.) It works well, provided that you have wireless access and remember to update it!
I like the idea behind Awesome Screenshot as you can build handouts for websites or classes so that even if you have Internet connectivity issues, you won't be reduced to shadow puppets for your class on Google or library databases!
Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.
I've "attended" a number of webinars, mainly for upcoming fiction titles, including the one that Lou Ann mentioned in her blog Lou Ann Learns with CDLC on Beyond Bestsellers: High Demand Mysteries in Libraries. It is nice to get up to the minute listings of new titles and what the publishers are keen on for their imprints and houses.
Located outside the publishing hub of NYC, it's great to have access to these webinars and contrasts with the meetings that I had in the city today. Both in-person meetings and webinars have benefits (hence the first line of the blog) and offer libraries opportunities to promote titles to their patrons.
One of the ones that I was able to get an Advanced Reader Copy of today, was The Reading Promise, a lovely book, in which Alice Ozma and her dad had a special time set aside every night to read together. It started as a 100 day project and ended up covering everyday from Grade 4 until Alice left for college. I have been on the waiting list for this book, so getting a copy was an added bonus.
I should also mention that her dad is a school librarian.
Another type of webinar is a training class and I took several of these when I was setting up our new library calendar through Evanced. I couldn't have had such access to trainers as a single library, but I was able to share the questions and answers of all of the participants while formatting the software for our library. It was a bit like an open book exam. You can take notes and look things up in the training manual as the instructor was teaching us how the software works.
As with all webinars it comes down to the expertise and enthusiasm of the instructor.
I remember watching the Royal Wedding of HRH Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer when I was little. My dad woke me up early (as requested) so that I could see the whole thing live on a lovely Wednesday morning. This morning was a similarly beautiful day and thanks to the Internet and Social networking sites, a bit more intimate and global all at the same time.
I've been following @Clarence House (for the Prince of Wales' Press Office) to get updates for the past few weeks, as I think I mentioned in my last post. Apparently Westminister Abbey has also gone 21st Century as someone was live tweeting the wedding at @Wabbey .
One of my new favorite blogs is Madhattery which covers the hats and fascinators (such a lovely word for a cross between a hair comb and a hat) of Royal Families around the world, with a very witty commentary. Not surprisingly, the traffic to the site caused a crash this morning, but if you want to see the hat that Zara Phillips or HRH Princess Beatrice (the one that looked like a beige clock) wore - this is the site for you.
With the Official Programme released yesterday, I was able to download it to my iPad 2 and follow the service line by line. Small and intimate and around the world all at the same time!
Going along with tradition, HM the Queen bestowed a new title on HRH Prince William and Miss Middleton received her first title. They will now be known at the TRH the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
I wasn't sure how to approach this week's CDLC assignment on online communities as I may be the last person in New York State without a Facebook account. I've seen Facebook and have been able to keep up with my family, thanks to my husband's Facebook account, but generally, I'm not really that interested in Facebook, per se.
I read a number of people who are on Twitter, for both personal and professional updates. I was really pleased to be able to add Twitter feeds to my Google Reader stream a while back. There are a lot of libraries who tweet about programs and services, but bringing a longstanding institution like the British Royal Family into the 21st Century must have been a much more difficult sell to the Queen! I have been following Clarence House's twitter feed (HRH The Prince of Wales' PR office) about his son's upcoming wedding and now know that #rw2011 is the official hashtag for the Royal Wedding on April 29th.
Personally, one of the social networking tools that I use is Ravelry, which is a great site for ideas and free patterns for knitters and crocheters. Well, it's great in some ways, but my list of "oh, that would be a great project" is getting longer by the day. Where else can you find a pattern (available through Ravelry and Paypal) for "Mittens with Pints On" with rows of different types of beer in English pint glasses. http://www.etsy.com/listing/65452301/mittens-with-pints-on
This week as part of our CDLC project, I've been exploring online photos. Flickr is the best-known site for uploading pictures to the Internet. You could also upload photos as part of a videofeed on Youtube, but moving images work best there.
Our library has a Flickr feed : http://www.flickr.com/photos/cphpubliclibrary/collections/ where you can check out photos of the library over the years, recent Children's programs (including an adorable set of photos from our Teddybear Sleepover) and meet Tad, our library mascot.
During my tour of Flickr, I found links to some great photos including one below. If you know the connection between the person in the photo and me, leave a comment on the blog. Bonus points if you can identify two connections! Have fun.
UPDATE: Catalogthat came close with her guess of Canada, but the actual link is that Matt MacIsaac (the piper in the picture) and I are both from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. The other link is that Matt's mom made a kilt for my husband that he wanted for Christmas a few years back. Check out their website http://www.mackilts.com/ and see Matt's sister Veronica's site http://www.veronicamacisaac.com/ for some really cool, trendy tartan clothing. Yes, tartan can be hip!!!
We have been working on RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds for week 2 of the CDLC class as well as aggregators and default webpages.
As Google takes over the world, iGoogle pages abound. The iGoogle page works nicely with a gmail account and the Google Reader that I use for RSS feeds. In the past, I read the feeds through Bloglines but the site was scheduled to cease existence. Like Mark Twain, the reports of Bloglines' death were premature. It continues to live another day, but since I've adjusted to the Google interface and ease of adding URLs, including the Clifton Park-Halfmoon Public Library's twitter feed, I'll stay the course.
CDLC is offering a great program for librarians to testdrive technology.
We've had a fun Adult Winter Reading Program at the library this year and the response has been great. For some people, it's time to rev up their reading during this long winter, which even today seems like it will never end.
I've really enjoyed the program and read some great books. I've just finished Something Borrowed which moved up the list ahead of finishing, The Girl Who Played with Fire. Imagine finishing a fun, light read over a dark book with a cliffhanger!
