Library routes and CPD

At a brown bag lunch in April 2010, College, Faculty and University participants discussed not only the stereotyped and positive images of librarians but also who and what brought us into the profession. Girl in the moon blogs about her early interest in books and I was library monitor in primary school, reinforcing ladybird books with sticky backed plastic and marching into classrooms demanding the return of overdue books from the class teacher with all the confidence of a final year pupil. However it was my College Librarian, Pauline Adams, who enthused me and provided a vacation post leather dressing the rare book collection, an all important reference and started me on the Library route. I applied to Library School but secured a Sconul Graduate Traineeship at University College Cardiff where I was mentored by a group of librarians whose careers later took them to Sheffield, De Montfort and the National Library of Wales so deferred my place at Aberystwyth for a year.
A year at a SWALCAP (South West Academic Libraries Co-operative Automation Project) library, an early adopter of automated library systems and 9 months at CLW where I took special library options including a placement at an architect's library with early experience of post disaster management (the Taff had burst its banks and the slide library in the basement was flooded) and a PAID vacation work establishing a catalogue and a circulation system for a firm of solicitors found me with a DipLib and no work.
Academic libraries were facing a cut in budgets and cancelling journal subscriptions (sounds familiar...). A few weeks temping in a solicitors firm, photocopying trial bundles, then typing, managing a switchboard (ineptly) and audio typing whilst applying for anything library or information related followed before I joined South Glamorgan County Libraries, initially managing the circulation desk at Barry Town Library (having never seen the Browne circulation system in action) and then becoming Branch Librarian at Trelai in Cardiff. I was able to gain my Charter and therefore become an ALA by following the internal training system within the County Libraries under the old Library Association regulation of two years work and a post graduate qualification conferring Chartered status. Public librarianship offered valuable experience in staff management, mainly organising rosters for coffee and lunch breaks, involvement with community workers in the Branch Library to improve facilities for young people such as homework clubs and summer reading schemes and extensive reference work experience from published works.

Shortly after becoming Chartered I took a career break to bring up daughters, working part time as a Library Assistant at University College Cardiff and taking various Open University courses in Maths, Computing and Statistics. We moved to Cambridge, and within two weeks I was appointed to the ESTC project based at Queens' and Emmanuel College, having applied for work in advance of the house move, and then to a job-share post at Homerton College in the School Practice Library. A year later the post of Assistant Librarian at St Catharine's was advertised and the OU qualifications were invaluable since the College Library was in the early stages of automation, and the LMS system LIB-Base created by Alan Findlay and Mary Kendall of Churchill College could be modified according to local need.

The initial appointment was for 25 hours a week, ideal with children still in primary school but the post developed, was regraded and became full-time (plus) and the word Assistant dropped. Developments in networked systems and the introduction of the Voyager system resulted in a group of LIB-Base librarians looking for a replacement LMS and selecting Softlink Liberty3 and then customising it (OU coming in handy again) and I attended Rare Books Group study conferences and Historic Library Forum meetings to support my work on the College rare book holdings. Otherwise involvement in CILIP was, I admit, minimal apart from scanning the Gazette, now Update and feeling that my MCLIP was a rented qualification.

It was my involvement in the CCALG (Cambridge College Assistant Librarians Group) which became the CCLF (Cambridge Colleges Library Forum), the Trumpington Street Disaster Planning Group and the courses provided by libraries@cambridge, the Computing Service and the College which contributed to my professional development at far less cost than a traipse to London. Ned Potter in his blog advises finding out what skills are required and seeking out training, in Cambridge we are extremely fortunate that courses are available, the main problem being for sole practitioners is getting away from the office to attend them.

Last Easter I retired (early) to pursue a dream of extended periods of sailing in the Adriatic.
Thus my library route should end with a picture of sailing into the sunset but in May 2010 23 Things Cambridge was launched and I was hooked. For those people who were not able to start it or did not finish may I commend the instructions for Twitter , Creative Commons and of course blogging. I have set up blog feeds to my igoogle page and have a whole new community of librarians, both new to the profession and well established to follow and exchange ideas and information with. This year I will even recognise the names when I come to vote at the CILIP elections. The feeds and tweets also alerted me to opportunities to contribute facts and images to True Knowledge and Wolfram|Alpha, on a voluntary basis. I still refer to Whitacker's almanac and tried and trusted reference works at home but these site are interesting alternative to a google search, try them.

I referred to the enthusiasm for her work, her College and the old members shown by Pauline Adams who recently retired after 40 years as Librarian and Archivist at Somerville. The head of Yale University Library Alice Prochaska was recently appointed Principal of Somerville College and there is a wonderful image of her wearing a hard hat and wielding a sledgehammer on a recent blog. Proof that librarianship is a profession which develops people and management skills and can well open up other opportunities.

And smile

First attendance at Freshers' Fair since I arrived at Cambridge, and I had the chance to get some freebies, including pizza although by no stretch of the imagination, despite dying my hair, can I be mistaken for 18. The Neon Librarian has blogged on the first day of Successful Library Promotion at the Freshers’ Fair, I think that Wednesday was probably quieter, certainly in the morning.
There was some initial confusion when a group of foreign language students confused the Central (Public) Library with libraries@cambridge, but some of them were pleased to learn of the internet terminals available in Lion Yard and that the County's catalogues are also available online. Many attendees are of course not Freshers, I was glad to see several from College who remembered that I had gone off sailing, and realised that librarians have lives.
Those librarians on the libraries@cambridge stall who had delivered induction courses had the advantage in spotting "their" students and being greeted with a smile.
The set was super, a cosy book lined study, (photo of Helen) with a banner and plenty of cards to dish out with the
libraries@cambridge link www.cam.ac.uk/libraries. Sarah's photos on flickr feature the cards on other stalls which should go a long way in raising the profile of both societies and libraries.
A few people had questions but if they register that library staff are friendly and approachable the two days will be worth it. Would I do it again? If I stayed up to date yes, but was flummoxed by one question on the number of books a first year could take out from the UL (5 for 2 weeks)

Final thoughts

Thank you organisers and thank you bloggers. It has been a fascinating programme, and although I am currenly in limbo I have very much enjoyed being part of the Cam23 community.
Looking at my Wordle image, share is prominent, and that typifies what we have got out of the programme, we have shared our enthusiasms and skills and interests, and this should have a knock on effect for the beginning of the Michaelmas Term.

As a College Librarian I knew a little about most things on the programme but had only ever faced one question about Endnote. Citation software was a known unknown and I have been glad to find out more about it.

My regret was not posting more comments on other peoples blogs, there were so many good ideas out there, which will enable professional development, but feedback and discussion is an essential part of that development. Social media, web 2.0, call it what you will can engage the profession with the users but needs staff time budgeted for to make the most of it.

Thing 22 Wikis

Will look at Library Routes wiki, after the end of the Cam23 programme to avoid cold turkey.
I registered with wikispaces last year to contribute towards the NewMunford library history wiki, another thing on my to do list.

Podcasts

My saved itunes podcasts at present consist of the Archers omnibus editions I mean to catch up on but prompted by Andy's Podcasting thing I searched on the British Library and found audio links to the re-unification of Codex Sinaiticus.

I did like the link to the L-team and thought that there was a Judge induction podcast using that theme but could not find it on the website.

The promo video for Catz (For the wheel), and I do not suggest that you watch it all, has some lovely shots of the Sherlock Library in the opening minutes. Good to see that it is viewed as an asset to the College.

Google docs libraries on Twitter

Link to Cambridge libraries on Twitter. Feel free to edit.

Marketing Libraries and Librarians

Oh dear. Whereas I have enjoyed working through the Cam 23 things I do wonder if the Fellows and authorities who manage the finances have quite as much enthusiasm for social media. When I suggested that I could be followed on Twitter and Facebook the following email exchange took place:

No, Fairport Convention, Marmalade, The Archers, Corduroy trousers, Sandals
..... are all indicators of sentient humanity!, which is more than can be
said for

Simon Cowell, Facebook, Russel Brand, Twitter, Big Brother, etc etc

R

--On 25 February 2010 10:40:25 +0000 Suzan wrote

> Went to a Fairport Convention gig last week where they dedicated a song
> to Phil Archer aka Norman Painting.
> Does that count?
> Suzan
>
> r@cam.ac.uk wrote:
>> Twitter!
>>
>> Facebook!
>>
>> You'll be telling me that you listen to boy-bands next!
>>
>> And very best wishes to you two, including on the Adriatic

Andy's marketing suggestions the 4 Cs of content, context, connections and conversations can be achieved by regularly updated websites, engaging with academics and managers in committees and meetings with student reps. Blogging, and setting up links to blogs via twitter, facebook, the library home page etc is probably the most useful thing that Librarians can do to raise awareness of resources, services etc on offer rather than hope that institutional accounts on the various social media will attract followers

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Zotero

Catch up time.
Am sure I loaded Zotero on the office machine, some time ago but never used it, have now loaded it at home, and tried to save some items but doesn't want to play.
Ah well you cant win them all.

LinkedIn and networking

There is an over the pond feel to LinkedIn with its openness about educational background and work experience and the ability to post recommendations about co-workers. Perhaps it is of more use in employment areas with high turnover. The weekly digest of group news to my in box has not yielded much of interest yet, and I have been a member for about a year, and I am bemused by the people you may know suggestions. I would also like to know who has been headhunted as a result of joining.

Library use of facebook

A year or so ago I created a College Library facebook page loaded some interesting images of the older and newer library and put useful links on it to COPAC, the library OPAC and JSTOR. Eight or so librarians became fans plus a few randoms with no Cambridge connection and then Facebook had one of its revamps, the carefully designed pages were split over several tabs and advertising appeared down one side. No College students were fans so I took the page down.

For several years however, I became a fan or liked the Freshers page and shortly before the beginning of Michaelmas term posted a reminder about Library tours to the wall, or to a discussion. Don't think it had much impact but I did get an invite to an 18th birthday party. Think I was washing my hair that day.

There are various facebook groups which might be of interest for networking or professional development but in general the activity in them is slight. I use Facebook to stay in touch with family and friends and share photographs and apart from Scrabble have resisted the lure of the various games on offer. If students want to befriend me that is fine, but each summer I weed my friends list. Facebook offers a means of staying in touch, offering support, organising social activities and establishing an online persona distinct from that portrayed in the office at home. It's fun, and we all need that, but perhaps it is not worth the time needed to maintain and update an institutional page when websites, emails, camtools etc are already used.

Widget - anyone want to test?

Library thing widget.

Seems to work

Library thing

I used Library Thing in my previous life as a College Librarian to search the tags of the Central Science's Library account for possible purchases at the end of the financial year in subjects with lower accessions than normal. I thought that the Medical Library was also on Library Thing but cannot find the booklists and tags so must be mistaken



So I have set up, by following Kirsty's instructions a personal library account, and keeping to the alias I have created called it CalonLan (no spaces were allowed). I grabbed some books next to the laptop which were purchased in student days and entered them, one a catalogue of Burgundian sculpture had to be done from scratch, others had records but not necessarily book images.

Library Thing is very useful for tagging, and provides "good enough" catalogue for home use or perhaps current awareness, but for Cambridge Library users I thing that RSS feeds of recently added books, or the new books listing provided by LMS systems such as Softlink Liberty3 are well established and do not require additional data entry.

Reflection

This image comes from a BBC news link that arrived today in my Google Reader feed, one of the tools I have set up since starting the Cam 23 programme. In very small print it is credited to Reuters

Many of the social networking and other tools explored in the first half of the programme were not new to me. I had registered as an enthusiastic early adopter when they were launched but then not made the time to explore them comprehensively. The 23 Things Cambridge programme with the additional links and exercises have prompted me to investigate further and I am looking forward to finding out more about Zotero and Mendeley.

We acquired a laptop with windows 7 at home and igoogle was the default home page so I set up a google ID, a new email address and a google webpage, which is far easier than writing the html script for a homepage before Cam 23 was launched but did not explore reader until Thing 1. Gmail or googlemail does not have features which are present in hermes webmail, such as the ability to sort columns according to subject or sender, but does keep related messages together, has folders and keyword searching of messages. For quick access to email messages I prefer putty access to hermes.cam.ac.uk but this is dependent on the programme being loaded on the computer in use, webmail is accessible on any system, and in Internet cafes google is often the default home page. In an office google mail or thunderbird or outlook can be kept running in the background so that you can be aware of incoming messages but time management skills are required to concentrate on the task in hand rather than check messages, or worse still engage in chat because a friend is also online.

Blogging has been great fun, and has been taken up enthusiastically by Cam 23 participants, but who has the time to read and comment on all the entries. For chartership candidates and new entrants to the profession a blog will be a worthwhile addition to a portfolio of skills acquired but for many librarians it will be hard to maintain a schedule of blogging in term time.

Doodle and Google calendar are useful tools for keeping track of meetings and events. I have found the email prompting for google calendar and can see that in an organisation with several staff it would help in forward planning, but wall charts with stickers and paper diaries still have a place, especially the university diary with board and term meetings pre-entered.

Twitter, Flickr, Slideshare were lovely to explore but suck the hours out of the day. I think that in Twitter effective use of # hashtag and bit.ly urls enables sharing news and links to conferences #npc2010 but believe that this is a tool for professional development rather than engaging with users. Any tool which requires a log in is setting up a barrier in the exchange of information.

Tagging and sharing links appeals to the cataloguer within me. There has been some very effective subject use of delicious by faculty libraries, one example here linked from the webpage, but I have found it hard to search across all Cam23 blogs for references to specific topics. The solution has had to be bookmarking an item when found with a todo tag to read later.

I would like to thank the programme contributors for writing the instructions to the things and the participants for their comments and extra links. This programme is bringing together the Cambridge library community in a way that the annual libraries@cambridge or brown bag lunches cannot hope to achieve.
Best get back to sorting out my paperwork:





Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Cambrige Libraries on Twitter

Which Cambridge Libraries are on Twitter?
A couple of days ago, I created a private list of Cambridge Libraries, as opposed to Librarians, on Twitter, from the #cam23 comments and members.
The first list of seven libraries was expanded by clicking on the followers’ link and scrolling down, a time consuming exercise which added three libraries.

At the drop in session I chatted to Andy about lists and institutional use of Twitter and he pointed out lists such as @followalibrary/United Kingdom


Later I revisited the blog by The Passion and the Fury “Why I created a library Twitter account”
It seemed that it might be interesting to find out as of 1st July 2010 :

How many Cambridge libraries have Twitter links on their websites?
How many people are following?

Is Twitter better used for personal and professional development and networking or as an additional means of marketing the library? If so who is being targeted, other librarians, faculty/department/academic staff or post and undergraduates?
Although there a variety of librarian lists on Twitter, and you can sort on #hashtags I found it hard to identify institutional users from Twitter search screen and went back to the web pages listed in the Cambridge Libraries Directory. There were some Libraries with Facebook but no Twitter links and some College Twitter links but very few libraries have yet embedded Twitter links in their webpages

Institution Followers Following Listed
ebookscambridge 153 199 25
libatcam 197 209 17
The UL 65 862 80
Homerton College 74 111 16
Wolfson College 3 15 0
Economics Marshall 74 160 12
Education faculty 7 37 8
Earth Sciences 46 41 4
Music Pendlebury 2 18 0
Philosophy Casimir Lewis61 57 8
Management Judge 23 137 17

(apologies - have spent longer than I intended trying to get a table into the blog and have given up)

We are tweeting, to each other about interesting developments but students and perhaps faculty may not be engaging with this method of communication

Delicious

I registered some years ago when the site was called del.icio.us and then a few months ago imported all my bookmarks from the office computer. There is some duplication of bookmarks which will need time to sort out. The explanatory notes for the Philosophy Library site are very useful, as in the example here

Screenshot of the unedited version of my delicious page attached, this is very much a personal working tool rather than a Library site.

Slideshare

Some years ago, I created a powerpoint introduction to the College Library which was embedded into the then welcome web page for graduate students. Slideshare seems a much simpler way to embed such information.

Using the search screen I came across
Building history websites, presented by Dave Lester (http://davelester.org) at National History Day. June 15, 2008.

Building History Websites: Software and Technical Tips

View more presentations from davelester.

Flickr using images

103 blog entries to catch up on after one week away. Have to take a deep breath and read what I can. In the meantime am using flickr and creative commons http://www.flickr.com/photos/14896779@N05/4736467532/ and to send notification to the Cruising Association about a shortcut to get through Losinj island or to enter the harbour of Mali Losinj via the artificial canal Prolaz Privlaka (3m deep and 6m wide) when the bridge opens at 0900 and 1800. Having seen the swell with a moderate NW wind I would not advise it.

As to library use of flickr, would it not be easier to get someone with a digital camera or a keen eye to take photographs on your behalf rather than fish for pictures on the web. Just a thought.


Sunset in Mali Losinj Midsummer.

Flickr and photo sharing

Found I could do a geographic search on flickr. Thank you Thing 9 Exploring Flickr since I had just used the service before to share photographs with friends and family rather than clog up their in boxes with large photofiles.
For those people who want to made money from their photographs this report "Getty taps into Flickr snappers" may be of interest.

I have tried to load a picture of our favourite (to date) lighthouse into flickr Sv Ivan na Pucini near Rovinj. I would be interested how many views it gets.
Calon Lan is off sailing for a week

Tagging

Wish I could search tags across all Cam23 blogs or have the equivalent to the #cam23 twitter search.

Used tags within catalogue records in the College Library catalogue: http://dragon.caths.cam.ac.uk/liberty3/opac/quickclicks/reading.do


Clicking on the tags pulled up the full record(s) with Library of Congress headings and other notes

Twittering away

Did wonder about setting up a Twitter account for the library some time back but doubted that people would want to connect to it and chose to set up a personal account. Made about 8 tweets in the same number of months then got distracted by the # and started to follow #drwho #archers.
Followed BBC news then realised it was a lot easier setting up a RSS feed to igoogle. Was not able to attend the libraries@cambridge conference this year but did follow the tweets, although I am not so sure I like the idea of people commenting on speakers during a session. Feel that I may be a lurker rather than an active contributer

Time management Doodle et al

Full of admiration for the course leaders and bloggers who are setting the Cam 23 challenges and advising via comments in addition to working/training/attending courses. Having left full time work to persue the dream of sailing I don't know how you do it all but perhaps the jisc info kit will help http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/time-management




Right oh Doodle. I first learnt about it at one of the monthly Brown Bag lunches, and used it last year to publicise library tours to the incoming freshers. It was received favourably by many of them and boosted attendance at the Michaelmas induction tours from the very low turn out the previous year, although perhaps a meeting with the Senior Tutor in 2009 after the low turn out might have helped.

Again after a brown bag lunch I used Mosuki and tried to publicise it at Heads of Department meetings but my usage of it slipped and I had not realised that it had fallen by the wayside. I am still a printed diary person, one for work (when I was in it) and one for home plus a great BIG chart on the kitchen noticeboard for sailing trips, rambling and family events, but have looked again at google calendar and made some entries. If you are not in the habit of using up to date mobile phones a University diary in the handbag is as good as anything.

Finally a note on today's picture. I take a laptop when sailing, but away from the Cambridge bubble of cheap, fast internet connections find that books and printouts of user group contributions to sailing networks are the best information resources when internet access is either not available or horrenously expensive via dongles.

Editing the blog

Thanks beauty-school-dropout for the banner.
Since blogs develop and can be constantly tweaked what is the best way of refering to them, yes they can be bookmarked but a date and time reference needs to be added as well?

Avoiding unwanted comments

Right oh. Have set up the blog and assumed that only Cam 23 people would be interested but have just received the following email. Can other bloggers advise on privacy issues?

Hi there blogger!

Just visited your blog and I was super impressed by its design and content. We just opened up our site Lookville for beta testing. It's a place for people to have discussions, share tips, and ask questions about fashion. Currently, memberships are by invitation only and I would love to have you on it! Use this invitation link to sign up if you're interested: (deleted)

And we would love to hear your feedback.

Ciao!
- Bethany C.

Lookville.com | Fashion Discussions. Ask, Answer and Discover | 1045 Missino St #433, San Francisco, CA, 94103 | You will not receive further emails from Lookville, however, u can .... to remove your email from our database

ah ah moment

Wondered why my blogs were giving the impression I was on the computer at very peculiar hours. Realised that the settings tab had me in Pacific time zone.

Screen shot

Hoping to make igoogle page of use when logging into internet cafes

First thoughts on blogging

Hoping to get up to speed on various aspects of social media. Use Facebook to share photos and information about leisure activities with family and friends. Am skeptical about social media for institutional library use but willing to find out more and be convinced.
Postings may be delayed by sailing activities.
Suzan