Internet Librarian 2011

I was very lucky and allowed to attend the Internet Librarian International Conference in London a couple of weeks ago. It’s my favourite conference and I’ve been for single days before but never for the whole thing. It was great as usual.

I didn’t take any notes,  instead Tweeted as much as I could which I find easier, plus hopefully was interesting to anyone following virtually.

I’ve put together all my Tweets from the two days and added links and context where possible over on Posterous (will be sharing at work and whilst this blog isn’t private, don’t want to make it too easy for colleagues to find)

Thing 3 – Branding #cpd23

I’ve always tried to keep a fairly low profile online.  I’m quite introverted and that seems to extend to my online presence,  I was never really sure whether I wanted people at work to find me and social media for personal use isn’t really encouraged, so I was quite happy being anonymous.

Recently my feelings have changed and now I can see that having a decent online presence is a good thing. Plus I don’t really say anything controversial, so there’s no reason to stay hidden.

I tend to use a variety of usernames online. Like many others I set up my Twitter account with a nickname. I wanted claireb but it was already taken and so is my full name which is surprising as it’s fairly unusual. I’ll stick with @calire (calire is just how I misspell my name when I’m typing too fast.) At least it has the benefit of being short.

I use the same image for most of my online presences. Usually a small piece of the above which was taken at  the Comic Book Museum in Brussels back in 2005.  I’ve had Mini Moo cards printed with this image. Judging by conversations  I had at Umbrella, people associate my Twitter name with the stripes, so I suppose it’s a brand of sorts.

(I know I should have a photo there, but I’m very camera-shy and don’t like images of  me online, so this will have to do)

Google 

I Google myself occasionally, but my surname is Back which tends to mess with the results a bit. The highest result that’s me is LinkedIn, which makes me think I should do something with it. (Looks like that’s coming up in Thing 6 if  I ever get there)

If I add library to the search, there’s a bit more. I like that the second result is to a presentation I did, and the description includes the line “It’s easier to say sorry than ask permission”, although I’m not sure how that would look to potential future employers. Also in that list of results is my name on the minutes of a CILIP Committee meeting and strangely a list of the web authors at my place of work which is listed on the staff intranet.

I’ve only just added my full name to my Twitter profile which would explain why that doesn’t feature highly. It will be interesting to see if that changes in the next few weeks.

Umbrella 2011: First thoughts

Last week over two days, 500 librarians descended on a University campus in Hertfordshire for the biennial CILIP Umbrella conference. I was lucky enough to get funding from my local CILIP branch to attend.

This was my third year, but for me it was the best yet. Firstly I actually thought about which sessions to attend. Before I’ve always gone for the familiar and then wondered why I was a bit bored. This year I went for those that would introduce me to something new.

Secondly Twitter added a whole new dimension to the conference for me. From arranging pre-conference meet ups to providing a useful ice breaker when chatting during breaks. Aren’t you @twittername? being a useful conversation starter when you’re as bad at networking as I am.

I enjoyed tweeting the sessions and following the backchannel of discussions and comments. It also meant I could keep an eye on what was happening in other sessions. There’s an archive here of all the #ub11 tweets.

I’ll be blogging about each of the individual sessions I attended over the next week or so.

 

 

 

Catching up: CPD23 Things 1 and 2

Not off to the greatest of starts, I’m nearly three weeks  behind on CPD23 already. Luckily I already have a blog, so I only have part of Thing 1 to do, unfortunately it’s just what I hate doing which is writing about myself, but as one of the reasons I’m doing this is to improve my reflective thinking and writing here goes.

I’m an Information Services Librarian working for a public library service in the South West. I’ve being doing this job for far too long, but I seem to have come to  a halt career wise. (Confession time, I’m not a qualified librarian which limits my options a bit). I have signed up to do Chartership via the extraordinary route and I’m trying to pull my portfolio together at the moment.

I’ve had this blog for a while but I don’t update it very often. I did think about starting a new one just for CPD23, but I’d rather have everything in one place.

As I’m behind I’m going to briefly cover Thing 2 as well. I read (well scan) a lot of blogs. I have far too many in my Reader and sometimes find it hard to keep up. I’m a frequent user of the mark all as read button.

I’ll often read something at work and want to comment, then have either forgotten what I was going to say by the time I get home or the moment has passed. I’m not helped by the filter at work which blocks all Blogger blogs.

The Delicious list of CPD23 participants is slightly overwhelming, but thanks to some great tagging is very easy to navigate. I started with the public library blogs as it’s what I know, but this is also a great opportunity to find out more about working in different library settings.

I’ve added a few to my Reader and promise I’ll start trying to comment more.

Blog revival

I knew it had been a while since I last blogged anything, but nearly a year! That’s not good.

Still, hopefully this blog is about to get a revival as I’ve decided to take part in the 23 Things for Professional Development.

I’ll let the organisers describe it:

“23 Things for Professional Development is a free online programme open to information professionals at all stages of their career, in all types of role, and anywhere across the world.

Inspired by the 23 Things programmes for social media, this new programme will consist of a mixture of social media “Things” and “Things” to do with professional development. The programme starts on 20 June and will run until early October 2011.”

There’s a CPD23 blog,  plus you can follow @CPD23 on Twitter and use the hashtag #cpd23

I can think of a few people in my workplace who also might be interested, so if I can get over the ‘all Blogspot blogs are blocked’ problem, I’ll try and sign them up.

 

 

Library Day in the Life 5

Today was round 5 of Library Day in the Life. I took part in Round 4 back in January. Today was a more typical day I think.

Started with a few technical problems with our public access PCs which luckily were very easy to solve. There also seemed to be more requests to unblock websites than usual. Sometimes our provider seems to make changes which results in a flood of requests as sites that were once OK to view get blocked for no reason.

Uploaded photos from our Twilight evening to Flickr.

The rest of the morning was spent catching up on emails. As I’d been away from my desk a lot in the last couple of weeks, they’d built up a bit. Arranged a couple of meetings too.

After lunch. I updated the library website with some events coming up during the summer. Took three times longer than it should due to the website CMS which regularly freezes for no reason.

Our library is a PATLIB and due to various staff retiring recently it’s been added to my list of things to do, so most calls re: Intellectual Property get put through to me. Luckily today’s was a fairly simple Trade Mark enquiry. I still  panic slightly when a call comes in as I still feel like I’m learning.

The library Twitter and Facebook are updated throughout the day whenever I see something interesting.

The rest of the afternoon was spent reading and making notes on a project which will be looking  at how we handle enquiries in the library.

A Day at the OUP: Part one

I was lucky enough to go to the OUP last week for one of their Public Library Panel Days. They have these at least once a  year or so for library staff to get together and talk about the best way of promoting online resources.

Although the day is primarily about OUP resources, there is no problem talking about any of the others we all subscribe to, so it’s a really useful day for getting ideas.

This year the day concentrated on promotion via the web. Firstly OUP talked about how people find their content. Google/other search engines was top along with library services, Wikipedia and viral awareness. Wikipedia is one of the highest referrers to the online version of Who’s Who.

The interactive Sgt Pepper cover put together by the ODNB for the 40th anniversary was very popular and is still online.

OUP are letting more of their content appear in search engines, usually a summary along with a link to how you can gain access. The new Oxford Dictionaries Online (replaces Ask Oxford) has a lot of free material and when the new OED launches in December it will have more public facing content.

The next hour was spent on Social Media. @schammond talked about the results of her dissertation – How are public libraries engaging with library 2.0? There’s a handy set of links on Delicious. Mobile access and QR codes were also touched upon. As ever a lot of the good examples came from the US.

I then did a quick round-up of some of the stuff we’re doing in Plymouth which led into a general discussion. Inevitably it was mostly around the issues of IT (or more usually corporate communications) and access to social media. I suppose we are luckier than most, but I’m a big believer in it’s easier to apologise than ask permission. It also helps that I’m quite passionate about it and therefore have no problem updating occasionally in my own time. I’m using these sites anyway, so it’s no big deal to quickly post to the library accounts. I think I may be a bit unique in that way though.

It was also discussed whether we should be using social media at all or letting library users maintain the presence for us? Interesting idea, but I’m not sure how I feel about that one yet.

This is getting too long, so part two tomorrow.