Thing 4 – Twitter, RSS feeds, Pushnote

Thing 4 – Twitter, RSS feeds, Pushnote

I know, I’m miles behind on my cpd23!

Luckily for me I’ve been registered on Twitter, and have used it for about a year now, so I can put my hand on my heart and say I’ve reflected on that one (see my earlier blog post).

I can also put my hand on my heart and say that I’ve previously tried RSS feeds, but not found them easy to use! Reading through thing4 made the use of RSS feeds sound easy, and more useful than I had previously realised, so I gave it a go! I’m not sure how I did it, but initially I managed to get the cpd23 feed onto my browser bar, so it’s there permanently, although unintentionally! So far so good, now to follow the actual instructions and get it onto my Google account. Oh, seems like I have somehow managed to get other feeds onto my Google Reader page – which is a bit odd as I have never knowingly used Google Reader! Ah, now, on closer inspection they seem to be blogs that I have subscribed to, probably blogger ones, and certainly ones from other cpd23 participants! So that’s what happened when I subscribed; it actually turned them into an RSS feed and put them on my Google Reader, not send me an email like I thought it would!

Well, that’s something unfamiliar, so let’s try something I do use regularly – putting them into iGoogle! Yeah! It worked! I now have a page of RSS feeds in my iGoogle which I will find useful!! Now I’m off to see if blogs from other blogging software can also be RSS fed into iGoogle.

In the meantime, I’m reading about pushnote. Hmmm, no, this is too tricky. I wouldn’t say my work computer is completely locked down, but it is really rather difficult to download stuff, without asking for help from an IT colleague – and that just isn’t on at the moment. Things are no easier at home either; I don’t have administrator rights, so I have to weigh up whether it’s more important that I encourage the OH to decorate the kitchen or download new bits of software for me! No contest really. If anyone out there thinks I’m really missing out on a trick by not having access to pushnote, do let me know and I’ll revise my thinking!

All in all, I am keen to get to grips with new technology and whizzy web developments, but I like to understand how these things will benefit me before I go through all the hassle of getting stuff onto my pc.

Cataloguers and wikipedia

Cataloguers and wikipedia? What is their relationship?


A colleague has just alerted me to a report from the Primary Research Group entitled: "Libraries and the Mega Internet Sites". An abstract of the report is available, but the report is essentially about how and why librarians use some of the big internet sites, like wikipedia, Google, YouTube, etc..

Personally, I haven’t got $89.50 to spare to buy a copy of this report, but in the Primary Research Group newsletter of 2 August 2011, there are a few juicy extracts from the report itself. Naturally, I gravitated to this one:

"Wikipedia was most popular among librarians working in technical services and cataloging; 71.43% of these librarians found it highly useful."

And found myself wondering why this should be the case! I came to the following conclusions, and I admit there are probably a hundred more reasons that I haven’t even considered:

1. Cataloguers who are classifying new bookstock often deal with subjects of which they may have little or no knowledge, and what better starting point than wikipedia, after all, it’s not as if we are writing essays to gain qualifications or that people are marking our work! The “facts” presented by wikipedia, if used in conjunction with the text in hand probably represent a fair interpretation of what the book is about and therefore leads to a relevant classification number being assigned. Usually. And besides, it'll always be found on OPAC, wherever we classify it!

2. One of the other reasons cataloguers are using wikipedia is in an attempt to provide users with greater and easier access to useful resources. Here, think using wikipedia for creating/controlling authority data . Here’s an example of a link to wikipedia in a German authority record (very bottom left of the screen). Have a look at allthingscatalogued for a more in-depth discussion on the German/Austrian approach. Mining the information held in wikipedia is also within the remit of a Tech Services department; have a look at the wikipedia miner site to see just what is possible, and then take a look at a blog post from a cataloguer who has just seen the light - do read the comments too, as they are most interesting! OCLC has also been doing work with wikipedia to include OCLC name authorities in wikipedia articles, see the wikipedia entry for Abraham Lincoln: Right at the bottom of the entry, the LCCN (Library of Congress Control Number) links to the LC authority heading for Abraham Lincoln. (dare I say this looks a little more aesthetically pleasing than the LC authority search results page?)

3. Cataloguers are also talking about mapping wikipedia articles to LCSH

Of course, one has to be careful when presented with isolated statistics:

Ok, wikipedia was most popular with Tech Services librarians and cataloguers at 71.43% , but maybe there was another group of librarians with whom its popularity was 71%? And how many other groups of librarians were there? Oh, one could go on and on, but at least it proves that Tech Services librarians and cataloguers are not the dinosaurs that they are often imagined to be! We do use the internet, the “big” sites, and are interested in mashups and providing our users with access to all sorts of useful resources.

University open days

Over the last couple of weeks I have been lucky enough to accompany my daughter to five university open days. Ok, so that doesn't make me an expert in running an open day, but it has opened my eyes to what can be achieved by making potential students feel welcome, and what might put them off! Let's have a look at some of the things which really impressed me about the open days I've been to. Obviously, I'm not going to "name and shame" the institutions, just point you in the direction of what I think were the good things, and possibly what were the not so good things! In no particular order, these are thoughts just as they came to me!

• Student Ambassadors - are vital to the sucess of the open day! Having lots of ambassadors is essential (as long as they are not huddled around together in groups!) as this proves that current students are interested in promoting the university, and by implication that the university is worth applying to. It also gives the prospective students someone to address with any queries they don't feel they can ask of staff! Dress the ambassadors in a prominent colour t-shirt and station them at strategic points: at the railway station, at the bus station, various points en-route to the university - no matter if it's a straight route from public transport to your university - and position them everywhere on campus or outside university buildings.
• Put up clear signs from major routes into your town or city to help those who are driving in. Sat nav codes on your website are very handy, as are the obvious links to maps of the major routes, showing where your university is situated.
• Ample route and building signs on your campus are also a must, and work well in conjunction with your student ambassadors. These are also a must if your permanent signage is not too hot - you may well know your way around but a prospective student is unlikely to and may waste valuable time trying to find a specific location.
• Plenty of pre-open day information is more than useful! Email the prospective student to make them feel welcome, even if all you're doing is sending them links to open day information on your website.
• Provide a coherent set of welcome and informational lectures: cover student finance, UCAS admission procedures, student accommodation, student life, student careers & support. Even if a prospective student has heard the finance situation from a previous visit, others will not have done, so you are never going to be presenting to a small, disinterested audience!
• Ensure, as far as possible, that the subject-specific lectures cover all the ground a prospective student is likely to want to know: admission criteria, course outline, amount of contact time, assessment methods, module choices, what your usp is, etc.. Also, if at all possible have said lecture presented by your most charismatic, engaging member of staff, whether that be the head of department, a lecturer, or a junior researcher; there's nothing like a lecture delivered with a bit of passion to sway a propective student's opinion!
• Make sure that the general lectures are repeated throughout the day.
• Be sure to co-ordinate across the university so that lectures are scheduled at such times to give people enough time to move between buildings.
• Ensure that you provide big enough lecture rooms to accommodate all the people who want to attend the lecture! There's nothing more disheartening than having closely planned your day to be told that the particular lecture you've scheduled into your limited timetable, and turned up for is full!
• If at all possible, open up some of your other buildings! Most open day visits seem to be centred around one or two buildings which doesn't give prospective students much of insight into your university. A good one is to open the subject staff common rooms, where staff can be on hand to answer questions, displays of current work can be exhibited and refreshments provided.
• If something unexpected should happen (for example the fire bell rings) do try and let people know what's happening, especially if you are going to pick up the talks where you left off or if you are going to continue with the scheduled events at the scheduled times.
• Where possible provide tours to and of the university accommodation; open up a few rooms if possible so the youngsters get a feel for what it might be like to live in uni halls.
• Another great idea is to offer campus tours, even if you you don't offer to actually go into buildings, it's still good for people to be aware of how big/hilly/old/new etc. your campus is.
• Make sure your library offers tours to prospective students!
• Have a central exhibition area where all departments and services can display their wares and answer questions.
• Clearly identify all your eating establishments; many people have travelled a long way to get to you and need to eat and drink!
• Have your bookshop open and giving a discount to any purchases made on the open day!
• Get subject staff to provide prospective students with a booklist! The avid readers will love that!

If you have any other great ideas for open day visits, or any bugbears, do leave a comment in the comments box.

Thanks for reading!

Personal brand

Oh dear, I'm still thinking about cpd23 part 2 and haven't got round to looking into part 3 yet!

It's taken me until now to consider the title of my blog, and what effect that might have on people scanning a list of blog titles. Understandably, I would read it and say "Yay! That's right up my street!" but I'm sure a lot of people - librarians and information professionals included - will zip past it, either for being as boring as anything or not relevant to their area of the profession.

And I suppose they are right! I chose the name because it had a nice sing-songy rhythm to it - blogg-ing cat-a-logu-ing! However, if I want to write refelctively about aspects of my work and profession that aren't strictly to do with cataloguing, then I probably won't have many readers!

So, for anyone out there who might be reading this, my next posting is not going to be about cataloguing - so spread the word if you know anyone who might be interested in reading about university open days!

My personal brand

I have always been a bit of a wimp when it comes to divulging personal information on the internet. It took me a very long time to trust the internet enough to buy things online (and my purchases are still rather limited) and I have never gone in for internet banking. So, when I decided to create a wiki and a blog, way back in July 2007, I was determined to remain as anonymous as I possibly could.

Choosing a username can get very confusing for one so innocent of the ways of technology. Sometimes sites require your username to be your email address (now, which to use, work or personal?) and sometimes they request a unique username. Chances are, the one you want to use has been taken, so you start adding numbers to the end, or the site does it for you! Then comes the tricky issue of the password; do you use the one you always do, oh, no, can't do that it's not long enough or secure enough etc..

That is how I ended up with the name most people will now associate with me - by trying to be clever and not give away my real name so no-one could steal my identity! How naive! Anyway, you'd be right to say that Jerome was the patron saint of libraries, (and now also refers to a specific library research programme) but that's not why I chose the name. It had more to do with the photographer of one of my favourite photographs, the name of the author of my favourite book, and a couple of sentimental initials. What impression this creates for anyone who reads my stuff, I have no idea. It's a bit like trying to interpret a poem, a work of art or a piece of music; the artist knew what they meant, but that doesn't mean to say it will be interpreted in the way it was intended. But it seemed like a good idea at the time! Of course, I actually didn't want to use exactly the same name for all my web 2.0 sites (to avoid that identity fraud again!) - or was it just that some names were already taken so I ended up with a variation on a theme?


On the subject of photographs, I remember the uproar there was when a photograph of each member of our library staff was digitised and uploaded to the VLE for all our library staff to see - that's all our library staff, not all our insitution's staff, nor all the people in the world - a secure service for which we had to log on. People (and I include myself in that) were worried their pictures would be stolen and edited and implicated in all sorts of crimes. So, I chose a fairly innocuous photograph to upload as my picture on the blog and the wiki, which was also partly determined by lack of expertise with digital photos! This picture has stuck with me on all the sites I've joined, and like Tina has said in her blog on personal brand, I'm reluctant to change this as this picture is probably easily recognised as me by my select group of followers! The added advantage is the air of mystery it creates! Imagine going to a CILIP Executive Briefing on RDA having primed your new Twitter friend (in this case Celine Carty) with the words: "I'll be the one carrying the bar of Toblerone"!

Thanks to a couple of things (not least reaching the grand old age of 50 and wondering why I have a tendency to hide in the basement) and a couple of people (not least our new VC for encouraging all staff to shout about what they are doing, and Celine for being so encouraging when my confidence has waned), I have, however, decided to raise my head above the parapet (yes, I know this is the name of one of the bloggers registered for cpd23 too) and blog about my profession as a cataloguer. This has led to opportunities for me that I would never have thought possible, but my real name has now become attached to my web 2.0 identity.

Interestingly, I "attended" a lecture given by Dr Claire Warwick at UCL entitled: "Great 2 meet u :-) Twitter and digital identity" which talks about why people choose the pictures they do etc.. Well worth the listen.

Last week I discovered that Google search results are based on searches that you have previously made and it is most opportune that Phil Bradley has today tweeted a way round this! So, the following searches produced the following results:

• Searching Google on IE and Firefox for Lynne Dyer resulted in 5,700,000 results of which my Twitter account was the 7th result

• Searching Google on IE for "Lynne Dyer" resulted in 5,230 results of which my Twitter account was the 5th result

• Searching Google on Firefox for "Lynne Dyer" resulted in 5,230 results of which my Twitter account was the 3rd result

• Searching Google on IE and Firefox for "Lynne Dyer" &pws=0 brought back 4 results - none of which were me!

I would conclude from that that I am still pretty well hidden!

Anyway. good luck to all you cpd23 - ers out there!

It's time for - cpd23

So, it's Monday 20th June 2011, and today sees the start of the online "training" cpd23!

It's fantastic to see so many people registered and interested in personal development.

In my opinion, cpd is genereally work-related, and is the way forward when looking towards promotion, but it's not just about collecting paper certificates! To get the most benefit from any cpd activity one must learn from it, take something away from it and apply it to one's own situation.

For me, though, cpd has been about widening my horizons generally, and learning about things that interest me, not just things that are relevant to my work. This blog post isn't intended to be a self-promotion, but some of the things I have learned over the years, including gaining a first certificate from the Wine and Spirit Education Trust (basic knowledge about wine, wine production etc.), a diploma in feng shui, and an NVQ3 in Interior Design, none of which helped me one jot in my work, but have certainly kept my brain active, and my interests varied!

Today, however, we all use the web for a variety of reasons, whether they be for work, or play, and this cpd event represents for me a kind of cross-over between work and personal learning. I want to learn how to use the technologies that web 2.0 offers (like blogs, wikis, shared services like calendars, and social websites like Twitter and Facebook) as these things are useful for my work and also useful for my personal life.

The cpd23 programme looks as though it is going to give me some ideas on services to use and how I could use them, as well as, hopefully, connecting me with a group of like-minded folk.

This week, it's about creating and using a blog. I admit that when I first came across blogs I tried several (blogger, wordpress, posterous, tumblr), and evaluated them against certain criteria, before deciding which to use in earnest. I am hoping to learn a bit more about how to use blogs, especially things like how often to update (too often and I won't have time to delve too deeply into a subject and I won't give my readers (hellooooo - is there anyone out there reading this?!) time to digest what I've said), how to keep it relevant, and how to make sure I'm reaching those people that I think might be interested in what I have to say!

Anyway, time to get on with it! Good luck to everyone!

Lynne

Blog post on hvcats!

This month instead of putting a blog post on my own site I have contributed to the blog over at hvcats.

It would be naive of us to think that all librarians and library colleagues know what goes on in a technical services / cataloguing / acquisitions department, so over at hvcats I have suggested a brilliant way to increase our visibility by showing people what we do!

Pop over to hvcats and read about one way of organising open days to raise awareness of what you do. You don't specifically have to be a cataloguer to offer an open day to other staff; open days can work for any team wishing to showcase their talents to their colleagues!

Don't forget to browse through earlier posts too: there's some really good stuff over there! Where was that again? Over at hvcats!