September Webinars

The Modern Library, by Library Journal. 

Wellington Public Library, New Zealand, began a new initiative to meet new customers. The idea they came up with was a book bike: Impromptu storytelling in the summer months along the beach front for kids and their families.

It provided really good feedback to the librarians and the families gave a positive reaction when they returned to the beach every week. It also gained some media attention, which was very positive for the library.

The librarians then took to twitter to take pictures and promote the book bike to their existing customers, after a while they would have queue’s form around them for borrowing books, and signing up for membership.

The library then developed the new mobile checkout software for the Ipad where they could issue new cards and new books to patrons while out and about with the book bike.

It ordered them to think outside the box, libraries need to go outside the library walls and engage with others, we need to show and tell people the value of the services that public libraries offer.

Especially for rural libraries, communities are vital and you need to give excellent service to the older community within rural towns and villages.

Networking Relations, by Tracy Z. Maleeff.

Professional relationships, need to be created, maintained and sustained. This process is a marathon, not a sprint, take your time and practice.

Networking is not to schmooze people there is no gain, you have to give and take, don’t always expect something from the relationship.

When you meet someone for the first time always say to yourself “What can I do for this person?”

People have various excuses for not developing networking relations, like being an introvert and extrovert, networking is a not a personality trait, you develop these skills.

Create a network:

People well known in the library world have a duty to new professionals, so they will want to get to know you. Find out who these people are, make that connection through twitter and build from there. Follow this through at a conference; find them, introduce yourself and talk to them.

The reason why you want to connect with that person is the reason why you want to talk to them. Pick a topic you are both interested in and go with that. If you do find yourself in a situation where you don’t know the person, start talking about the where you are, be it Dublin or Dubai, it helps break the ice and you will find it easier to navigate the conversation back.

If you are nervous about speaking with people in these situations practice in other situations, book events always have a Q&A session at the end, go in with a question and be sure to be kind and gracious, the author will remember you later when you are getting your book signed! Conferences also have Q&A sessions, find out who is on this panel, research them, research the program, and go in with a few questions.

Maintaining a network:

The most important element when maintaining a network is to keep in touch with people you meet along the way. Through all the social media routes, find the people who are active on these sites and keep connecting, and engaging. It will help you as you move through your career, these are professionals you can call on for advice, don’t be afraid to pick up the phone, or meet them for coffee.

More importantly be empathetic, you need listen to people and be kind. If you find that someone in your network is having a really busy and stressful time, reach out and give your advice, find solutions to their worries. This could be as simple as a funny article about a recent political blunder, but they might just need a laugh.

Be in the know! Know what is going on out there, yes there is a lot, so focus on the topics you like. Also, know your library sector. However always be interested in other sectors, at the end of the day we are all library and information professionals.

Sustaining a network:

Be an interested inquirer, as librarians we all love learning. So by sustaining these networks use the opportunities that will arise. Collaborations could include:

• conference presentations,
• journal papers,
• webinars,
• blog posts,
• committee duties,
• Twitter chats,

 

Library Advocacy #1

Topic: Values & Community

As I begin my second MOOC which is a very different setting from the first MOOC,  I settle into finding my way around the site I am initially disappointed, finding it difficult to locate the resources is very frustrating and the discussions are grouped in 4 different sections which I am not pleased with as I hope to learn from all in the library profession and have the opportunity to look at different perspectives and contexts within the profession.

However as time seems to running away from my plans I realise I need to get on with week 1 and assignments.

Assignments consist of multiple choice quizzes which you have 10 chances of taking again, very easy to do if you have not read the material. In addition they ask you partake in a discussion within the 4 groups you find your job title closest to.

My present two part time jobs reflect a small part of the “other” sector that has been listed and I am very keen to get an insight into where my new skills lie within librarianship. However, I am very interested in public libraries and how they operate and view library advocacy from a worldwide perspective.

As I find my resources I am inspired as I read the overview and this motivates me through the site,

“Libraries are bonded with their communities aspirations” (Library Advocacy Unshushed, 2014) which is very true in many regional libraries in Ireland. I see many public libraries adapting to the new communities that have entered into Irish society. Libraries are changing their outlook into becoming a open & engaging space which is a fabulous opportunity for students who wish to learn, and libraries have done this by becoming a learning space adding in bright colored seats and incorporating engaging facilities for learning.

As our world is changing, adding to this changing landscape is how people are learning, how teaching is changing and how information is being ingested. In order for libraries to keep abreast of this rapid switch they need to turn their focus to each individual that uses their particular library and view how they learn, look through their eyes for a moment and if they cannot understand or visualize this then they need to ask!

The second point I really felt summed up the above point is how “libraries are linked to ageless values” (Library Advocacy Unshushed, 2014) as librarians these are our core skills, however now our own skills are adapting and changing with this new movement. I like to call it the movement of information! These core values come in many shapes for example equality – everyone is welcome, and everyone is treated the same within our libraries.

Public libraries have a challenge as they do need to meet a wide range of people’s needs and with limited resources it is a interesting time within how local communities can help develop this amenity.

Community has been rather forgotten when it comes to libraries even though these individuals are the reason for our existence, to which some may add is declining, which I argue is not the case.

In order to make this known libraries should adapt and should promote their facilities, however all this is good and great with social media tools and I learned a lot of how this can be done by Micheal Stephens, however here I get the flip side of “promoting our services” WHY?

According to some this does not build relationships, I can see an element of this but my answer to this is then the community is not engaging with these social media tools if they are not working tweak them!

It is proving difficult to get my focus or head space into this new concept of Advocacy, a type of marketing tool but speaks to a specific pool of people who have a hand in library making decisions? A quote from the MOOC illustrates the following “In library advocacy, we are positioning libraries as assets in our society’s agenda or parent organisations agenda or priorities” (Library Advocacy Unshushed, 2014)

Okay instead of talking to our users talk to the people who keep our doors open and our staff strong and innovative! Interesting!

These new concepts and ideas are difficult at the moment to put into perspective, as they seem to be relating to people who do or may speak to this pool of people within each community, maybe by looking at their discussion feeds I might be able to get a better perspective.

Keep Learning!

Week 10: Learning and New Literacies

Learning is acquiring new, or modifying and reinforcing, existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. (Wikipedia)

In this post I shall document the challenges and triumphs that have changed (A) In my approach to learning (B) my approach to the teacher (C) how I learn around my peers.

When you have a topic that you are very interested in, and on the first day of class the teacher is very clearly saying what he/she has said for a long time you can feel this by their body language and how they engage with the content which can be very disappointing.

I understand that 300+ students in a Sociology lecture year after year can get very repetitive, so why not change your content, laziness? That is a total contradiction, he/she is an academic they have to keep with the current changes in their profession, right?

Many times through my undergrad and Masters I found this, but I was a mature student so a part of me had an expectation of what a lecturer might be and one of those was a love for their profession. However it seemed that the love was there, they were just content with how they delivered it!

As I moved into the Masters a new way of learning was introduced: Group work!!! And it was my learning nightmare!!! It is a fear that I had of my own ability I had succeeded in the undergrad however I fought many demons along the way and now I had to share my work with a group of people that I knew were far more advanced than me.

It can have a terrible effect on someone when you do start to work on a project and you produce your work in a google doc and then you see what the rest of the group has produce you automatically feel like you have been kicked in the stomach, and then the editing happens and none of your work is yours anymore!!!

The only aspect of this group work that allowed me room to gain confidence was through the establishment of my blog, it was through this that I could be me, be colourful, add in funny remarks or pictures or link the topic to something current and argumentative. It also allowed me to be happy with my ability as a Masters student and to accept my ability within the library profession.

I will not fear the aspect of group work when I move into the working world of a library there will be many new aspects of how I approach teamwork and how I will work together with my colleagues.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 7 Mobile and Geo-social environments

This week’s topic is something that in the last 5 years I have come to question, then hate, then come very jealous of and now LOVE! The reason this relationship has panned out like this is, as smart phones became the norm, and iPhones became the phone to have:

I became frustrated with the lack of what my LG phone could do compared to an iPhone, and then became very jealous of the people who had them (my partner got one free and was always on it) and now I love it (as he got an upgrade, switched to a HTC and I got the iPhone)

However I feel I have come to know this new technology at the right time, as if I had explored and bought a iPhone 5 years ago, my Twitter account and my apps would be used in a very different way and for a different purpose.

This is how I view libraries using these new technologies, if they are going to embrace the massive and diverse nature Apps have they need to choose wisely as it can have an overpowering effect on the goals of the library and on the interests of the community.

I understand the use of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as a good utility for showing what the library has to offer and engaging with their community, however if the community is small and rural and has a limited knowledge of these devices and geospatial applications it needs to choose what is relevant to the community, the library and the overarching objectives that have been the foundation of the history and future of the community.

I agree with Michael when he notes that unique collections should be shown to the world, long gone are the days where you have to travel to a town, district to see a collection. There are many ways of choosing what you want digitised and what you want to leave untouched for the unique collectors or archivists to come see.

And it is deciding this first that will then allow you decide on the application you wish to incorporate into your library.

Onwards and upwards in this techie world!!!

User Experience

There are many aspects to a user’s experience and as society has changed so has the face of a library, which we hope has also changed the way a person uses a library.

Schmidt (2010) constructs this ‘mapping’ in which he thinks of  every step a user may need to go through in order to accomplish their informational need. Step by Step he brings us through the many interactions that person has with the many aspects of a library only 1 of those being us the librarian which for the first time it stuck me how we relate to the structure and how embedded we are in process.

Each of these elements need to adapt to the changes in society here the way I would approach and anticipate my users actions or informational needs to analyse and develop Political, environmental, social, and technical needs, changes or maybe wants within that community, also known as PEST.

Environmental changes for instance may affect how that community engage with seasonal changes if they are in a high flood plan or are prone to storms the information would change according to what informational needs the community has. This is one way of looking at how or what your users may need, during my time learning information behavior there were many articles like these:JunJul10_Palen_Starbird_Vieweg_Hughes that I found very interesting.

Of course the diversity of your population and community changes drastically from area to area and the social aspects would the geographical situation of the community rural or urban, social housing private housing etc.

Each of these elements gives you a foundation to build on when looking through that particular communities eyes, you can see gaps in where they lack information or could improve in areas of literacy skills and by doing this it changes and adapts your library to fulfilling their needs.

I recently came across a beautiful quote from an Irish lady Caitlin Moran and it goes like this: ‘A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft, and a festival’.

It is anticipating your community needs and making sure the process is free flowing that will ensure your diverse user and community a fluid service.

Cost of Information

As it is the last few weeks, our supervisor has allowed the class to focus on topics that we feel are relevant and current within the library field. This week the topic is “Cost of Information” with focus on the current debate “Open Access”. Here myself and three classmates organised the content for the class and presented the research to them.

The readings focused on how this is seemingly the solution to the cost in which libraries have to pay for journal subscription. This solution being the Finch Report in 2012, two options arose and were named “Green Open Access”  and “Gold Open Access”.

This debate gathered pace as the results of the Finch Report became apparent, that Gold had been favoured. So first what is Open Access, it seems self explanatory Access to Information that is Open to everyone. However when you get to the bones of the subject it can become very dense.

So, Wikipedia! Oh my what is a librarian (well potential librarian) doing using Wikipedia to source Information? To give the basic no frills look at Open Access.  “Open access (OA) is the practice of providing unrestricted access via the Internet to peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles”.

As part of my piece within the presentation I focused on Green Open Access, here I argued the positive aspects of this option and how in general Green and Gold need to be taken into context. Academic Universities need  to be aware of the solutions that are available, however they need to enter into a dialogue with all the disciplines they collaborate with.

The incentive for change is slow, as this debate keeps going in circles. Steven Harnad shows how this debate can seem to wander in circles, and each side has it’s own flaws.

The presentation was a success, as we opened the debate to the class to see how each side shone through, Gold did have a lot of advantages and one can see how. Green tends to hide behind the banner that says “FREE” but this is a fallacy as there is always going to be a cost. The change that needs to happen is to remake the model that is currently effecting libraries and to seek a way to help them from ever declining budgets.

These are issues that we will all be facing as we move into the sector  of librarianship, we may not just yet have to make these big decisions but we can become part of the dialogue that is currently making its way to us.

Only 1 more week left in college, with this many decisions are going to be made, this blog for one will adapt and change the new direction this summer will take towards my Capstone project!

Onwards and Upwards!

LAI CDG

On Wednesday 10^th of April Croke Park Conference Centre, the Library Association of Ireland, Career Development Group got together to organise an event for Professionals in work and how to enhance or renew their skills. In addition advice was given to guide Professionals that have recently been out of work along with the emergence of New Professionals into the world of Librarianship.

Two of the committee leaders Giada and Daniel were our speakers for today. Giada led the conversation with a very engaging Prezi presentation, where she gave a background to the establishment of the CDG which was something that amazed me; the group really have only begun to emerge in the last 12 months! My perception was this was a long established committee, so I was very eager to see their plans for the future.

Giada and co, have many ambitions for the group one aspect is to embed a job’s forum within the LAI’s website, and to work in conjunction with employers in order to establish another platform to seek us as potential employee’s.

This is a positive ambition of the committee as the establishment of Libraryjobs.ie has given me and my fellow classmates from SILS in UCD a lot of hope and encouragement for the future.

In addition future ambitions include the “libcamp”. I had not heard of the English version, however as Giada illustrated the event seems very engaging, the day is very informal, a topic is chosen beforehand within a group with similar ideas and you “pitch” this topic/idea to the floor! It sounds delightful, as there are so many issues surrounding our profession that you don’t always get the time to engage in debate, or even find people with similar or contrasting ideas. I am really looking forward to this event and I hope I can be a part of it!

Giada’s presentation then focused on Professionals within work, and she had a positive message. “Learn, Go, And Do”! This message would be a great workshop for any library to engage in.

Libraries today are facing many restrictions, however if you brought this plan into your institution you can change the outlook within the Profession and view these challenges as road block you need to divert from not stop at!

The procedures in which Giada outlined is to constantly keep up-to-date with the issues/topics/challenges surrounding you and your position. Get involved with the many debates that are being held via social networking. Personally I find Twitter an essential tool, even if your knowledge of the topic is sparse you still gain a lot from these conversations. I do take part in the Irish Libchat (#irelibchat) and it is great as you may not know these people but you build an online rapport with them. This is extremely beneficial when you attend conferences as this connection is already well established and you have found the links you need to help you within the issues and challenges facing you.

Another way to build your network is through Mailing lists and Newsletters; these illustrate the current issues and challenges facing this Profession. The people established within the various institutions need to engage with these issues in order to find solutions. So build up your social network, engage with the debates at conferences and keep up-to-date with issues and challenges, it is the only way to find solutions to the many problems facing Library and Information Studies!

This model Giada created is what she adopted as Professional Activism which is very true. The Professionals that are in the Professions need to renew their skills at a time when this profession is being threatened, and engage in dialogue with their colleagues from various institutions nationwide and worldwide to see how these have managed and used these challenges to be more effective for their community.