it’s Franks world….

And now, the end is here And so I face the final curtain……

don’t worry, there’s no rogue sound file lurking anywhere in this post with a dubious rendition of that karaoke classic, but I do think that it’s one of the strengths of 23Things that you can get what you want out of it, although to a certain extent you get out what you put in, no pain no gain, and other cliches. You go at your own pace, and come to your own conclusions, but with the benefit of c.100 other viewpoints to call upon if you can’t quite make up your own mind.

I’ve really enjoyed it – the discipline of writing up a blog for each thing, the camaraderie of the process, the feeling that every time I ventured out beyond the Medical Library walls it was like going on a blind date – would the person I was meeting up with be doing the Things? and what would their blog be? and would I be able to match a blog to a face? (probably not – but it’s fun to speculate, and I’m looking forward to meeting up again at the closing ceremony).

I’ve enjoyed reading other people’s blogs enormously – and am excited by the prospect of there being life beyond this Thing in the form of TeachMeet and I’m going to copy other people shamelessly by listing the 23 things and speculate on my future relationship with them all (what a hussy!)

Google & iGoogle page

yes – use google id loads, no – hardly ever use iGoogle – I’ve got other things that do that job for me, but I do like the principle of personal homepage

RSS feeds

 using RSS feeds is just standard for me – who could bear to have email alerts coming in, just clogging things up and making you feel guilty – I teach about RSS feeds and actually practice what I preach (which as a firm believer in “do as I say, not as I do” is saying something!)

Blogging

well, you’re here, reading it! blogging is my big surprise really – that I don’t mind shouting into the wind, and that some people actually shout back is great – thanks for all the comments over the past few weeks. I use blogs already for cpd in general, but hadn’t commented on anyone elses before – maybe that will be my first big post cam32 step into the unknown?

Doodle

useful in its place – I don’t use it regularly, but I like that it’s there for when I do want to use it…

Google Calendar

I use it for work, but haven’t ever considered using it for me, because I can access a shared work calendar over the web already, and just haven’t made the leap to using a web calendar for personal use yet. But I like the things you can do with google calendars – the embedding etc.

Twitter

complete twitter junkie – was doing it before 23things, but am surprised how much I enjoy using it, and what I gain from it. just wonder when I’ll make the leap to using it for the library rather than for myself….

Flickr & Creative Commons

again – used it before, and really like it but have enjoyed learning about the creative commons search options, which just make it all a little more… is ethical the right word?

Slideshare

I like, though haven’t loaded anything up there yet – am sure that will come.

 delicious

was an early-ish adopter of delicious, but really haven’t kept up with it, and haven’t used it to manage the links from the library webpages in the way I thought I might, but again that may be worth a second look.

 tagging

I embrace the notion of folksonomy, but i’m just rubbish at it – generally can’t be bothered….. bad librarian!

 librarything

just not for me – nice that people can show off how much they’ve read, or how many books they own – yawn…..  and not much cop for the library either frankly- we’ve got a catalogue and it’s hard enough for readers to use it (hurrah, roll on acquabrowser!)

 facebook & LinkedIn

hmm – has this bandwagon not been taken over by anything else yet? the monstrous juggernaught of facebook has ceased to entertain me, and I never really engaged with it for the library either – but perhaps I’ve got no idea what would actually properly engage the students with the library – maybe I should ask them…?

And linkedin may come into its own eventually, but it’s not quite got there yet for me, so while I’m not jumping ship like I did with facebook, I’ll stay lurking and reserve judgement.

zotero & mendeley

useful useful useful and great for upping your profile – every researcher & student loves a person who can help make referencing easier, so confidence in these tools (plus the endnotes, reference managers, etc of this world) is a good thing.

marketing thing

always useful to think about marketing – and how using more than email and posters will reach different audience.

Google Docs & wikis

very good thing – used a lot, and will continue to use a log – but fancy exploring an in-house wiki for staff manual etc.

YouTube & tunes of various sorts

like the idea of a library film (watch out for the launch on Sept 7th), but wonder how I’d use podcasts in the library – just voice isn’t so great

Wordle

Thank you Cam23 – it’s been great!

cam23 catch up – how did thing 4 slip through the net?

whoops! how did that happen? thought I was onto a smooth cruise to the finishing line, and it turns out I’d only have done 22 things! crikey!
so, looking back carefully at the instructions

• I’ve made a blog and registered a it on the 23things list;
• I’ve made screenshots a-go-go;
• I’ve tagged and
• I think I’ve been pretty sociable (commenting on other people’s blogs, and even meeting up with some entirely new people, face to face don’tcha know!) and
• I’ve even gone a little more public, by listing myself on UKLibrary blogs (sandwiched between Multifaceted and My:Self-Archive, and not too far away from NPage and TheMongooseLibrarian which is nice to be amongst friends.

And not on the list, but something that I note with interest – I actually quite enjoy the blogging bit of blogging! who’d have thought it? I like the sound of my own voice! I’m not as reflective as some, which is why I’ve really enjoyed reading many of my fellow cam23er’s thoughts – there’s lots of Proper Thinking going on out there!

And my obsession with the viewing figures that wordpress provides means that I can also guage how much other people like the sound of my voice too – or at least the number of people who come by, however briefly… they probably do it by mistake and then throw things at the computer shouting “silly bint”…   bad luck folks – I’m hoping to continue blogging even after the final curtain on 23things – there’s much to look forward to and blog about afterall – there’s a film launch, and TeachMeet – too much fun!

onwards!!!

wiki… and the difference between wiki and google docs is..?

so google docs can be a type of wiki, right?

so just like I like google docs, I like wikis – we’re doing the summer quiz using PBWorks this year, rather than relying on a scibbled mess of answers in the staff room. So more part-time staff can contribute to the easier answers, rather than just finding that there’s only the hard ones left at the end of the week. (aren’t we nice??)

We’re using PBworks for camlibtm – another thing, another chance to plug the exciting event that’s happening on 27th September – haven’t you heard about it??

It’s all happening in PBworks, but I’m sure there are plenty of other resources we could use.

As I mentioned for google docs thing, we’re planning on using wikis to update and maintain our staff manual, and if camtools does the job (thanks celine!) then we might use this tool rather than an outside commercial one.

whichever tool I use it’s great not to have to clog inboxes up with word docs which might already be out of date.

Plus the thing that is most amazing now is how Wikipedia – the original shining example of a wiki – has now turned into a really very reliable source. Pinches of salt still need to be on hand – just like with all information – but it’s evolved from being a Very Bad Thing to being a Useful Place to Start if you’re entirely new to a topic. A great example of how the internet is self-regulating.

so yes, wikis are a Good Thing.

podcast and youtube

mmmm libraries and video cameras – so often a bad combination (resulting in such nails in our image coffin as the gaga abomination and the wierd syncronised trolley olympics that seem to pop up every now and again – no I’m not going to put in links to these, it just encourages the madness)

But library promotion in a variety of forms is a good thing (as the soon to be launched The Perfect Desk is a good example). Library videos by librarians about libraries are often a little dry, but library films pulling together student/ library user opinion is a good thing.

Film about the use of libraries by academics, and their perception of what libraries are for now and in the future formed the basis of a much more interesting presentation to the UL’s Visiting Committee last year.

Library introductions that are virtual rather than laborious tours of shelves make life more interesting too (another thing for my “to do” list), and online training in screencast form is a useful way of making support available any time of the day or night.

I like podcasts ( of radio programmes I’ve missed or for students to listen again to lectures), but I’ve not tried making one myself. I’m a little dubious about podcasting library information/instruction – I would imagine it’d be pretty dry….

 

google docs

I do like google docs – if there’s collaborative work going on (like we’ve been doing with camlibtm) it just seems so sensible to work on the most current version of the document, rather than each of us making changes which then have to be almalgamated.

I’ve used google docs to write articles collaboratively, share documents without having to load emails with massive attachments, and to avoid having to carry around a memory stick when I’m working at different computers. Means I can work on things at home (erm, why is that a good thing?) and it also lets me convert documents to PDFs (lovely!).

I’ve tried to use the forms in the past, and while lovely in theory, the range of options for type of questions didn’t really suit me, so I went back to SurveyMonkey (I’ve access to a souped-up subscription version, so while it’s not free, the extra functionality does provide value for money)

It’s not all sweetness and light – it does feel al little clunky at times, and there’s not a straight conversion to/from MS Office formats. And of course you’re a slave to being online (as we discovered the other night – meeting to discuss camlibtm in CB2 when internet access ground to a halt my note-taking in google docs did too – so back to slate and chalk).

For our staff manual we’re thinking of using either wikis or google docs to maintain accurate and up to date documentation for the library, but it’s tricky having to rely on a third party to host internal information. Wouldn’t it be nice if Cambridge University (CARET??) could provide a service which would mean that we wouldn’t be at the mercy of putting our information in someone else’s hands (we do enough of it already).

so nice google docs, I like you!

to market, to market….

marketing, marketing – it’s never ending, isn’t it? We get new readers joining the library all the time so we have to constantly sell and promote and tell people what we do. We offer new services so have to get hold of the existing members to remind them that we exist and can do snazzy things.

Every time we interact with someone “out there”  (whether by issuing them with a book, or confirming their renewal of a loan by email, or devising a series of training sessions focused on a particular set of skills or cohort of students) we’re marketing the library and everything that means.

I’m a great believer in word of mouth promotion, but that can really bite you on the bum, because bad news spreads like wildfire – which can sometimes feel like 1 step forward and 3 steps back. But if someone comes to the library because their colleagues said it was useful, then it’s double bonus points.

I’m also a great believer in “getting out there” – if we’re only promoting ourselves to existing users of the library then we’re only reaching a fraction of the people who might find the library useful. If we only promote services to those library users who actually come inside the library, then it’s even more depressing. So we need to get out there, to where our potential and actual library users are. Afterall, doesn’t everyone like a trip out of the library, at least every now and again?

Web 2.0 stuff and social media – it is all just grist to the mill, just another weapon in the arsenal, if you like. It’s not so much what tool you use, so long as it reaches people and it does the job. So newsletters can still be posted round if that’s what will reach your audience, but email’s might be more effective, and an email with a link to a blog might reach the people you email and also more people who’re not on your list but who stumble across it. Having a twitter account in the library will catch as many people as it alienates or confuses, but if you only use twitter, you’re really missing a trick.

I use a blog for the Medical Library, but still focus mostly on email to announce things to the general Medical Library population. There’s no twitter account for the Medical Library… yet. But it’s getting comfortable using tools like zotero that will catch people’s eye, and make us relevant to their work.

I like the idea of the social media cards that Andy highlighted in Illinois, and know there’s been a flurry of twittering about having similar things (popular source seems to be Moo) but find it slightly odd that they don’t include a phone number…..

Just poking around trying to find an interesting image for this post, I found this from Adam Cohen:

I think it’s brilliant – and helps clarify my ideas about the power of word of mouth. Getting library champions to work with us in raising awarness and hopefully converting a few along the way.

zotero love…. but actually I’m not that fussy!

Anything that helps to manage references is a Good Thing.

Anything that helps to manage references that is free is a Very Good Thing.

In Cambridge the Very Good Things include Zotero, Mendeley and EndnoteWeb (but only because someone else paid the money), and the Good Things include EndNote and Reference Manager (which is actually not that high on my list of Good Things normally, but that might be because I don’t use it as much as the others).

Other Good Things might include Papers (for Mac only), CiteULike, Connotea (after a fashion), RefWorks….

There’s a really good comparison of functionality in Wikipedia andI’ve blogged elsewhere about a great comparison by Martin Fenner

I offer training sessions on Zotero, Mendeley & both versions of EndNote, and will turn my hand to training in reference manager if I can go to the person’s office and they’ve got it loaded on their computer. I specifically give training on EndnoteWeb to the small proportion of Part II students I see.

I’ve written rough guides to Zotero (needs updating!) and EndNoteWeb, I’ve enbedded  Mendeley reference lists in department pages (will be going live shortly – I’ll add a link when it is live), I’ve shared references  in EndNoteWeb with colleagues in Sheffield when we were writing a paper together.

All of which sounds like outrageous boasting (sorry!). They’re all just really really good tools, so the more we can support researchers and postgraduates, and indeed anyone else who’s writing a piece of work with a significant number of references, or gathering a large number of references together for any reason – the better. It makes us much more broadly skilled, and relevant and useful for more people. (read my previous rantings if you really want to get more of an idea…)

Things that drive me mad are

• when the reference wont go into zotero or mendeley and you only get a screen shot;
• when you can only download a limited number of references from a database (eg Ebsco access to PsycInfo has a library imposed (yes I have complained!) limit of 50 articles per set – imagine my mood when I had 300 articles to add to Mendeley
• when there’s a mixture of abreviated journal names and full journal names – makes for messy referencing!
• that I can’t get the public shared collections in Mendeley to present themselves in chronological order (an email to mendeley support is on my to do list)
• that I can’t always get RIS files to import to mendeley (an email to mendeley support etc…)
• that I just haven’t spent enough time to really get to grips – so I can get people started, but can’t help them with the more advanced functions… ah well, isn’t that just life!

they’re all great – it’s just chosing which one that can be tricky!

all linkedin but nowhere to go

so here’s the thing, facebook was for fun and linkedin was supposed to be all professional, so I’m registered  http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/isla-kuhn/9/52/7b2 (and it’s the third hit if you google me which is pretty good – ahem, not that I do that very often..) and I’ve even got 22 connections which is lovely.

But apart from this week, when Head Above The Parapet used it to contact me (which I’m mildly suspicious was only to tick the box for this Thing – correct me if I’m wrong, HATP!!) I’ve never really used it for anything. I like it when I get requests for connection – who wouldn’t? – but I’ve not used it for what a non-librarian friend seems to use it for, which is to include pleasing comments from business clients about him. Which is nice…

I get pleasing comments from library users, occaisionally, but I’ve yet to feel the urge to post them on linkedin.

Perhaps that day will come… but in the meantime I’d sooner have a whole different set of links to contemplate….

Library Thing…. I’m just not that into you.

Library Wanderer puts it so very succinctly that I’m not sure I should bother trying to add anything… just knowing that there’s a book called “Did David Hasselhof end the cold war“  (£4.75 will never be better spent)has made my life immeasurably richer.

but I suppose I should add my pennyworth…

I have to say that it would never ever in the world of a month of Sundays when every single Sunday had a blue moon occur to me to … hoot… catalogue my own books! ahahhahahahahahahha.

Not only would I be rubbish at it, but what on earth is the point???

Every one has to amuse themselves in their own way, and I will admit to buying a second copy of Cats Eye by the glorious  Margaret Atwood from the wonderful Alnwick Barter Books, within weeks of buying the first copy (see the covers, I could be forgiven for not linking the 2 couldn’t I?) but I blame that on woosiness brought on by a fine all day breakfast…. (ps have just finished The Year of the Flood, and loved loved it – v good indeed, though will have to re-read Oryx and Crake now since they’re very interconnected…..)

Anyway, back to LibraryThing, yes I know, but we really must …. I’ve given it a try as a possible way of presenting our Clinical Medicine reading lists a couple of years ago, because we thought the benefits of presenting the book covers was just too tempting to resist but, my goodness, it was a right pain to enter the data, and then once you’d found each book (not all of which actually had a cover, though most did, I admit), the link to Newton which we wanted to include was so invisible as to make it practically pointless. My tags in http://www.librarything.com/profile/SciPort are the Clinical Medicine (CM) ones – see if you can find the link to Newton for http://www.librarything.com/work/231986/book/36838359 for example… so, need more time…… not spotted it yet??? frankly I’m not surprised, and it just proves my point.

So, no, LibraryThing – I’m really just not that into you…..

Deliberated, Cogitated and Digested…. and a bit of chin scratching

d’oh! wrong sort of chin scratching… meant it to be more contemplative… but, ah well….

thanks to mikeandanna

 

So, it should be week 7 reflection, but actually it’s week 10, and I’m in a flurry of catching up – exactly the wrong mood to do any useful reflection, I fear.

I have to say that while I’ve enjoyed doing Cam23, and have particularly enjoyed getting myself into the habit of blogging (a habit a weeks holiday quickly puts paid to all to easily, I’m afraid, but which I hope to carry on beyond the 23rd thing), the things we’ve covered haven’t been new to me. 

Which is fine - if I’ve got the audactiy to be delivering my own version of 23things, I would hope I’m already reasonably savy about web 2.0. But I would also hope that I’m always up for learning something new, looking at things in new ways, to have my (huge) prejudices challenged by the insight from more open minded colleagues.

Which is what has really made it for me -  reading other people’s blogs, getting to know a few more people in Cambridge (even if only via their nom de plum!), hearing that not everyone thinks that X, Y or Z is obviously great. The latter has been especially good for me – reminding me that just because a person doesn’t use a particular tool doesn’t mean they’re closed to all thing web 2.o (after all, I don’t like all the things on the list, by any stretch), and that just because I do use it doesn’t mean squat .  Easy on the web 2.0 evangalism!

But to a large extent I can’t help but evangelise about the possibilities of the sorts of tools/toys/treasures that Cam23 is talking about – the possibilities are endless, and even if we can’t see them, our users will

“all that glisters is not gold” 

If we (librarians) can’t show a good working knowledge of the main web 2.o tools out there, and also be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, sheep from goats, etc etc,  when it comes to discussing and recommending them (or suggesting a better solution) to library users, then aren’t we just ensuring that we will be become as irrelevant in the future as unfortunately some people already think we are?

I want a professional future and a future in the profession - and confidence in the tools that cam23 is spotlighting is included in the ways in which I think I can ensure that I have both.