Putting 23 things to use

As a nod to things 10 and 11, I have acted as a buddy to a cam 23things participant last year and did post my CV on the website of my College employer to act as a point of contact for any students thinking of a career in librarianship and information science. One enquirer got a graduate traineeship but I had no subsequent feedback from her.

I did not sign up for the 7th round of the Library Day in the Life Project since I had no supply work booked via the University Agency and I had blogged about the Doorstep service to the housebound in my entry for the 6th round of the Project. However, for most of last week and the week before I have been researching and communicating with others the roles of Library Friends in supporting community public libraries under threat.

Last year I set up a wordpress blog to participate in part of the 25 Research Things @ Huddersfield program.
I therefore had a separate identity to use for a Friends page for the local library. Thing one revisited.

I googled other Friends pages and got in touch with organisers, added their blogs to the page I had set up. Thing two revisited.

At the moment I add items to the blog under a pseudonym but calonlanu3a for a retired sailing librarian is fathomable and as soon as the committee is established I will add proper contact details to the information page (if elected onto it) Thing three check

Current awareness is essential when joining or pushing a campaign. I now get RSS feeds from other campaigning sites and @shirleyburnham bounced/retweeted  the Friends page via twitter where is was picked up by @UKpling and then @anniebob. Thing four essential (apart from Pushnote)

Facebook has been used for some of the publicity but the problem with online networks is that they require the audience to be part of the same group, and if you are breaking out of the echochamber the networks have limited value. One campaigner has set up a Save Library page followed by all her friends and I set up a Friends page followed by 2 councillors and my daughter. Still thing six used.

Perhaps the most useful special interest group for this type of activity is Public Library News 
It has useful briefing on volunteer run libraries and provided a link to a new website Locality
which might be worth investigating. Thing seven tangentially use.

Google calendar has not been much use in this activity but I have tried Evernote whilst researching the various campaigning groups ( and reactivated my delicious account which I had transferred to diigo when it was under threat last year) Thing nine, unknown to me before has therefore been of use.


So a BIG THANK you to the cpd23 contributors. It is never too late to learn

Source Ian Baker Spectator 30 July 2011