Tales of a Librarian

Hi, I’m conscious that i haven’t really posted anything for what would seem to be a very long time (i.e. nearly a month), at least it would seem to be a really long time compared with all the mainstream library blogs that I have been keeping up to date with via newreader, which seem to have an almost supernatural ability to write a freakish number of blog entries per day/week. Where do they get the time?

Anyways, I have come across various things in the news of late that has sparked an interest, but I have to apologise that I have not reported them here. It has been a very busy month for me (having bought [nearly bought, should I say] my first house), and basically I have just had other things on my mind. I am human after all. Now, if this had been a blog about finding the best mortgage offer, or what colour I should paint my new bedroom walls, or how much money i could possibly spend in one shop (which will remain unnamed), then this blog would be positively busting with posts, all of which tinged with a slightly crazed stressed subtone which seems to have been everpresent since i first decided to go ahead with the offer. Hmmm… probably not healthy.

As far as work has gone, I have been getting more involved in more aspects of it, such as proof-reading/editing, different kinds of searching, and also involved in information projects. I am also involved in my own little project which intends to compare our information service with another free one that is often quoted as a reason for users leaving our service (if i have already mentioned this - please forgive me). It has been rather slow in the uptake, but I conducted a brief website evaluation, and search facility evaluation last week, which i hope to incorporate into the project along with more statistical information (numbers of items added to stock, same items, different items etc.).

I am however, still unsure of what form it will take - report, essay etc. Obviously, my natural tendency is to write in essay form, but i will have to speak about this with my manager. I think that we will be having another meeting about my chartership in the next couple of weeks so i will mention it then.

It was also quite interesting to see a post on LIS-CILIP-REG about a chartering librarian who was asking whether other people had a blog and if they were using it for chartership, i replied and let him see this one, and from his response i think that a good few other people also are blogging their way to chartership. I somehow doubt that this one will be of much use to that effort though, i’m rambling a bit…

Finally, since it is Friday and I am heading home soon, what about this light hearted post which reports that playing the game ‘the World of Warcraft’ can actually advance your career and make a positive addition to your CV? It’s from Wired Magazine, read it here. A couple of my friends (who are incidently, also a couple) are completely addicted to this game. I, so far, have managed to avoid being sucked into it (apparently, people have died from playing the game for so long and forgetting to eat, sleep, answer the call of nature etc…). Having said this, I have been given a demonstration of its prowess by my very enthusiastic friends, and do most definitely fancy getting me one of those black flame hooved horsey things!

The social aspect of a game like this is also amazing. For example, one of my friends admits that she now speaks to her brother (who lives miles away) far more often because she does it through the game, where they meet up and help one another complete various challenges. They are also in contact and friends with a whole host of people from around the world with whom they can choose to carry out the various challenges of the game. It does look really great. My only fear is that if we get the game then I will either a) never see my partner again or b) be involved in endless fights over who gets to play a la my two aforementioned friends!!

Oh well, enough for me. Ta ta for now folks…

Technorati Tags: world of warcraft, cv, blogging, moving house

Just been reading this survey done by the ALA (so it’s American based) about usage of public libraries and people’s general attitudes towards them. Walt Crawford, once again, covers the main points made by the post very well, so I will not repeat those here.

One finding that I did find particularly interesting, however, was that when asked whether they felt libraries would no longer exist in the future because everything would be available on the internet, or whether they felt that libraries would still be needed despite electronic information, a whopping 92% felt that they would still be needed.

Pretty good news for us librarians, I guess…

The whole report actually paints a very rosy picture of the way the public views the library and I have to wonder where they found the participants because I am sure that most people do not see the library as quite so important (over a third put them at the top of their list of public services, above such things as schools, parks and roads…. hmmm, i like libraries, but more than schools?). 32% also ranked librarians as the most valuable professionals in their communities - now thats just crazy talk - don’t think i would want a librarian operating on me or rescuing me from a house fire!!!

But have a look over the results for yourself and see what you think…

I had my first performance review with my manager yesterday to discuss how I was getting along with all of my new tasks that I had picked up since starting to work here. I think that I am getting along okay, and she seemed to agree, which is great news. I also mentioned that I would like to take on a bit more work if possible because I seem to have the time for it at the minute, and so I hopefully will be getting to try my hand at a few other areas of the information service, which is all good news for my chartership and experience!

I really think that I need to start looking for some training courses to go on but there are just so many of them to choose from. I will have to have a really good think about what training I can realistically get from practical experience on the job and reading, and identify any gaps in my skills that I need to fill and base it upon that. I think that one thing that I may need to attend courses on is general management as I am not really getting the chance to learn things like that here (particularly managing people) due to the organisational structure of the information service (i.e. there ain’t really any library assistants that I am responsible for). So perhaps that’s an area that would do well to be covered by something like a training course. The other problem is that they all seem to be in London!! Hardly anything ever seems to be up in Scotland, so I will need to plan a little ahead if I am going to go to anything like that. I wonder what kind of training everyone else in my position is getting to do? I should count myself lucky however, that I am in the position to go to these if I wish, and that my employer will pay for it. I guess many people don’t have that kind of priviledge.

Finally, just wanted to say (again, think I may have mentioned it before but not sure) how great the LIS-CILIP-REG mailing list is (it’s for chartering librarians to keep in touch with each other/ask questions/compare experience etc.). I submitted a quick query about whether I should have received notification of my registration for chartership from CILIP (as i had not heard back from them) and within a couple of minutes I had at least five responses and an email from CILIP apologising for not getting back to me and saying that they would send something out once my application had been processed. Magic!

And how cute is the picture????

Technorati Tags: performance review, training courses, chartership, cilip, librarian, skills, development, mailing list

Hi there, it seems it has almost been a week since my last post - that would have been unheard of back in January when I started the blog so I hope that I am not falling into the track of gradually forgetting about it, as I still think it is a really great way to put all my thoughts about my work and stuff together in one place.

I have been adding to my list of rss feeds almost daily - there always seems to be new ones i have not heard of popping up in various posts. The best ones I have recently discovered so far include Caveat Lector and Info Career Trends. The former is written by one librarian/information professional/self-confessed geek about various aspects of her work - it’s really interesting and her writing style is very entertaining! Indeed, her post on Google books was unlike anything I’ve seen anywhere else (in a good way, of course!). The latter feed is from an online journal which publishes relatively short articles by practicing librarian on a whole host of career related issues. One particular post that caught my attention was written by a librarian who used to be a bookseller, and she was discussing the various positive influences that the retail service side of her previous job had upon her work as a librarian (see ‘Confessions of a Reformed Bookseller‘). All very relevant and interesting stuff.

Walt Crawford released the March edition of his Cites and Insights online journal, in which the main article was a piece discussing the notion of ‘folksonomies’ and whether they should be used in place of tradition cataloguing (OR) or along side (AND). He of course, was fighting the corner of the AND people, which is something that I also agree with. I quite enjoy putting my own invented tags on things like these blog entries, technorati and del.icio.us but it is constantly on my mind to make them relevant, accurate descriptions and to try and be consistent throughout. Scanning various people’s tags on del.icio.us shows that most people generally just use a tag once, and they are highly personal and there is no linking related terms in any way. It’s just no use for proper searching and retrieval. But for fun, for sharing and so forth, well, I’m confident that it is fairly acceptable (although work to improve it wouldn’t go amiss). You can’t really imagine someone sitting down with AACR2 guidelines to fully catalogue their bookmarks can you? Bit too much effort, even for me and I LOVE to organise things… The paper is well worth a read. And Mr Crawford also makes reference to another paper discussing the whole folksomony debate from Guy and Tonkin (2005) ‘Folksonomies: Tidying up Tags‘, in DLib Magazine, which is also worth a read.

Technorati Tags: blogs, rss, folksonomies