What I've been reading in December

Save Libraries

Alex Needham, Campaigners vow to fight on against Brent council library closures 

Benedicte Page,  Closure confirmed for Herts School Library Service

National Libraries Day Website (February 4th everyone!)


Exhibitions

Naomi Tilley, What makes a good online exhibition? 

Marketing

Anne Welsh, Library Bypass?  

Library School

Laura Sanders, Work/Life Balance in Library School 

Leo Casey, How to Write a Literature Review for a Dissertation

E-Books

Skip Prichards, The Future of Books 

Merry Farmer, Gutenberg to Kindle: The Elitism of Books 

Interviews

Jenica Rogers, Show up and be smart (or, Jenica's guide to interviewing for an academic job) 

Joe Hardenbrook, Interview Red Flags

Karen Schneider, Coda to Candidates: After the Interview 

End of the Year

Simon Barron, Five things I want to happen in 2012 

Lauren Smith, 2011 in Perspective

Rita Meade, A Librarian's Christmas

Library of Congress by robert_carpenter

Getting ready for Christmas

Lights going up in our flat...

The first term is over and I will be very glad to have a bit of a holiday. I love the run up to Christmas, and in between essays and assignments Rory and I have been busy decorating the flat, buying presents and baking Christmas cookies! I have several bits of coursework due in January, and I'm working at Newnham a bit so I won't be relaxing that much, but it will be nice to have a break from the commute at least!

The coursework at UCL is quite varied, we've been writing essays, policy documents, and doing classification exercises. The thing I've spent the most time on recently has been making my website for Principles of Computing and IT. It's very basic but I'm ridiculously proud of it! Over the holidays I'll be writing a cataloguing policy document, grappling with Universal Decimal Classification and writing a Collection Management essay.

...and at UCL

As both Rory and I have been busy recently we did about 90% of our Christmas shopping online. Mostly this worked well but we are still waiting for 2 parcels and I'm getting worried they won't get here in time :( The present for his Nan turned out to have been sent to America by mistake! As always when let loose with internet shopping we've ended up buying stuff for ourselves as well. As an early anniversary present we treated ourselves to the Game of Thrones board game. This will hopefully keep us going until April when the second season comes out!

Lumpy chocolate & raspberry tarts (yummy though)

I've been on a cooking/baking kick recently and have been trying out new recipes. Unintentionally most of them have been from the blog Annie's Eats. After they made one on Masterchef I wanted to try making chocolate and raspberry tarts. I wholeheartedly recommend that recipe, mine turned out to be delicious but rather misshapen! Then I made cookies as Christmas presents for a couple of friends, and used this lemon sugar cookie recipe. Judging by the speed they were eaten they were a success!

However one of the most unexpectedly delicious things I've eaten recently was this rather boring sounding baked spinach recipe. I had most of a bag of spinach left over and was looking for something to do with it. I made that recipe in little ramekins and it tasted fantastic and looked very cute too.

Putting my Christmas cookie cutters to good use

I doubt I'll have much time to blog for the next couple of months, so I hope you have a lovely relaxing Christmas, and see you in the New Year!

What I've been reading in November

Google

Lane Wilkinson, Life after Google (Start of a 3 month experiment to not use any Google products for 3 months)

Phil Bradley, Google Verbatim tool (searches Google for what you actually asked it for)

eBooks

Andy Woodworth, The Amazon Lending Library is NOT the Library Apocalypse 

Jessamyn West & Dan Smith, The Kindle lending experience from a patron's perspective "a wolf in book's clothing"

Save Libraries

Benedicte Page, Campaign against library closures has scored a vital victory

Lauren Smith, DMBC Must Take Equalities Duties Seriously

Gamificationj

Cathy Foster, My Library Induction Recipe (bringing games into school library inductions)

Niamh O'Donovan, Library Scavenger Hunt

Cataloguing

Céline Carty, Training the Cataloguing Trainer: Interesting Conversations on Twitter, Part 1

Freedom of Speech

Ian Clark, Blog comments: to censure or not to censure? 

Ian Clark, A classic case of playing the victim

Simon Barron, Freedom of Speech 2.0

Misc.

David Lankes, Beyond the Bullet Points: Don't be the Mud 

Seattle Central Library by Thomas Hawk on Flickr

 

#LIKE31 - Information Literacy

On Thursday I went to another London Information and Knowledge Exchange event, this time a panel discussion on Information Literacy. The discussion was chaired by Dr Susie Andretta from London Metropolitan University, and on the panel were Adjoa Boateng, Rachel Adams and Caroline De Brun. Each of the panellists works in a different sector (Higher Education, legal and health respectively) and it was interesting to see the common problems faced by people working in different sectors. Sarah Wolfenden has also written about this event on her blog, The Wolfenden Report.

First up was Adjoa Boaten. She began by passing around a copy of the reference librarian's bible, Know it All, Find it Fast, first published nearly a decade ago. Today, the information environment is even more complex and harder to navigate for both students and librarians. As well as learning how to get information, students also need to learn to navigate all of the new platforms we have. Barriers to information literacy include:

• jargon
• specialist databases
• fast-changing technology
• lack of interoperability

We need to help students develop the skills to learn, and to put into practice what they have learnt. The resources librarians choose now will impact on how information literate students will be in the future.

Next was Rachel Adams talking about her experiences working in law firms. It can be difficult to sell information literacy to a workforce. How can we argue the case for information literacy training?

• It saves time
• It saves money
• It saves stress - minimising information overload!

She found that information literacy training was most effective when it was "just in time" rather than "just in case". Often, information literacy training is focused on trainees and new recruits, at a time when they are being bombarded with information. Training given at the point of need sticks better, and timing refresher sessions close to a looming deadline gets people through the door.

Last but not least was Caroline De Brun, who works at the Royal Free Hospital. The term "information literacy" is not commonly used in the UK health sector, "evidence based medicine" is a more common phrase. This means that decisions should be based on best research and clinical expertise, which requires information literacy skills to fulfil.

Training and outreach are important in the health sector. Clinical librarians support clinical teams in hospitals and on wards, and GP librarians support practitioners in local surgeries. Appointment turnaround is very fast in GP offices, so the librarian's job is to offer training in short bursts, raising awareness and getting a foot in the door. The aim and the main measure of success is of course an improved patient experience.

This event was a great way to pick up tips on information literacy training from other sectors, as well as having a fab meal with lots of interesting people to talk to! Apologies that this was quite a rushed post, I've been wanting to blog since Thursday but Collection Management Policies (*sigh*) got in the way!

Acronyphobia

Urban Dictionary tells us:

Acronyphobia

The irrational fear of acronyms. One might have been in a very confusing conversation, not knowing what they were being told because of the excessive use of acronyms. When they hear an acronym, or see one, they have similar panic attacks and feelings to that of other phobias.

Dude, I've got Acronyphobia. I can't bear to hear or see an acronym, and just talking about it makes me shudder.

The following acronyms have been bandied about in the last week at library school:

AACR2, ALA, AR, BL, CAMiLEON (most ridiculous acronym ever?), CEDARS, CILIP, CLOCKSS, DDC, EAD, FRBR, HTML, IFLA, ISAD(G), ISBD, JISC, JSC, LCC, LCSH, LIFE, LoC, LOCKSS, MARC21, MARCXML, MLA, MODS/MADS, NPO, OCLC, OLIS, PADI, PLANETS, QR, RDA, REDS, RunCoCo, SC, SGML, UKMARC, UNIMARC, USMARC, XML...

by NinaMatthewsPhotography on Flickr

By next September will I know what all of these stand for?

A rather curious number

Yesterday, after posting about conservation and augmented reality, I realised that my next post was going to be my 111th, otherwise known to us hobbits as eleventy-first. And what was the date? Random happenstances like this make me happy, so here is a totally unneccessary blog post, cobbled together solely for the purpose of scheduling it for 11:11 on 11/11/11.

As a happy eleventy-first present, I've dredged up a few of my recent and not-so-recent YouTube favourites for you. Hear! Hear! Hear!

Looking after nice old things and playing with shiny new things!

We had two guest lectures last week that between them seemed to sum up a lot of librarianship - looking after what we've got and coming up with innovative ways to introduce it all to new people.

For our Collection Management and Preservation module we had a guest lecture by Fred Bearman, UCL's Preservation Librarian, who was talking to us about the best ways to preserve our libraries' collections, and conservation of damaged materials. Fred's talk included a few horror stories of fires, floods and building collapse, but also more day-to-day dangers such as pests, dust and changes in humidity or temperature. Most of the preventative measures taken were common-sense stuff, but I picked up a few tips I hadn't heard before:

• While cotton gloves are not recommended, if you are handling something you don't want to touch with bare hands, latex-free, powder-free gloves are another option.
• If you're boxing materials to protect them, beware of unscrupulous people who steal the contents of the box and put the box back on the shelf.
• Dust is abrasive and also home/food to various pests and mould spores.
• If there are lots of spiders in your library, it means they are hunting something else which may be eating your books!
• When putting photos etc. in Melinex sleeves, do not seal up the sleeves because... [I've forgotten why, all I have written in my notes is "DO NOT SEAL!" Anyone know why not?]

UCL Special Collections are looking out for volunteers to do some of the dusty work, I might volunteer next term when I have fewer lectures!

Friday's Digital Resources in the Humanities lecture was very different but no less interesting. We had some staff from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology come to talk to us about digital imaging techniques, and then in the practical session we got to play around with some 3D digital versions of museum artefacts and (oh the excitement!) iPads and an augmented reality app.

In the lecture, Mona Hess and Kathryn Piquette took turns to talk about some of the techniques they have been using to create 2D and 3D images to accurately document the objects they are curating. These included close range photogrammetry, laser scanning, and even GPS for documenting buildings or larger sites. All of these techniques are non-contact and non-invasive, which is very important in conservation. Mona showed us how a broken vase could be reconstructed after being photographed systematically from lots of different angles.

As well as taking images of all the sides, it is also useful to capture the same side many times, changing the direction of the light source each time, so that all the nooks and crannies can be captured. For this, Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) is used, where the object is placed inside a rather spacey looking lighting dome, and photographed with the light source moving each time. Then software such as RTIviewer allows the user to move the light around to see different parts of the object in light or in shadow.

Shiny...

For the practical session, Giancarlo Amati arrived bearing iPads (this was what I'd been itching to get my hands on, I have serious tablet envy at the moment!) and showed us the Petrie Museum's augmented reality app. This is still a prototype, but when released will allow iPhone or iPad users to scan markers which will bring up an interactive version of the museum object. They plan to have a few iPads to loan out within the museum for those of us sans tablet.

I've seen videos of AR but hadn't tried any myself before. I was impressed by how interactive it was - I have no idea how it worked but as well as being able to turn the object by moving it with your finger on screen, you could also reach around into the empty air behind the iPad and "pick up" the sarcophagus or whatever it was you were playing with. Weird...

Obviously this is great in a museum setting as most of their collections can't be touched. When smartphones/tablets become more prolific I can imagine AR being used in a library, for instance to provide review videos when you scan a marker on a book, or to watch the trailer of a DVD. The fun thing about the Petrie Museum app though was it's interactivity, so it would be cool to work that aspect into any library AR apps. It may be a bit of a gimick, but it sure is a fun gimick!

What I've been reading in October

Save Libraries

Peter Walker and Alison Flood, High Court Bid to Halt Library Closures Fails 

Lauren Smith, Just Another Liberal Whinger? (A brilliant response to this article by John McTernan) 

Alison Flood, Philip Pullman declares war against 'stupidity' of library closures

Voices for the Library, 22nd October 2011: Library Campaign Conference (includes full speech of Philip Pullman's speech) 

Library Camp

Paul Stainthorpe, Let them tweet cake: why Library Camp was unconferencing done right

Gaz Johnson, Camping

Saint Evelin, Library Camp: Call me Sarah if it makes things easier...

Presenting

Ned Potter, 5 Easy Ways to Create Fabulous Slides 

Ned Potter, Student Induction, Libraries, Prezi, and Interactive Maps

Digital Resources

Micah Vandegrift, The Digital Public Library of America

Dan Cohen, Digital Ephemera and the Calculus of Importance

eBooks and eReaders

Simon Barron, Why I got a Kindle

Ian Clark, Why I have not got a Kindle... (I'm considering buying something to read ebooks on - Kindle, Kobo or Android tablet - so Simon and Ian's posts came at a great time! Any other advice would be very much appreciated.)

Digital Divide

Ian Clark, Follow your dreams - but it will cost you

Mark Herring, Fool's Gold: Why the Internet is no Substitute for a Library (London: McFarland, 2007)

Jobs and Careers

#uklibchat, Summary: Thursday 22nd Sept 2011. LIS Jobs and Careers 

Simon Barron, Thoughts on Military Librarianship

Carley Deanus, My Graduate Trainee Year: On Reflection... 

Games and Gamification

 Gerard LeFond, Why Education Needs to Get It's Game On

by Cindiann on Flickr

Of libraries and learning and luminescent probes...

We're getting properly into the course now at UCL, and with the first assignment due in less than two weeks, I'm planning to spend most of this weekend doing some serious business stuff like deciding on subject headings for books about rabbits! Other assignments include an essay on the possibility of a paperless global information society, and one comparing a digitised item with its real world equivalent. So lots to think about at the moment!

Even though I'm leaving the house at 7am to get to university for 9am, I'm quite enjoying commuting at the moment. The train journeys seem to pass very quickly as I'm racing my way through George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. They are fantastic books, but I end up getting weird looks on the train when he dramatically kills off characters I really like and I go "nooooooo!" Maybe I'll have to switch to reading about collection management instead...

A perfectly justified Sean Bean photo

Meanwhile I'm still popping back up to Cambridge two days a week for work, which has been really nice. I've done a few induction tours for new students, and the last couple of days I've been in I have been typing up a handwritten card catalogue into a big Excel spreadsheet. Apart from a couple of indecipherable bits ("the author's name is....Snail?") this has been quite a nice project to work on. Also, even though I've only been doing my course for three weeks there's already been things we've learnt, especially in Cataloguing classes, that have made me better understand things I do at work. (But of course, having had a bit of practical experience of cataloguing has made the classes so much easier to follow!)

And on that note, it's time to stop procrastinating here and get on with those library school assignments!


PS: If you were wondering about the luminescent probes, we learnt yesterday that this was the first Library of Congress Subject Heading to be suggested by a Brit. Not tea making paraphernalia?

[CPD23] Thing 23: Reflection - What next?

I've been putting off writing this post, partly because I don't have much time but also because then it will be over, and what will I write about when I don't have CPD23 people telling me what to blog?!

To be a master...
Photo by .noir photographer on Flickr

But of course, like most librarians I am a completist, and so I simply must write this last CPD23 post. I've never kept a Professional Development Plan before, and like the CV database I think it's a really good idea, and definitely something to have to hand when applying for a new job. I've copied Niamh's template and started to fill it in. I hope that doing a one year Masters degree will focus my energy into completing several goals this year. Well I hope I can complete number 1 on the PDP list, which is simply BECOME A MASTER! Another thing I want to accomplish this year which is already in motion is to get some committee experience, and last night I went to my second Cambridge Library Group committee meeting. Assuming I get nominated and seconded in absentia at next week's AGM (and you know what they say about assume...) I'll be editor of the group's newsletter, so that will be a good experience to put on the ol' CV. There are a couple of other things on my newly formed PDP that I hope to achieve this year (and have just thought of another as I'm writing this) so we'll just have to wait and see how productive I end up being!

And finally, my 6 word story. Ooh this is tough! How about: "Made me think, engage, try, reflect", or perhaps simply "Wish it didn't have to end..."

#libcampuk11 session 5: #uklibchat and social media

The final session I went to yesterday was on #uklibchat and using social media to cross sectors. Four out of the five #uklibchat team members were there to lead the discussion - Adrienne, Sarah, Ka-Ming and Sam.

The aim of this session was to explore ways to move forward with #uklibchat.

What people like about #uklibchat: 

• Having a set time that you can turn up and know you can have professional chat. 
• Good for solo librarians who can feel isolated. 
• Can watch without needing to join in. 
• Agenda can be anonymous and means you can think about your answers beforehand. 
• Write ups are great. 
• Focuses twitter energy!

What could be improved: 

• Intros at the beginning mean people might feel discouraged from joining in halfway through. 
• Having an "agenda" feels rigid (possibly calling it something different would solve this). 
• Having it at a specific time is at odds with how people use social media. 
• Impression that it's just for students but it's not!

Other similar chats to look at:

• #tlchat - teacher librarian chat - not at specific time
• #ukedchat

General thoughts on social media:

• Twitter is mysterious if you don't use it, who to follow, hashtags etc. Possibility of using the blog a bit more with tips and How To guides.
• Twitter is less formal than mailing lists, you need to be grown up on mailing lists! They seem like things that you need to be experienced librarian to use. Twitter reaches the wider world so good for cross pollination. Generational divide between listservs and twitter - is uklibchat offputting to older people?

Ideas for the future:

• Partner with experts for chats in particular area.
• Encourage people to use the hashtag outside of the set time as well, to discuss anything library related.
• How To guides for using Twitter, including clients.

                                                                 ---

Okay I think that is literally everything I have to say about Library Camp! Normally I end up writing one massive blog post after a conference, today I have ended up with 6 slightly shorter ones, I don't know which is better! Using Evernote to make my notes yesterday has made blogging about it afterwards a lot quicker and easier, so I will definitely be doing that again in the future. So a bit of CPD23 win in there too!

#libcampuk11 session 4: Wikipedia and Libraries

Have I hit the blogging wall yet? I don't think so! Let's keep going...

Session 4 was led by Andy Mabbett, who also had the job of shouting instructions above the hubbub of librarians throughout the day as he had the loudest voice! Andy is a Wikimedia Foundation volunteer, who has been involved in the GLAM outreach project (GLAM = galleries, libraries, archives and museums) which encourages organisations to release their content with Creative Commons licenses and get users to write articles about their objects.


Andy gave the example of Derby Museum, which gave a backstage pass to volunteer Wikipedia editors, including tours and talks by curators.  Curators prepared lists of museum objects that were worthy of a Wikipedia entry but hadn't already got one or that only had a stub. The museum also provided references for citations. Wikipedia volunteers wrote entries then and there, then the articles were translated. 1200 new articles were added to Wikipedia due to that event (including the translations).


While objects need to be worthy to get an article of their own, text and images from museums and libraries can be released under open access and used to illustrate other articles. As everything is attributed, all of this can increase traffic to the organisation's website. The only cost is the small amount of time required by curators etc. when the volunteers are there, and the volunteers feel valued as they get to access areas of the museum that are usually closed to the public.


Libraries sometimes have image collections with no metadata, and they can upload the collection to Wikimedia to crowdsource tags and descriptions. This makes something that usually isn't seen or used into something useful and more valuable. It also means people might use the images etc. in their own blogs which then must attribute to you. This also outsources the web hosting. The metadata is kept up to date and curated by other people.


We then moved on to talking about some other Wikimedia projects. The Wikimedia Foundation is the parent of Wikipedia and about a dozen other projects, including:

• Wikimedia Commons - originally a place to put images for Wikipedia but it is now the biggest repository for freely usable material, mostly images.
•  QRpedia - encodes URL of Wikipedia articles, but returns the translated version depending on the language your phone is set to, in a mobile friendly form of course. Use in museums/libraries to provide captions etc in multiple languages. Could also be useful in a library with minority group users.
•  Simple English Wikipedia - for people with poor literacy skills or who are learning English.

Homework for this session!
Sign up for a Wikipedia account and fix an error, or convert a standard Wikipedia article into a Simple English article.

#libcampuk11 session 3: Mobile apps etc.

Another session pitched by Andy Walsh, and another topic I'm very interested in. Andy said right at the start that he had lots of questions but no answers, which is how I feel a lot of the time! The discussion bounced around quite a few areas of mobile library services, from general points to specific examples and back again.


Questions

• Nowadays people rely on phones for reminders, meaning our memory is now in the cloud. Does this allow you more brain space to think rather than remember? Or just leave you with a terrible memory?
• Museums get a lot of downloads for their apps. Why?
• When people ask questions using a library's app, where are they, what kind of questions do they ask compared to face-to-face/email? Users say they would ask library questions from their mobile while in the library but not outside - seems strange, but the library isn't somewhere they think about when they are not there.
• Apps vs mobile websites? Desktop.vs browser?
• Is it good to have a mobile technology strategy?
• How long should we spend thinking about and testing a new tool before launching it? Long procedures and checking means that when new tool appears it is out of date quickly, but untested apps can flop miserably.
• Should we be teaching users the best ways to use mobile tech/cloud services such as dropbox? Not just how to use tools but how to organise stuff so that it makes sense and how it can be useful? E.g. CPD23 is about learning with peers, exploring and sharing ways it can be used not just how to use it is more useful than being given a static lesson on "this is how to set up a blog". 
• Could we combine task apps with games? (See also my notes on Session 2: Games and Gamification)
   

Libraries are geared for people to be in a fixed location - but now we need to be wherever the person is at the time. However we're still in an office at a static desk so it is harder to explore mobile tech with users. Embedded librarians and roving support (sometimes even with an iPad) are becoming more common but there is still often a fear that "away from desk" means "not working". 


Members of senior management often get given an iPhone, then do nothing with them, it would be a better investment to give them to librarians!

Lots of academic databases are providing their services in a mobile format now but students have mixed feelings about them. Apps should be about making your life easier - tasks like topping up printer card, finding classmarks etc. are useful to do on a mobile, but reading articles and databases aren't necessarily things you would want to do on a mobile. It shouldn't be just about the device but about context/location.

The good thing about mobile apps is the cleanness of their design, with all everything pared down and unnecessary stuff removed. Standard websites could take hints! At the moment a lot of libraries aren't even getting basics right like making the home page mobile friendly.

Things to look at:

LukeW blog about mobile technology.

#libcampuk11 session 2: Games and Gamification in libraries

Session two was a very popular one, on a subject I've blogged about a bit before. Dave Pattern and Andy Walsh were facilitating this session, and they started off the discussion by talking about a project that they have been working on called Lemon Tree. Their aim is to gamify the library experience to encourage low or non users to get involved and learn how to use the library in a fun and challenging way.

One aspect of the game that they mentioned were a points system, where users gained points for all library activities, e.g. for taking out a book, and you get more points for taking out books from outside of your subject. The prize is simply to be good at it, and badges show who is "expert" in particular areas. Another side of the game is that the OPAC levels up as you do, so you get more features/functions as you learn new skills. People learn better in games, when they are "learning by stealth". They also learn better when it is a challenge. Someone mentioned the protein folding problem: once an unsolved scientific problem was turned into a game, it was solved in ten days.

Libraries have the same kind of repetitive behaviours that are involves in games. Turning this into a challenge has been around for years, for example in summer book challenges. Someone mentioned the pretty incredible statistic that the total time people have spent playing World of Warcraft is 6 million years. The man-hours spent playing games are phenomenal, and almost entirely untapped.

Another library (I forget who said this sorry!) has introduced xbox, PS3 and wii, and it has been so popular that they would recommend it to any other library. This has the benefit of getting kids into the library who wouldn't normally enter the building. The wii and xbox kinect have also been used as therapy, e.g. rehabilitation, and to help with dyslexia by associating words with movement.

Some of the fears are that games encourage violence, and games seem childish. Arguments against these: the average age of gamer is 34! Even in shooters, there is much educational potential. Creating maps and building is a creative and educational use of a game. Halo maps made of buildings have been used to test fire drills! (Our evacuation plan worka for fires and zombie apocalypse...). Other games such as Minecraft are all about creating and building.

Other ways to bring games into the library:

• offer hacker groups etc. space in your building, and build up a relationship with this user group. They could teach librarians things!
• take ideas from IGFEST (intelligent games festival). This is held in Bristol, and the games are played throughout the city including things like Augmented Reality zombie shooter games using an iPhone app, and QR code scavenger hunts.
• Death in the library, treasure hunt with clues in books, learn about catalogue/classification through a game.
• Games can be a great way to teach silver surfers how computers work. For first time computer users, solitaire is great for learning mouse control.
• Games don't have to be tech based - board games, cards etc.

However developing games need thought, they can't be rushed or underestimated. Trying to choose a game to suit everyone will probably end up suiting no one. Instead of librarians choosing the games, why not let the user group buy the games - give them the budget and let them choose what they want. Or in an ideal world you could let users design the games.

If you are planning to bring games into the library, you will need to develop a thick skin as many will object that this is not what libraries do. ("Think of the children!" "Think of the Daily Mail!") Maybe good way to test would be to piggyback onto ALA's annual gaming day - 12th November, could be a good test for a wider programme.

And finally...my favourite suggestion of the session: Offer users a chance to clear their fines by challenging their librarian to game of Dance Dance Revolution!

Things to look at:

Reality is Broken by McGonigal

#libcampuk11 session 1: Managing the Transition between School and University

The first session I went to was run by Jo Alcock and Jean Allen. This turned out to be the most formal session I went to during the day, and was extremely interesting (not to mention topical, as we are still doing induction tours for new students at the library at the moment).


As we took it in turns to introduce ourselves, we also said what we hoped to get out of the session. There were a mixture of Further and Higher Education librarians, as well as librarians from other sectors and library school students who had an interest in  learning more about this area. Induction tours were mentioned quite often, and there seemed to be a general feeling that FE librarians don't know enough about what goes on in HE and vice versa.


The discussion can be pretty much split up into problems and suggested solutions (of which there were lots, which is always nice!)


Problems:

• Students arrive at university with few or no research skills.
• Kids are often taught about the internet etc in primary schools and then at uni, but not in between.
• When information and research skills are taught they are often taught in a vacuum, not embedded into the curriculum (this is sometimes the fault of the librarian if they are too protective over their info skills sessions!)
• School curriculums don't make transferable skills explicit.
• Teachers in schools don't realise the value of a qualified librarian as a resource, as they're trying to meet grade targets and cover the curriculum they often don't think they have time for wider skills. 
• University students don't want to get lesson on induction when hungover - they only think about this when essay is due and they are in a panic!  However often induction is the only chance we'll get to hook them in.

Suggestions:

• Librarians, teachers and parents need to work together from the beginning - skills should be taught embedded in the curriculum not in a "library skills lesson". These are life skills.
• Not just library staff, but teachers and management should be on board.
• Librarians have to be in your face, WE CAN SAVE YOU TIME AND IMPROVE YOUR STUDENTS GRADES. Nab new teachers with cake and booze, get them on your side!
• Start with what is readily available i.e. Google advanced search as they will most often turn to Google anyway. Then use Google Scholar as a stepping stone to library resources.
• Practice inductions on local sixth form students. Encourage local schools to bring project groups into university libraries.
• Don't be precious about info lit training, encourage teachers and lecturers to deliver sessions, to embed in curriculum. (Emma Illingworth - this is being done at the University of Brighton)
• Sarah Barker - Interview with academic staff before start of term, what do you want from library? They usually say eresources, reading lists.
• Important not to assume everyone has access to PCs/internet at home. Also important to remember that nfo literacy includes the physical library, not just eresources.
• Children are only in schools for 15% of waking hours. Public libraries underpin whole process, beginning with BookStart.

Things to look at:

• Arcadia project by Emma Coonan and Jane Secker 'A new curriculum for information literacy'
• #sch2uni tag on twitter and delicious.
• School Library Association.

Library Camping

I plan to spend most of today right here on the sofa with this fleecy blanket and my laptop, so I will take the opportunity to get lots of blogging done!

Yesterday I crawled out of bed way, way before the sun came up, and began my journey to Birmingham for the first LibCampUK. I very little idea what was going to happen there, if I would like it, or even how to get from New Street Station to the venue.

For me, the idea of an unconference was a completely unknown entity, and as someone who likes to have a structure, I was a bit worried that with 175 people there, deciding what to talk about on the day wouldn't work that well. Also there was going to be lots of cake...and a poet? Sounded weird, man.

However, I decided to get over my initial fears, and sign up anyway. After all, it was free, there was going to be cake, and virtually everyone I followed on Twitter seemed to be going. I signed myself up, and Rosie too for good measure (and backup), and that was that.

I am so glad I did! As I said, it turned out to be a massive tweet up, so it was great to meet a bunch of people in real life who I had known through Twitter for varying amounts of time, and to see some familiar faces again. My worries about everything descending into a big mess were banished by the sight of a big whiteboard timetable, to which people stuck post-its describing what they wanted to talk about, and we could then choose what room we wanted to go to for each session.

Library Campers deciding where to go

So many different sessions were pitched (there were about 7 for each slot) that although there were over 150 people there yesterday, I don't think there was any one person who went to all the same sessions as I did. I'm looking forward to reading peoples' notes on the ones I didn't get to go to, as it was a hard decision for many of the slots!

For the first time, I made my notes using the Evernote app on my phone. I could pretend that this was a deliberate attempt to put a newly learnt tool into use, but the reality is that I forgot my notebook! Anyway, it worked really well, and I uploaded my photos to DropBox on the way home, meaning that I could start blogging straight away this morning, and copy and paste my notes instead of having to decipher my handwriting! I will blog about each of the sessions seperately, I think.

But I know what you were really wanting to know about! ALL THE CAKE...

We had high-tech cakes with QR codes linking to their recipes...

Low-tech cakes with post-its... (if you were the baker of the cherry brownies could you send me the recipe pleez?)

...and while no-one from SWETS could make it in person, they send a gazillion cupcakes!

Judging from the fantastic spread, librarians are EXCELLENT bakers, and very generous too. There were so many cakes there, not to mention doughnuts, cookies and Marmite crackers, that even with the 175 of us (and we did try our best!) there was quite a bit left over at the end of the day.

So yeah, it was a pretty brilliant day altogether. More posts to come about the actual sessions, but for now I'll just say another big thank you to the organisers and to everyone there for being so awesome, because that's what made it for me.

[CPD23] Thing 22: Volunteering to get experience

So far I haven't really done any volunteer work in libraries. It's something I would be quite happy to do to get experience if I was missing a criteria from a dream job's description, however I would always check that I wasn't taking a job away from paid qualified staff. I think there are a lot of ways that volunteers can do a lot of good for libraries though. I had a quick look around a Volunteering Fair at UCL yesterday, and Westminster Libraries had a stall there recruiting volunteers for a homework club scheme they run across the area. Running this kind of thing would take up a lot of staff time, and a library degree really isn't necessary to help kids with their maths homework, so this is a nice way to use volunteers to supplement core library services.

Okay so what have I done? I have done the odd bits and pieces of voluntary "stuff" such as lending a hand occasionally as an assistant Cub Scout leader, organising Cam23 2.0, and I've recently joined the Cambridge Library Group committee. Things like this always seem to be very useful things to be able to talk about in job applications and at interviews, as well as being good fun to do!

PS: Since I wrote my Thing 21 post about job applications and interviews, the summary has gone up for the #uklibchat on LIS Jobs and Careers, which is well worth a read.

[CPD23] Thing 21: Promoting yourself in job applications and at interview

A lot of thinking to do for this week's Thing, but right now job applications and interviews are just about the furthest thing from my mind! I have just started my MA, which I had an interview for waaay back in December, and another interview for funding a few months ago. It's nice to know I've got a break from applications for a little bit, while I concentrate on doing the thing I actually interviewed for! I do see the sense in keeping a record, or "CV database" of things that I've done, and I did keep an Excel file of this kind of thing while I was a graduate trainee so I'm going to aim to keep the habit going.

I feel like a total cop out leaving it at that, but I have bookmarked Maria Giovanna's excellent tips, and I solemnly swear to do this Thing properly next summer before I start applying to professional posts.

Here are a few blog posts I've bookmarked in the past because they have handy application and interview tips:
Laura Wilkinson, Tips for applying for library jobs
Becky Woods, Application, application, application
Katy Wrathall, Gizza job - from both sides of the desk
Ned Potter, What's the key to a good interview - beyond the usual trueisms we all know already?

And here's a blog post that I wrote last year about practical tasks in interviews. (Includes a crowdsourced list!)

By David Davies on Flickr

Week One

UCL's main library is just behind the nekkid man

I've just finished my first week at UCL. This week has been an induction week, with introductory lectures for several of our modules, a bit of getting lost, and lots and lots of queueing! I've got my university card with a picture that apparently looks nothing like me (maybe it's actually that other Annie Johnson, the one who's stolen my email alias...) and have managed to make it through this unseasonably hot week without melting either on the tube or in the Freshers' Fayre tents!

As well as having introductions to our modules, we've also had several more general lectures on presentation skills, report writing, and an introduction to CILIP. This last was one of the most interesting, as we were debating the merits of joining CILIP and reasons not to join. I joined CILIP last year and I have blogged before about being a member. While I'm not the most active member, and I know I could get a lot more out of my membership if I put more in, I feel it is easily worth the £38 I currently pay. It was interesting to listen to the other side of the argument though, from Jen for example.

An important decision to make this week has been which optional modules to take. I have decided to sign up for Digital Resources in the Humanities and...dum dum duuuum... Cataloguing and Classification II. I've kind of surprised myself with how my attitude to cataloguing has changed over the last year - a year ago I felt rather like this, but as I've done more of it this has changed. I've especially enjoyed creating some records from scratch for our sheet music collection at Newnham. It's also important to me to get as many practical skills out of this MA, as it is after all a vocational course. When I did my undergraduate degree (which was in music), I ended up choosing lots of philosophical type of modules like Music and Ethics. These may have been very interesting, but yeah...not too useful really.

On Thursday we had a seminar in a room in Gordon Square, which was pretty much directly opposite this house:

Which, it turns out, is now this:

Statue of Newton outside the British Library

Also this week, I signed up for the British Library, which was a lot easier than I was expecting. I had my CILIP membership card all ready to enjoy that particular perk, but turns out they let pretty much anyone in nowadays, what is the world coming to?!*

I also went to my first LIKE event on Thursday night, at a lovely pub in Farringdon. The event was led by John Davies from TFPL and the starting point for the discussion was a TFPL report titled 'Connecting Information with Innovation', which examined the trends emerging in Information and Knowledge Management. My first impressions of LIKE were of a very intelligent group of people, and the debate was very lively. While I probably didn't contribute much of any use to the discussion, I enjoyed the evening and everyone was very welcoming to a first time attendee!

I'm looking forward to starting proper lectures next week, and Library Camp has been rather sneaky and somehow it is now only a week away so I've got that to look forward to too. The only question is will I have enough time this week to bake a cake...?



* In case it isn't obvious, I'm not being serious.

What I've been reading in September

Advocacy

Lauren Smith, Thing 16: Advocacy, speaking up for the profession and getting published (from the CPD23 blog)

Nikki (Musings from a Librarian), Thing 16: Advocacy 

Ian Clark, Advocacy etc. 

Ian Anstice, Arguments Against Libraries, Arguments For Libraries 

The Good Library Blog, About two thirds of reading in this country is of books from public libraries


Marketing

Ned Potter, Marketing Libraries in a Web 2 World [slides]


Social Media

Nancy Baym, Personal Connections in the Digital Age (Cambridge: Polity, 2010)

Meredith Farkas, The Changing Professional Conversation

Ned Potter, thewikiman blog? There's an app for that! (Useful looking tool for turning blogs into iphone apps, shame no Android support though!)

Ian Clark, Turning blogs into apps (How the above tool could be a lot better)

Laura Wilkinson, Highlights from Oxford Social Media Day 2011

Jo Alcock, 6 Twitter Tips for Organisations #hhlib (Great advice from Donna Ekhart at the Handheld Librarian conference)


eBooks and Digital Resources

JSTOR, Early Journal Content on JSTOR, Free to Anyone in the World 

Simon Barron, UK Government rejects idea of National Digital Library

David Rapp, Sony Announces First Dedicated eReader with Wireless Library eBook Download Capability

Obnoxious Librarian from Hades, The one with the e-book chaos 

Julie Bosman, Kindle Connects to Library eBooks (But only in the US as yet)

Bobbi Newman, How to Check Out (and Return!) Library eBooks from OverDrive on Your Amazon Kindle


Library School

Annie Pho, What does your degree mean to you? (Is a library degree more than just a "union card"?)


The Future of Libraries

Ian Clark, Could the UK soon need an official 'Banned Books Week'? 

Ned Potter, Skip to the end: library futures, now... 


Misc.

Anna Martin, Organising a Day Trip 

Central Station, Mysterious Paper Sculptures

Brian Herzog, Work Like a Patron Day 2011

By LibraryMan on Flickr

[CPD23] Thing 20: Library Routes and Day in the Life projects

I think the Library Routes project is a brilliant idea. I've been aware of the wiki for a while and read quite a few of the posts. I haven't written one myself because, well, it wouldn't be very long! I don't know if I've been working in libraries for long enough to have roots, let alone routes, but I will write about my 'rootlings' anyway!

'Winding Road' by AColvin on Flickr

 I can't pinpoint the exact moment when I decided that I wanted to become a librarian. When I was 14 I wanted to be a vet. When I was 17 I wanted to be a music therapist. When I was 20 and coming towards the end of my music degree I didn't know what I wanted to be, except I knew I would be a terrible teacher and I was in no way talented enough to become a concert pianist... Luckily I had been working part time in the music library as a student assistant, and it began to dawn on me that this would be a job I would both enjoy and be good at.

I began to talk to librarians and other information professionals about this idea, however this began a bit disastrously! The first couple of people I spoke to about being a librarian were quite negative, and assured me that technology was already replacing librarians, and that it was turning into a dead-end job. This was slightly discouraging, but after speaking to some more people I realised that this wasn't the majority view thank goodness! The Library Day in the Life project was really helpful when I was looking into different kinds of library jobs, and that is the other part of the Thing this week. I have done a few posts during the last two rounds of Library Day in the Life, and if you're interested in reading my Day in the Life posts they can be found here.

I started to apply to graduate trainee positions during my last year of university, and after a few interviews was offered the place at Newnham. My graduateship was brilliant, and I am really lucky that when it finished they kept me on as a part time library assistant as our senior library assistant has decided to reduce her hours. I'm loving working in a library. I have a lot of variety in my work which is great because it means I have learnt so many new things. I have also just started an MA in Library and Information Studies at UCL, which means that I will be able to study the theory behind the things I am doing in practice in my job.

My roots are probably quite similar to many other peoples'. It seems to be quite common for people to "fall into" librarianship. It would be cool if librarians were more prominent at careers fairs etc. to get the word out that librarianship is actually a career, it's actually something people do!

The Space Between

Since my traineeship finished, I'm now in theory a part time library assistant, working 14 hours a week. However I had a few weeks until my MA started, so I have been going in to work most days to rack up some hours! This has been great as I've been able to work with Polly, our new graduate trainee. In between going over Library of Congress Subject Headings (sorry Polly...) and which sticky labels go on which books (important concerns!), we've been working on an exhibition on Newnham's connections with the Bloomsbury group. One of the group, Frances Partridge, was a student at Newnham, and Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own was based on a series of lectures given at Newnham and Girton Colleges.

In other news, Cam23 2.0 ended this week. We held our closing event at the Museum of Classical Archaeology on Thursday night, holding an awards ceremony for those voted the best bloggers, and nomming our way through far too much cheese and pineapple. It was a lovely end to the programme, and although I'm feeling quite a bit of relief that it's over (only one set of 23 Things to think about now!), I had a great time both as an organiser and a participant. 

Next week is induction week at UCL, so I will be off to the big city, clutching a map and my brand new Oyster card. I'm looking forward to meeting people that I have only spoken to through Facebook and Twitter, and to being a student and learning again, although I'm sure I'm sure I'll soon get over the novelty factor on that one!

'UCL Students do it 24/7' apparently. By Ofey on Flickr

[CPD23] Thing 17: The medium is the message - Prezi and Slideshare

It has rather amused me reading through the CPD23 feeds over the last couple of weeks and seeing the number of posts along the lines of "This is a placeholder post for Thing 17, order must be maintained! *twitch*" I have to say the thought did cross my mind to do the same! Oh librarians :)

Prezi
I've only recently started using Prezi, after we covered this in Cam23 2.0. At the moment I'm still playing with it, and making frivolous presentations such as this one of my Dublin holiday:

Dublin, September 2011 on Prezi

When I start at UCL I'm sure I will have to start giving proper presentations, so I may have the chance to use this tool then. In the meantime I made my second complete Prezi for CPD23, which condenses my instruction post on Twitter into Prezi form:

Twitter: What's it all aboot eh? on Prezi

I really like Prezi as a presentation tool, it's intuitive to use and for an audience it is nice to see something other than Powerpoint slides once in a while. When I do use it I'll make sure not to whirl about madly and make people sick!

As a project for the future, I would like to have a go at making an interactive map of our library using Prezi, something along the lines of this one by Ned Potter.  I’ll probably need to practice a bit more before I attempt that though...

Slideshare
I’ve only used Slideshare as a creator once before, when I wanted to share a presentation the graduate trainees made for the Libraries@Cambridge conference. Surprisingly, our presentation was chosen as one of Slideshare’s ‘Featured Presentations’ (I’m not sure why, it seems quite a niche topic!) and then went on to get over a thousand views in a week, which was a bit of a strange experience! Again, I think this is something that will become increasingly more useful in the future as I start making more presentations.

Apart from that, I have used Slideshare quite often to view other peoples’ presentations. After conferences or other events I will usually have another look at the presentations, which are often hosted on Slideshare.

I think if you were going for a job in design or marketing, a slide-deck CV could be a good way to show your skills off. If I was going for a job which asked for these skills in the job description, I might consider putting together a Powerpoint or even a Prezi CV. It obviously couldn't contain as much detail as a traditional CV (at least, not without filling your slides with text and making a rubbish presentation) so I don't think it could replace the paper one.

I'm glad the last weeks of the programme are going to be spread out a little bit more, as I start at UCL on Monday. However I think the last few Things are going to be some of the most useful and interesting, so bring it on!