Pause for Reflection, Rudai 9

Photo taken by Stephen Leitch

Taking time to pause and reflect on tasks undertaken can be a challenging undertaking, and one this librarian has found at times troublesome but ultimately very useful to do.  Below are my reflections upon tasks 3, 7, and 8 for task 9 of Rudai 23. 

Visual communication is a key part of society and increasingly part of work on the internet. Tasks 3, 7, and 8 of Rudia 23 have challenged me to look at new approaches to this using image banks, online exhibitions, and infographics. For image banks I undertook the take of exploring on of the image banks mentioned in the post, select an image and post this to my blog. I decided to use Pixabay. You can view the image I selected here . 

For the online exhibition I undertook the task to create an online exhibition by ‘taking a paper based brochure or poster for a collection or service and recreate it in an online exhibition using a blog.’ The blog I created ‘Those That Came Before Us’ is available here. 

Task 8 asked for the creation of an infographic or information poster using one of the highlighted programmes to do this focusing on an easy topic. I decided to use Piktochart for this task and created an infographic showing my libraries key statistics to share with the school’s senior management. It features statistics about total stock, library membership, last years issues and additions to stock over the last year. You can find the image here.

Overall all these tasks were successfully undertaken, though some had more time needed on them than others! I have mixed feelings though about the whole process. 

Looking at using Pixaby I found this a very satisfying experience, being able to search and find images that are copyright free for use and this was my first foray into online image banks. I’ve been very much a google image kind of guy before this. The process of searching was easy, with the added benefit of tailoring the search with type, size and category which I was familiar with having used similar options on google image search. Libraries was my search term and having saved the image I posted this. Knowing it was copyright free was a boon as I didn’t have to worry about referencing the source or seeking permission. One concern I did have was that the tags didn’t indicate the exact name of the library photo I posted which I found a little frustrating as it was beautiful and wanted to find out more about it. I ended up having to perform a reverse google image search to find out further information on the library in question - the Strahov Monastery in Prague. This was a simple task to complete and certainly has expanded my knowledge of image databases and the usefulness of them for copyright purposes and that there is life beyond google image search! While the relative limited number of images results may be seen as limiting factor, I’m a believer that less is more, especially when looking to use this in my work situation in the High School with pupils. Since starting this course, I have incorporated Pixabay and issues around copyright of images into talks to my 3^rd year Art and Design students who were researching Steampunk images, introducing them into the world of copyright free images as part of their research, including for situations about side of work where copyright laws differ from within school. In retrospect I should have been quicker of the mark this year to build searching image database into library induction as an activity for 1^st year onwards, so I will need to wait till the next academic year to action that for our new 1^st years as part of their information literacy course.

Of all the activities and tasks that Rudia 23 has asked me to undertake, none has generated quite the level of emotion and mixed feelings as task 7 – create an online exhibition. This created anguish, headaches, sleepless nights, annoyance, delays and dread as I tried to approach and complete this task. This may seem a bit strange as the physical task to create an online exhibition using a blog was obvious enough to me, but the detail of what to use to do this drove me to distraction - “Take a paper based brochure or poster for a collection or service and recreate it in an online exhibition using a blog.” How could I take someone else’s work and recreate this online? Issues around copyright leapt into my head and I struggled to see how a poster or leaflet could be turned into an online exhibition. The whole question just felt wrong, a feeling I still have about it. I have produced an online exhibition using a blogging site – Blogger, which led to another session of headaches and despair trying to work out how to deal with images on the templates I was looking at using. But I have an online exhibition, and one that despite all the above, I am really pleased with as are my family, as without the task I wouldn’t have made the family photo blog.

Despite all the negativity about this task the outcome has been very positive in both the product – an online exhibition featuring images of the two sides of my family, and the increase in skills for using Blogger itself. It was a steep learning curve for me. Perhaps had panic and despair not taken over all would have seemed easier, but I did struggle with the layout of the new blog, sizing and placing images, creating new page tabs (I stupidly thought that these couldn’t be called pages and looked for tabs instead), which of course varied form template to template. After much changing I ended up clicking on the template style I use for my Rudia 23 blog, and everything seemed to slip into place then – perhaps the familiarity calmed me down. In retrospect I should have done more research into blog design, and while I used some of the examples in the Task 7 post, this is an instance where more time researching would have led to less stress and hassle, especially when I had a clear plan of what I wanted this to look like. I should have admitted this to myself earlier. Also asking the Rudai community for help with things like sizing images etc could have proved useful too – something to remember for next time. While I didn’t ask for help with the physical blog I had to for clarification for what was needed for the theme of the blog from my mentor. I’m very glad I did as her response provided me with a direction I could take. Completing this task has improved and developed my blogging site creation knowledge which I am sure will serve me well I the future. If I had to do this task again I would certainly make sure I had a plan of what I wanted the blog to contain and look like, but rather than struggle away myself I would look to ask advice and help earlier on and also spend a bit more time looking at other examples and noting down things like the theme chosen. In this instance I still feel I would have to ask to clarification of the deal of the task at hand (of what to use as the stimuli), as I still feel the question overall is not as well put together as it could be, though that is my opinion. Also having used Blogger so far, I feel I should explore Wordpress to explore how this works, as I may find one lends itself more to a remit than another. Since completing this task, I have though been reflecting on situations where the ability to create an online exhibition would have been useful especially when I was working in the public library, perhaps to create a legacy from heritage events to continue discussion and broaden accessibility. The ‘Old Shops of Lossie’ photo display I organised would have benefitted from this, as now the photos just sit in a folder in the library. I’m also seeing how I can use creating online exhibition blogs for my current school librarian situation. I’m currently planning one for Suffragettes in Moray containing newspaper articles, photos etc relating to the suffrage movement in Moray, so allowing pupils in Buckie and all Moray schools access to these resources for History. This blog can also act as a bit of PR to highlight to my school teaching colleagues what their librarian can do for them. A final thought about having completed this task is, if repeating it or looking to create other visual blogs, is to consider who the blog is aimed at and also how you expect people to access the blog – phone, ipad, laptop etc. being a traditionalist I just assume everyone would use a laptop or PC for access, when the reality is phone and tablets could be more likely. And indeed, the family who have viewed my blog have done so on mobile devices. This has made me consider this for future planning

Completing the Infographic task was very satisfying as I have been looking forward to creating these for some time, as I really admire the impact that a good infographic can have. I feel the end resulting ‘Buckie High Library Key Library Numbers 2016-17’ works for what I set out to create, and remains very visual highlighting just a few key pieces of information, though the time this absorbed in creating it left me very tired – 5 hours were spent on this! The process wasn’t the quick click or two I thought it would be, especially as I chose to use a template to alter rather than start from scratch following advise that his would be quicker.  But one aspect which did reward spending the time on was planning out what I wanted on the graphic and planning out a rough layout. I thought having made up diagrams in MS Word and PowerPoint (PPT) I would have the skills to complete this quickly. Alas, they were not as useful as I had hoped, mainly due to the new interface and layout of the buttons, which rather than throwing myself straight into creating the graphic, I would have been wiser to spend some time making sure I was familiar with the layout of the interface buttons and icons as they were not as comparable with Word and PPT as hoped. Creating shapes and resizing icons also took getting use to due to the delicacy of the controls, though the guidelines that popped up were very useful. While watching he introductory video was useful, I should have watched some of the others before talking this task in retrospect to build up my knowledge. So while Piktochart was another steep learning curve for me, because the task was straightforward and the programme more accessible than from the online exhibition, I didn’t get upset or too challenged.  In retrospect I would have made myself more familiar with the programmes details. Having a plan and information in advance of starting really helped and I would follow that approach again when I come to tackle infographs again. I can see how I could use Infographs and posters in my current post, especially in reports and highlighting key library information to the pupils and senior management including survey results, top ten issued books etc. though I feel I will have to limit the number of these used as their creation I found very time consuming and time I a precious commodity at work.  As I felt adapting a template was very time consuming, I need to revisit this with starting with a blank form to see if for me, this is a quicker route for creating Infographs.