What I've been reading in September

Careers

Andrew Milne, #CPD23 Thing 10 - Train in Vain?

Maria Giovanna De Simone, Thing 21: Promoting yourself in job applications and at interview (from the 23 Things for Professional Development blog)

Siobhan Britton, CPD23 Thing 21: Promoting yourself in job applications and at interview (a lot of very good tips here)

#uklibchat, Summary - 15th May - Careers

E-Books

Ian Anstice, E-Lending: the end of the library?

Alison Flood, Ebook lending review announced

Voices for the Library, Statement on the ebook lending review

Ian Clark, eBooks, public libraries and the publishing industry

Twitter

Jo Alcock, Five free methods of archiving tweets from events - which are best?

Misc.

Clare Sansom, The Perils of Terminology (and Lunch)

Jessamyn West, How not to write about libraries - some guidelines for reporters

Lane Wilkinson, On ethical reference service (or, "Fishmongers? In my library?")

Photo by Bethan on Flickr

What I've been reading in April

eBooks

Peter Pachal, What Apple's Ebook Fiasco Means for Amazon and the Book Business (See also Digital Divide. Very worrying...)

Bobbi Newman, Ebook Readership Increases, Still Only 21% 

Kathryn Zickuhr, E-books aren't just for e-readers: A deep dive into the data

Andy Woodworth, Reading Between the Lines (has the internet killed reading books?)

Andy Priestner, Ebooks: an epiphany

Digital Divide 

Ian Clark, The income divide and its impact on digital exclusion

Ian Clark, Age, disability and digital divide

Ian Clark, The internet - don't need it, can't afford it

Information Literacy

Greg Downey, Counterintuitive Digital Media Assignments (Very interesting assignment set for a digital media course)

Job Applications

Laura Wilkinson, Designing interview tests

Helen Murphy, Dum de dum de dum de dum de dum (otherwise known as #CPD23  Thing 21: Job Applications) ("I defy anyone reading this to imagine something more likely to take a ruby-encrusted pickaxe to your soul than a poorly formatted Word table.")

Cataloguing

Claire Sewell, CIG eforum - Social media  in the cataloguing community

Misc.

Simon Barron, ISBN, ISTC, and ontology

R. David Lankes, Beyond the Bullet Points: Libraries are Obsolete 

By needoptic on Flickr

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

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

[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

[CPD23] Thing 4: Current Awareness

I wrote the instructions for Thing 4, so I've got no "if it all goes horribly wrong, blame the instructions" option! I'm a bit behind as I had an interview last week, so prep for that took priority. But I suppose since I've already written a few blog posts on this, I should be able to speed through this one and catch up again!

Before I wrote the post for the CPD23 blog, I'd already been using Twitter for a while, and had been subscribing to RSS feeds using Google Reader for a long while. I find both incredibly useful, and have been recommending them to people all over the place.

By robpatrick on Flickr

Being connected and being aware of current goings-on in the library world is important to me, not least because the job market is so rubbish so I know I'm going to have to really fight to get a job after my MA. Having a network of smart librarians on Twitter means I can get almost all of my up-to-the-minute news in one place, with blogs and news sites feeding more in depth posts and articles to my Google Reader. Huzzah!

Although I haven't been using Twitter as long as I've been using Google Reader, I've kind of stuck to the basics with Reader, while I've been using a lot of third party apps and tools with Twitter such as Hootsuite, twitterfeed, the archivist and futuretweets.

Having read Erin's post on this Thing, I'm definitely going to try out some more of the sharing functionality on Reader, and have a shot at Supercharging Google Reader.

Pushnote is something I hadn't used before CPD23. I knew it came on Stephen Fry's recommendation, but not too much more than that! When I was trying this out before writing the instructions, only one other of my Twitter/Facebook friends (Erin again!) had a Pushnote account. I was looking forward to the moment when hordes of CPD23ers would join and start sharing links. Since last week I'm now following a lot more people on Pushnote, and have found several new-to-me sites (worth it just for EchoBazaar alone!) which have been shared. However Pushnote is still in beta, and I think it has a few kinks that needs to be ironed out before it will be a really useful tool. At the moment it seems that friends' shared links and comments don't always show up when clicking on the star, although I think all are appearing on the Pushnote home page. Hopefully they'll get the kinks sorted out! I might try it again in 6 months or something. At the moment Twitter and RSS serve my current awareness needs, so I'm happy!

What I've been reading in June

Save Libraries

CILIP, Women's Institute to Campaign for libraries (hooray!)

Lauren Smith, Libraries and the WI


Conferences

Various people, CILIP New Professionals Information Day blogs (a bit.ly bundle put together by Richard Hawkins)

Ned Potter, Presenting opportunities at library events, and how to get them 

Annie Pho and Lauren Dodd, Hack ALA: Get Your Network On!

Ned Potter, Librarians are horizontal; libraries are vertical (thoughts on the opening keynote of SLA 2011)

Laura Steel, New Professionals Conference 2011 

Jo Norwood, NPC 2011 Part One and Part Two (Tired of reading conference write ups? Here's the New Professionals Conference in comic form!)


Social Media and Technology

Josh Halliday, British Library creates a "national memory" with digital newspaper archive

Soren Gordhamer, 3 Pressing Questions Facing the Future of Social Media 

Audrey Watters, How the Library of Congress is building the Twitter archive

Hamilton Chan, HOW TO: Make Your QR Codes Beautiful


eBooks and Digitisation

ML Burgess, E-book campaign: advocating e-books in a visually pleasing way

BBC News, British Library makes Google search deal

Olivia Solen, JK Rowling reignites DRM debate 

Bobbi Newman, eBook FAQs. 36 Most Common Questions Answered by the OITP eBook Task Force 


Copyright

Jennifer Howard, What you don't know about copyright, but should 


Job Applications

Katy Wrathall, Gizza Job - From Both Sides of the Desk 

Becky Woods, Application, application, application


Misc.


Andy Woodworth, It's Pretty Dark Inside a Closed Mind 

Sarah Kessler, Startup Publisher Gives Readers Control Over What Books Get Printed 

New Professionals Conference audience (photo by sarahjison)

Crowdsourcing and practical interview tasks (and YAY!)

I am very very happy this week for my friend Rosie, who had an interview at the Bodleian on Wednesday and got the trainee job at the Business School library! Yay!

I just wanted to share with you something I think is quite useful that came up when I was thinking about her going for this interview. Part of it was going to be a practical task, but that was all the detail given beforehand. I thought I'd do my best to help by asking the friendly library-folk on twitter what kinds of practical tasks they had experienced in interview. I thought I'd get a few answers back, but thanks to some retweets, I got loads of responses, many beyond my own network of followers. (I shouldn't be by now, but I am always surprised and very happy at how well twitter networks work in gathering information!)

There were some interesting tasks coming up, as well as the core few which kept cropping up. It's a handy little list to have so I thought I'd share it now that there's no danger of giving hints to the competition ;)

So here's the crowd-sourced list of interview tasks:

• Sorting books by classmark - 9
• Cataloguing books/edit catalogue record - 5
• Finding works in the catalogue - 4
• Give a presentation - 2
• Searching databases - 2
• Look up subject headings
• Give an example instruction session
• Find details of a print article from a bibliography
• Write a blog post to teach students something about RSS
• Fill in a referral form based on a transcript of a phone enquiry
• Edit a text for spelling and punctuation
• Copy typing (to demonstrate attention to detail)
• Prioritise items in an in-tray
• Compile a reading list using any of the library's resources

Obviously some of these wouldn't come up in a trainee interview, which is good because I can keep hold of this list and now I have some idea of what to expect in future interviews!

What I've been reading in 2010

 I've been reading a lot of 2010 roundup posts recently. I thought I'd steer clear of the "what have I learnt in 2010?" type post as it would probably just come out sounding trite and clichéd. Instead, I'm doing a roundup of the most interesting things I've read this year. Hopefully this might also be useful to people applying for graduate trainee jobs for next year!

One thing that became very obvious is how I've got a lot better at bookmarking things as I've gone through the year!


Applying for graduate trainee jobs:

The Times, How do I Become...a Librarian? (From 2006)

Librarians Who LibraryThing, "I want to be a librarian because I love reading"

New York Times, A Hipper Crowd of Shushers (From 2007)

NPR, Will an Apple Tablet Heat Up E-Book War?

Marilyn Johnson, This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All (Harper, 2010)

Starting out at Newnham, applying for Masters:

The Wikiman, Essential Advice for New Professionals

Neon Librarian, CILIP New Professionals Information Day 2010 - Embracing the Future

Librarian By Day, So You Want to be a Librarian? A Guide for those Considering an MLS, Current Students and Job Seekers (A lot of links to good advice on The Degree, The Job Search, General Professional Advice and Skills.)

Girl in the Moon, Some Thoughts on the LIS MA

N Page, The Librarianship Qualification

Swiss Army Librarian, Notes on Reading Resumes

Tony Horne, Evening Chronicle column November 26 2010

and a rebuttal to Horne's column: Thoughts of a [wannabe] librarian... "Libraries are dead" says little known regional radio bloke

The Wikiman, Libraries & Stealth Advocising!

Lauren Pressley, So You Want to be a Librarian (Litwin Books, 2009) (Shamefully I still haven't finished reading this book!)

Coming towards the end of the year:

Neon Librarian, End of Term Round-Up!

Girl in the Moon, Brown Bag Lunch: Is the Physical Library Redundant in the 21st Century?

Musings about Librarianship, My Information Consumption Habits or How Having a Smartphone has Changed the Way I Work

The Wikiman, 10 Online Tools I've Found Useful in 2010