Stamping The Books

I’ve done it! I’ve completed the course and received the last two badges today. Finishing The course has been a lot of work over the past few weeks, but really enjoyable too. I’m so glad I pulled myself together and completed. Many thanks to the Rudai 23 team for organising this course - it has been brilliant :0)

Am I an engaged professional? After working through and reflecting on this last section of the course I would say yes, but with room for improvement both with being involve with CILIP and being a better advocate for my library and libraries in my local area. I have become aware through looking at my own experiences and talking to other librarians that people’s engagement and level of involvement with professional bodies will change throughout their working lives. And this is OK. It’s OK if the only way you engage with CILIP, is to read the ‘Information Professional’ magazine. You may be on 2 committees and attend every conference. That’s great. What’s important is that you are part of a professional organisation and supporting it in whatever way you feel you can – and this may change. I would also say you should challenge them on issues and topics where you feel more should be done which is something I need to get better at doing. Professional library organisations are here to ...

I’ve been a member is CILIP and its predecessor since my student days back in 2001. Since then I have had a changing relationship with CILIP. In the mid 2000’s I stopped my membership for a variety of reasons – problems finding a mentor, little or no accessible training opportunities near me, cost of membership, the removal by   my local authority of the non-chartered salary bar ,   and a perception that the organisation had nothing to offer me. About 6 years ago I re-joined, partly to be able to work towards becoming a chartered librarian and a change in my attitude towards CILIP - If I claimed to be a library professional, I needed to be part of the professional body that is representing me and keeping abreast of current issues. At the time local authority cuts were starting to bite into the service and keeping up to date on current library news, advocacy and training took on a new incentive. I now have a much more positive relationship with CILIP, and the assault on p...

1.       Name three detrimental effects to a community when a public library is closed.   Loss of direct access to free resources in the community e.g. books, multimedia, PCs, local information, visitor information, training opportunities, that may not be available elsewhere in the community for free. Will impact those on low incomes who can’t afford to buy these resources. The loss of the library as a social, activity and meeting space for groups in the community: older people, parents and toddlers attending story time, people attending evening talks etc. Possible increase in social isolation within these groups. Reduction in children’s reading opportunities and engagement in reading, and support available for children’s reading, with no summer reading challenges to engage children in reading or professional support with reading choices. 2.         Three ways a strategic library plan can advocate for the library service. After s...

I’m aware that Podcasts have been floating around the internet for many years, yet I’ve never engaged with one -   I hadn’t even noticed the podcast icon on my iPad till this section of the course. It was with some trepidation I ventured forth and pressed the Podcasts icon to explore the world of Podcasts. All I had decided before venturing forth was that I would look for something LGBTQ related as having a topic may make searching easier.  First, I headed into categories thinking there would be an LGBTQ section, but I could find one so I had to think where would they be placed. After setting on Society and Culture I began to trawl my way through hundreds of podcasts, till eventually giving up and opting to do a search which was much more fruitful. ‘Gay Agenda Radio’ caught my eye – some topical debate and discussion would be interesting. Oh dear, how wrong could I be. It turned out to be total waffle and full of inane babble with very little content indeed. The most ...

I’m delighted to have achieved badges two and three - networker and critical thinker. I’ll be pulling out all the stops to try and achieve the forth badge.

Before undertaking the Critical Thinker section, I was initially surprised at the content – what did some of the tools and resources have to do with critical thinking? Having completed all the tasks and reports I can see how critical thinking is at the heart of all the tools and activities. In each I am making choices about what information I am storing or sharing knowing this may be viewable to others. This has made me stop and think more critically about the information choices I make on a daily basis. I have enjoyed learning and thinking about these new tools and programmes.     Thing 14 introduced the term Personal Information Management to me. While I had never thought of this as a specific study area, the tools I was introduced to were particularly interesting. While I could see uses for all of the tools especially in this digital age, for me, most were irrelevant to my needs with the exception of two. Evernote with its nifty notebooks and even more ...

At work I encourage pupils to take 5 minutes to think about the task they have been asked to do, to come up with a plan of action for their research and task over all. I would have done well to have taken more time to explore the SlideShare site before launching into my review for Thing 17. While not wrong at the time, the area of most frustration to me - the lack of a notes section, was indeed there  all the time, I just hadn’t noted it. The notes held in the notes section of PowerPoint Presentations do transfer with the file, which means I can continue to make use of the notes section in PPT when putting together my presentations which is a great relief. This doesn’t mean all faults are gone - interactive elements don’t transfer and there doesn’t appear to be a section to upload a text document supporting a PPT. Further website exploration may reveal these options yet. But it has become eminently more useful, though taking five minutes to think about whether I want to share a fi...

I have had a changing relationship with Wikipedia over my professional librarian career. I used to view it with a healthy skepticism, indeed, encouraging people not to go near it as the information couldn’t be trusted – anything that can be changed so easily is not a trustworthy source surely. That was at the start of my career. I’ve moved on since then in my relationship to Wikipedia, partly because on occasion it has been the only place I have been able to initially find information on a topic to start my research process, and also because I understand how it work better and the work people put into keeping it up to date and relevant. In school now, my approach is to suggest using it as a starting point if you want but go to the original references if there are any, or if facts are unverified, see if you can back them up elsewhere. As mentioned in the Thing 15 article, it is ‘useful as a starting point for research’. And this is where good research and information assessment skil...

I decided to try option one for Thing 17 and upload a PowerPoint Presentation (PPT) to SlideShare. I’ve looked at resources on SlideShare before but never thought to use it to upload and share my resources. Being able to access my presentations anywhere or point people to them makes good sense. I duly located and uploaded several files to SlideShare and being a member of LinkedIn I didn’t need to join another website to do so. The process was very simple – upload the file, give it a title, description, and privacy level. I opted for limited level of access - any one with the link could see it. Once uploaded the presentation was displayed in SlideShare’s typical fashion of slides above and notes below. And that’s where I discovered a problem. I had always thought the notes section below the slides displayed what was in the notes section on a PPT. But no. It displays any text on the slides. I keep my script either in the PPT notes or in a separate word document, and using this ...

What is happening to our data online has been high in the headlines recently thanks to Facebook revelations, yet I like many other continue to use Facebook aware that they may/ may not be recording information about me and what I do on tier site. While working through Thing 16 and reflecting on what I do to keep myself safe online, I wonder if I have become a little blasé about what information is being kept about me and my digital footprint. I all too quickly accept (and ignore) the adverts that appear on a webpage highlighting products from other websites I have visited, and some online retailers making suggestions of products I may like based on my previous purchases or search history. But am I doing enough to stop information being used like this to essentially target advertisements at me and collect data about me? I feel I have room for improvement. Reading the information in Thing 16 especially about Facebook, their rights to use my post photos or images, and the data tha...

Personal Information Management (PIM) was certainly not a term I’d met before encountering Thing 14. I certainly didn’t think of the actions involved needing specialist study for organisation of information. It’s just something I do without thinking really – creating and saving files, researching new topics, leaving tabs on the IPad left open to come back to (23 before starting this section) – hmmm, perhaps there is room for improvement in how I deal with some aspects of information handling both at home and work. But do I need further new online tools for this or simply be a more organised person with the systems I already use and have available to me? With a great deal of interest, I explored all the suggested PIM tools recommended in Thing 14. Evernote – a notebook creator and sharer, tools to clip articles and whole web pages, ability to add  photos and links to individual notes and sharing capabilities too. Goodness, what a tool. I created a few notes and added links et...

Photo taken by Stephen Leitch Working through the Online Networker section of this course has been both fascinating and a little frustrating at times. Fascinating as I’m seeing and learning about software and programmes that can really help me link in with my colleagues and the wider librarian work, but frustrating because I have been battling my own pessimism about their usefulness in some cases. Whatever I have felt about this section it has made me stop and think about reaching out and working with others in the sector, and what image or brand about me I am displaying to the wider world online. The digital footprint discussion made me do something I haven’t done in years – I Googled myself to see what information was readily available out there about me or my libraries. I was pleased to find nothing overtly incriminating, a few memories were stirred about past events and jobs and the odd chuckle over images. But also, I felt nothing startling either. With my Facebook locke...