Boating, Fredding, Librarianship blog

Library Day in a Life

2012-01-31T16:45:00.003Z

I'm not going to be able to take part properly in Day in a Life this year, but I will enjoy reading other people's blogs about their working days:
http://librarydayinthelife.pbworks.com/w/page/48173078/Round%208%2C%20January%2030th%20through%20February%205th%202012

I was off work sick yesterday, so it took me a few hours to work through my emails and remind myself about what I need to do this week. I'm surveying our readers this week to find out which departments they work in, to see who is using us, but happily my colleagues have taken over this task yesterday and today, while I had a 1-1 with a reader from 10.15-11am about NHS Athens and library resources, and then a search clinic from 2-3.15pm at the palliative care department. I have to do some work on our Emergency Control Plan now in the last few minutes of the day before I go and meet my sister.

Priorities - monthly statistics (do tomorrow/ Thursday, when January is well and truly over); typing up notes from Technology group meeting last week and figuring out aims for our group this year; organising Endnote/Refworks training session(s) for people in our building for the end of Feb; organising 3-fold leaflets about Endnote X5 (and Pubmed) for our readers, copied with thanks from something created by Swedish colleagues; send my monthly report to my bosses; read a book on NLP and see if it's useful for work; plan the next stage of my Chartership/porfolio.

Career

2012-01-23T15:59:00.003Z

I went to the International Careers Fair at the Exam Schools on the High Street on Saturday. I went to presentations from Google, two Oxford scientist-academics, the EU, and about OxAID. I'll recommend a few ideas to a friend of mine who is thinking about their first job and what they want to do. But what about me? Am I in the right job? What do I want to do?

Times are changing for me at the moment. Flux. Liminal stage. Liminality - I like the word but I'm finding the state hard to cope with.

Career change - why think about this when other things in my life are in flux? Well, what the hell. Change one thing, change 'em all....

To this end, I'm reading a Wolfenden report blog post on a recent Webinar on career stuff:

I think this is a theme to which I'll return at some point soon...

Where are we?

2012-01-11T15:41:00.004Z

And where are we going?

I worry that we don't have a mission statement, a clear statement of our goals and direction as a library service. I actually worry about this! I find it a problem because it affects me and my work: I need a focus, direction, aims, goals etc. Is our mission to provide library services to the NHS staff in our trust and to university members, help with information needs, help with research and excellence therein and thereof? I guess so.

To that end, when I give a presentation next week to a hospital and university department, I'm going to ask them how I can help. Can I provide a fortnightly search clinic service, sitting in a room with a laptop in the department and being available for all staff to come to? Can i start a blog to help nursing staff (or other groups?) keep up to date with the latest evidence and research in the field? What can I do?

I'm thinking increasingly about what reference management training we can provide here: Endnote, Refworks, Zotero/Mendeley/Colwiz.

I picked up three URLS this morning from a presentation about the 2011 Charleston Conference:

A reminder about Vivo - "facebook for scientists"
Total Impact - about how research has an impact on Twitter etc, not just in terms of H index etc.
Microsoft Academic Search - fun. found people I know, might be a useful search tool.

All of these thoughts and musings on a day when our printing, copying and scanning machines are out of action in the libraries. It is intensely embarrassing when they malfunction, because we have no local control over them, except for turning them on and off. Basic library stuff = photocopying, printing. What else though? What does the future hold for us?

A new year

2012-01-05T16:05:00.004Z

It's now 2012. 5 days into 2012 in fact. I was impressed by Sarah Wolfenden's blog post reflecting on her 2011 - http://thewolfendenreport.blogspot.com/2011/12/reflections-on-year-gone-past-2011.html - and felt guilty that I hadn't done the same. It's good to stop and reflect at this time of year.

I've now been in my management/ outreach librarian post for 9 months. I feel a lot more confident with the two library assistants that I manage; I've nearly completed the Introduction to Management certificate; I've helped to appoint a new member of staff and am now planning his training as part of his induction. I feel more confident about my job. I think I know what I'm supposed to be doing and how to keep busy, promoting our services, conducting 1-1 training sessions as part of my outreach duty, maintaining high standards all round.

This year's Staff Development Reviews/ Annual Reviews will be challenging for me, as I didn't enjoy them last year and will be holding the meetings on my own with the two members of staff this year, looking at what (SMART!) objectives to set them for 2012-3. And what objectives for myself? Pass the Introductory Certificate in management and then start compiling my portfolio and other documents for my chartership; work hard at being the best manager and librarian that I can be; enjoy it! I could do with being able to enjoy my work for a while, given that I have other things going on in my life this year, and settle into my role here. I'm not saying that I want to get lazy, complacent, or bored: just enjoy what I'm doing and feel comfortable.

I have Endnote/Refworks/Zotero training to organise (can I ask someone else to deliver it in our training room? When?), and I would like to attend a Wiser session on Reference Management to see how others teach people about the programmes. I know what I do, and how I prefer to teach things, but I'd like to see how other Bodleian staff members do their stuff.

I also would like to visit some more libraries this year. Oxford, London, anywhere.

Happy 2012.

Christmas at the Knowledge Centre

2011-12-16T09:55:00.002Z

What's Christmas without a librarian in a tree?

Occupy Library photos

2011-11-23T15:06:00.001Z

Occupy Library photos from around the world - from the Guardian.

Latest Library News from the Guardian

2011-11-11T11:52:00.004Z

British Library exhibition of medieval illuminated manuscripts:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/10/medieval-monarchs-books-british-library

(these are spectacular!)

The library at Occupy London:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/09/occupy-london-library

(How does this constitute a "library"? They have a Librarian, it's called StarBooks (as it is opposite Starb**ks), books are borrowed and returned, that seems a pretty reasonable description!

Interesting posts of the day

2011-11-07T11:17:00.003Z

Johns Hopkins medical library is now closing for good and they'll use the money saved on the physical space and stuff to pay for e-stuff and their informationists:

ZDNet Education: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/education/sign-of-the-times-johns-hopkins-shuttering-its-medical-library/4727
(04/11/11 - Sign of the times: Johns Hopkins shuttering its medical library)

and the Digital Shift: http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2011/10/research/major-medical-library-closing-its-doors-to-patrons-and-moving-to-digital-model/ (27/10/11 - Major Medical Library Closing Its Doors to Patrons and Moving to Digital Model)

And something on Embedded Librarianship at the Internet Librarian Conference

CPD23: Thing 23 - Reflections on the CPD23 Things Project 2011

2011-11-03T12:37:00.004Z

I've got time today so I'm using it to finish the CPD23 Things project, as you can see. Actually, I'd earmarked the time for someting else, but as I have the afternoon off today, hopefully I can work on that stuff later today.

Useful Summary of #CPD23 Chat - and I agree with the "most rewarding" comments. I've enjoyed having the chance to REFLECT on my job, my skills, my current situation, me me me. I've enjoyed having a go with Prezi (etc) and reading other bloggers' blogs. I'll continue to keep track of what some people are blogging about via the RSS feeds on my Google Reader. I'm sorry that I can't take part in an online conference which is going on world-wide RIGHT NOW, which I found out courtesy of the blog Musings About Librarianship - http://musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot.com/2011/11/library-2011-attend-free-online-library.html - and about the #uklibcamp conference via Librarians on the loose - http://librariansontheloose.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/uklibcampuk11-session-5-challenges-for-academic-libraries/

I'll continue to blog. I need to keep track of my chartership activities, my management learning and skills development, and this is good for my professional mental health.

What are my current strengths and weaknesses? What's my personal SWOT analysis for my career as it stands right now?

Need to charter.
Need to gain experience.

Then I can think about the next stages.

I hope that will suffice for now. More soon!

CPD23: Thing 22 - Volunteering to get experience

2011-11-03T12:32:00.004Z

Experience = to further my career

"Have you undertaken unpaid work to further your career? What was your experience? Is volunteering a good thing, or by working for free are we in danger of devaluing our profession? Tell us what you think."

I volunteered at a local mental health charity from April 2005 - September 2008. I loved it. I had to quit because I had a full-time job and a life, and possibly because I'd had my fill. I was saturated with information about the people who used the centre where I worked for all those months, I was saturated with experience and my enthusiasm was wavering by the end as I was actually tired. I would love to have the time to volunteer again, by for example working in the social anthropology library here in Oxford every so often to get an idea of what people working in that department need from the library service, but TIME is an issue. I work quite long hours as it is and am going through some heavy personal stuff at the moment so... that will have to wait. It's a lovely idea though. And a positive one.

By working for free we are not in danger of devaluing our profession. We are in danger of valuing it! By working for free you are saying, I value what I am doing so much that I will give up my time (maybe money too) to help others, gain experience, learn.

CPD23: Thing 21 - Promoting yourself in job applications and at interviews

2011-11-03T12:10:00.004Z

A reminder of the key bits from this Thing:

Thing 21: Promoting yourself in job applications and at interview

Part 1: Identifying your strengths; capitalising on your interests

"In order to identify your strengths, take a good look at yourself, your tasks at work, your career, you life: what do you like to do? What do you dislike? Do you remember the last time you felt that feeling of deep satisfaction after creating, building, completing something? What was it about? What skills do you need to do the things you like? These skills are your strengths; they stem from your interests."

My tasks at work - supervising the day-to-day running of the library service at the Knowledge Centre, checking that the desk is staffed, the phone answered, document supply tasks fulfilled, readers have their enquiries answered promptly, administering locker keys (! new task as of today), resetting the ipad, loaning the ipad, loaning/resetting laptops, maintainance and provision of statistics, liaison with people in the building, ensuring that health and safety policies are implemented; outreach librarian tasks - literature searches, keeping in touch with my departments, attending TIMS FY2 on monday, etc.

A variety of tasks. Lots of little folders to keep projects on track. I mainly dislike the management stuff on principle, but it's OK really and it's good to know that the service is ticking along nicely, that staff are OK and happy with their tasks, that things are working as smoothly as possible.

I get the most satisfaction out of helping people find information to answer their questions. For example, someone from dermatology needed help finding some obscure literature. In one hour-long session last friday, we achieved that task. The reader was grateful, I was happy to be able to help, and I even possibly contributed to Patient Care.

I need to improve on many skills: presentation skills (eg for a seminar...); assertiveness at work and at home; additional Presentation skills – presenting proposals to senior managers and presenting information to users; Teaching and training skills – setting learning objectives; Confidence with staff; Oral communication skills – persuading, negotiating, influencing. Clear information. Avoid misunderstanding; Leadership and management – especially setting objectives and managing performance; Decision-making: assessing options, consulting and involving others, understanding implications of decisions [most of these are lifted from my Skills Audit for the Introductory Certificate in Management that I'm currently involved in and are useful for my chartership portfolio...].

Actually, I think when I'm at my best, my strengths are on customer service, being positive and enthusiastic while also knowledgeable and professional. When I'm not at my best, my strengths are getting on with work at my desk: literature searches, in the main.

"It is important to remember that we are changing all the time: our interests change, our skills develop, we discover new things we like which we didn’t even know existed. Make sure that you keep up-to-date with yourself, and if you are unhappy in your current situation, acknowledge what has changed and take action."

Very true. I need to acknowledge a certain change in my private life right now and take action, because I am unhappy with the current situation, but haven't found the right time/ don't have the guts/ scared of confrontation/ change etc.... Oh heck.

Part 2: Applying for a job

"After identifying your strengths, build a record (a database, a list, an Evernote folder, a piece of paper...) of everything you have done that demonstrates you’ve got the skills stemming from your interests. This will be extremely useful when writing your CV or filling job applications in, as you will be able to select information from a list rather than having to start from a blank page every time, thus risking to forget something. Keep this record up-to-date. Your CV is a living thing."

I've applied for two jobs this year. My CV is now up-to-date as I reviewed it recently for my chartership portfolio. I'm happy with how to find job ads for my sort of arena, I'm working on my skills with all these management courses and chartership activities, and as I've been in my current job for 7 months now, I'd like to figure out this job before I think of moving on. I hope that's ok...

Part 3: Interviews

"A very useful structure when answering competency-based questions (like “tell me about a time you found a creative solution to a problem”) is the acronym CAR, which stands for Context. Action. Results."

Yes - example, what I did, the result of what I did. EG competency in setting up a current awareness service: I set up a blog for transplant, renal and urology nurses to help them to keep up to date with the latest information for their specialties. Feedback so far this year has been positive, although since I gave a presentation about this service to other clinical librarians in June, I haven't reviewed whether the blog is still useful and must get in touch with the Practice Development Nurse for those areas soon to find out what she and her colleagues think.

"Summary of tasks:
Answer the questions in Part I and make your own list of activities and interests: from watching the telly to something more work-related. Tell us what you’ve found about yourself: achievements/activities you had forgotten about, things you love to do, what they mean, how you could use them in your working life."

My list of activities and interests can be lifted from my chartership CV:

Interests

Social Anthropology and ethnographic research.
Reading (nineteenth century English fiction; modern European crime fiction).
Jogging, cycling, tap-dancing.
Co-director of Jericho Community Boatyard Ltd (January 2010 – present).

I've had many interests in my life and in my career. When I was researching and writing my MSc dissertation last year, I was interested in how us clinical/health/medical/outreach librarian-folk promote and evaluate our "outreach" services. I even published some of my research findings. Right now, I am interested in reviewing work I did 8 years ago on "cyberethnography", on an online community of people with a particular mental health problem (or who self-identify as having that problem) and how they communicated, what their communication reveals/revealed. It's a living. I use these interests in my working life to keep parts of my brain active while sorting out a procedure for administering locker keys etc. We shall see how I can use these interests in my career in the future, fingers crossed.

CPD23: Thing 20 - The Library Routes Project

2011-11-03T11:57:00.003Z

I've now added my link to the page, and had fun editing the wiki.

See here http://libraryroutesproject.wikkii.com/wiki/Main_Page

Lots of interesting blog posts about how people got where they are today, eg:

the wikiman - the first post on the library routes site from 2009
Dumpling in a hanky - great name, and good points about scrabbling around trying to figure out what the hell a job wants from you
Uncooked Data
Lucy Librarian - got a graduate trainee post in a health library...
Dusty Old Bookshelf - great use of Life of Brian image!

CPD23: Thing 19 - Reflection on the Things covered so far

2011-10-17T15:13:00.004+01:00

The most important thing that I have taken from CPD23 Things so far is... to reflect and make use of this blog to do so. I haven't been very happy with my job recently, and reflecting on what I'm not enjoying and what I am has helped me to understand myself better and where my weaknesses are. I keep forgetting to have formal 1-1 meetings with the two chaps I line-manage, for example, which is a weakness as I need to document whatever issues we talk about and keep tabs on performance, especially as we are half way through the year in terms of Annual Reviews (which took place in May, I think?).

What am I doing well, what can I do better? What am I doing, why, and when and how will I review myself?

I've been unable to concentrate lately. The major building works going on outside my office window have rather a big factor in that, as well as the 'bitty' aspects of my job: I have 10 different To-Dos, but they are all small and unconnected, and it's been hard for me to make a start on any one. I've enjoyed the library inductions, the EBM Thread lecture that TP and I gave today, my search clinics at Sobell House on Wednesdays. I don't enjoy liaising with people in this building, but I will do it. I have to.

As for the Things - have I incorporated any Thing into my work so far? Well, no, but I am now aware of the value of Zotero, Mendeley, (and why you should use Endnote instead!), as well as Evernote, Prezi, Jing and Audacity. I have enjoyed taking the opportunity to think about advocacy, my route into librarianship, what I might hope to do in the future. (Working on a building site is NOT something I'd like to do in the future. It is quite tiresome watching men in forklift trucks shifting piles of rubble around all day. And they are ALL men on the site!)

Going well, so far.

OH and I've enjoyed, and continue to enjoy, reading other librarians' blogs, such as the Wolfenden report: http://thewolfendenreport.blogspot.com/2011/10/cpd23-thing-19-catch-up-and-reflection.html We are a good community!

CPD23: Thing 18 - Screen capture and podcasts

2011-10-17T14:56:00.003+01:00

I made several "narrated videos" when I worked for a private company a few years ago, as I wanted a way to talk users and potential users through how to use the specialist library websites I was working on at the time. I used Camtasia to capture my screen, and I used my Skype headset to record my voice. I got rather good at speaking slowly, calmly, clearly, and was rather pleased with my work. The problem with the specialist library was that the web technology that it supported was so old and rubbish that it couldn't cope with whatever kind of file the Camtasia software created, so in the end I couldn't use the video. A frustrating but true story.

I am glad that I now know that Jing exists as a screen capture tool, but have no use for it just at the moment. Our library has used a tool that now escapes me for colleagues to record online tutorials: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/medicine/information_skills/screencasts I think these colleagues have done a marvellous job at making their presentations come to life.

I like the use of Slideshare by colleagues from the Radcliffe Science Library for this screencast: http://rslbio.blogspot.com/2011/02/reference-management-screencast.html What I'm trying to find is Ollie Bridle's presentation about bioinformatics that he gave to my colleagues earlier this year (I missed it cos I was on holiday!)... which is here! http://rslbio.blogspot.com/2011/01/bioinformatics-for-medicine.html

As for podcasts, I am already a big fan of these. I like podcasts of Radio 4 programmes such as the News Quiz, which I make a point of listening to every Monday morning to cheer me up, and I am a fan of podcasts of presentations such as those from the Oxford SciBar meetings, eg. Dr Evan Harris back in July: http://oxfordscibar.jellycast.com/node/9

If I needed to develop podcasts, I would use Audacity. Right now, however, I have enough to get on with in my 'management' capacity...

CPD23: Thing 17 - Prezi and Slideshare

2011-10-14T11:31:00.004+01:00

I'm going to start with Slideshare, as nice people have already put some of my presentations up on this website and I am slightly nervous about playing with Prezi.

Slideshare:

According to the CPD23 Things post about this, it is a useful place to store all the powerpoint presentations you have ever created. As I am slightly embarrassed about some of my presentations, I don't really want them available online for public consumption, and prefer to keep them on my hard drive, memory sticks, back up drive etc. The following are, however, all my own work:

My poster for EAHIL 2010 on the information needs of urology nurses: http://www.slideshare.net/eahil2010/poster-1-eb-urology-nurses-information-needs-with-references-compatibility-mode
My poster for EAHIL 2010 on collaborations between staff and on different projects for the late and lamented NHS Evidence kidney diseases and male urogenital disorders specialist collection: http://www.slideshare.net/eahil2010/nhs-evidence-kidney-diseases-and-male-urogenital-disorders-collaborations-poster-eahil2010

I've just joined slideshare in order to share this presentation about highlights of the 2011 International Clinical Librarians' Conference:
http://www.slideshare.net/EliBa27/outreach-librarians-atlargewedsamtrainingsession7sept111

This could be a useful tool for sharing presentations, eg about library inductions, with other staff in the university. Or when I give a seminar next month... I'll be able to share it with my family to get their comments on the key aspects of the research that I've highlighted using powerpoint... I will think about this!

Prezi:

I like this tool. I might actually try out a Prezi presentation for my seminar in less than 4 weeks' time... although the motion-sickness thing is a problem for me.

I like this presentation, as recommended by the Thing 17 post: http://prezi.com/hwkh2-lgkvm_/a-voice-in-the-wilderness-personalised-library-services-in-a-virtual-environment/

OOh I've just joined Prezi and created a test presentation: http://prezi.com/rxfwf7el4mft/test/

OK that'll do for now. I need to have lunch. I'm not having a great day, as I went to the Phoenix cinema here in Oxford last night to see Tyrannosaur, and am still in a state of shock and horror. I had to leave the cinema twice to blow my nose and mop up my tears. It was horrible. I won't listen to my friend Carole's film recommendations again in the future. It was almost as horrible as a French film I saw when first at uni in Cambridge, called A Ma Soeur!. The rape scene at the end had me in shock for weeks. I'm not a very happy bunny today. Despite the sun shining over the building site outside my office today...

I am still here!

2011-10-11T12:25:00.002+01:00

I know, I know, I have Prezi and all sorts of Things to catch up with, but I've been busy doing my management course and zillions of other work-related activities. I will catch up soon!

Quick reflection on today's inductions for MSc and DPhil students

2011-10-04T14:51:00.003+01:00

I've had three sessions with our new students: 8 for group 1, 15 in group 2, and 4 in the third and final group.

Mixed success, I feel. I gave a library tour to the first group, but not to the second two because the digging people had started digging next to the so-called Quiet Study Room by then and it didn't seem appropriate to interrupt the three people in there.

We talked about the library catalogue, databases, e-journals, a bit on reference management (why am I such a big Endnote fan?), the Oxford Research Archive, Remote Access, and ... printing, copying and scanning services. Most people weren't all that excited, apart from when I did a quick (panic) search on PubMed for articles with "depression in fish" in the title, to find something entertaining to demonstrate the link to the full text article... that got a bit of a laugh.

I went a bit too quickly, maybe, and yet it is hard to get the balance right: don't be too slow and patronising, don't overload and overwhelm with irrelevant stuff, yet maintain interest and feed the message that there are these resources available online, from our library website, and please come and ask me and my colleagues for any help you require with articles, literature searches, reference management, depression in fish, etc.

I do need to improve my overall confidence with ORCRB groups, although I'm getting better over time. I've now been in my current job for over 6 months, longer if you count the fact that I really began it in March not April, and I'm still learning.

Maybe we don't or can't actually help students in this building with their research or other work, yet we can at least show 'em what we've got.

Useful articles: iPads and evidence

2011-09-29T10:05:00.003+01:00

iPads are USEFUL for patients awake during surgery:

"iPads relieve stress and anxiety" - PiF news http://www.pifonline.org.uk/index.aspx?o=1097&newsitem=5351

And secondly - Banzi, R., et al. Speed of updating online evidence based point of care summaries: prospective cohort analysis. BMJ 2011; 343:d5856 http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d5856.short?

CPD23: Thing 16 - Advocacy, speaking up for the profession and getting published

2011-09-22T16:41:00.008+01:00

Let's address the publication issue first.

I am a published author. I have published... wait for it while I have a think... the following articles recently, as a professional librarian:

Bastin, E. (2011) ‘Using the Delphi technique to gather expert recommendations about promoting and evaluating healthcare library outreach services’, Journal of EAHIL, 7 (1), pp.3-7 [Online]. Available at: http://www.eahil.net/journal/journal_2011_vol7_n1.pdf (Accessed: 28 June 2011).
Bastin, E. (2010) ‘Freely available online resources for renal nurses’, Journal of Renal Nursing, 2 (1), pp. 36 - 37.
O'Brien, E. and Bastin, E. (2010) ‘Introducing the NHS Evidence specialist collections’, CILIP Health Libraries Group Newsletter, 27 (4), pp. 9-10 [Online]. Available HERE [because the link doesn't want to work properly] http://www.cilip.org.uk/filedownloadslibrary/groups/health/hlg%20newsletter%20dec%202010.pdf (Accessed 07/01/11).
O'Brien, E. and Bastin, E. (2010) ‘Introducing the NHS Evidence specialist collections’, CILIP Libraries for Nursing Bulletin, 30 (3-4), pp. 15-19.
Bastin, E. (2010) NHS Evidence – Kidney Diseases and Male Urogenital Disorders: search strategies for Annual Evidence Updates [Online]. Available at: http://www.apdis.pt/eahil2010/en/images/stories/docs/fulltexts/a1_02_bastin_full.pdf (Accessed: 28 June 2011).
Bastin, E. (2010) 'Book Review: Dowd N et al. Bite-sized marketing: realistic solutions for the overworked librarian', CILIP Health Libraries Group Newsletter, 27 (3), pp.25-6 [Online]. Available at: http://www.cilip.org.uk/filedownloadslibrary/groups/health/hlg%20newsletter%20dec%202010.pdf (Accessed: 28 June 2011).
Bastin, E. (2010) ‘Freely available online resources for renal nurses’, Journal of Renal Nursing, 2(1); pp.36-37.

I have no current publications planned. I don't have the time or the energy. I'm sure I can think of something though. I really enjoyed writing the book review last year, as I was thinking about promotion and publicity methods for my dissertation at the time and the book I reviewed was extremely helpful.

As for advocacy: I attended a brilliant meeting in the Oxford Town Hall last year to SAVE OUR LIBRARIES! I've also started to use our Central Library a lot more heavily, making the most of the resources while I can. But apart from signing petitions to KEEP OUR LIBRARIES OPEN, and keeping track of the campaigns via the CILIP publications, I haven't done much advocacy in terms of the public library campaign. I promote our own library service to (potential) users all the time with my Outreach Librarian hat on, and with my Knowledge Centre Manager hat on I try to find out how we can improve the service we already provide, so that people know that we are actively seeking to make improvements, keep the service relevant and make the world a happier place.

Thank you, CPD23 team, for pointing this out in the Thing 16 post:

"In addition to all the skills you pick up when engaging in advocacy (public speaking, constructing arguments, communicating with different stakeholders, using social media effectively, designing online and print materials etc.), there is the opportunity to write and get published. "

These skills are all excellent ones to have, and are all skills I need to develop. I'm happy with the designing online and print materials bit, and OK on the social media front, although I fear that I fail on the public speaking front because I am naturally shy and am an anxious bunny at the best of times, unless fortified by finest ale. I will have a think about what I can do and will get back to you on this topic!

CPD23: Thing 15 - Attending, presenting at and organising seminars, conferences and other events

2011-09-22T15:55:00.004+01:00

I have had the great honour of being able to attend three conferences for medical/healthcare librarians in the last... 18 months:

European Association of Health Information Librarians 2010 - in PORTUGAL! Estoril! Which was beautiful and wonderful... *dream*... 14-18 June. http://www.apdis.pt/eahil2010/en/index.html
CILIP Health Libraries Group conference 2010 - Salford Quays 19-20 July. See http://www.cilip.org.uk/get-involved/special-interest-groups/health/events/conferences/pages/conference-2010.aspx
2011 International Clinical Librarians Conference - Birmingham Botanical Gardens 13-14 June. See links on this page http://www.uhl-library.nhs.uk/cl_studydays.html

I presented at two (EAHIL 2010 and 2011 ICLC), and had two posters at two (EAHIL 2010 and HLG 2010). My mentor and colleague continues to encourage me to send in abstracts for other relevant conferences, even though There Is No Money for us to attend anything else ever again, apparently.

I was really nervous at EAHIL. I was also cold, standing in a huge auditorium in front of 90 people (I had time to count them). I therefore gave off "negative body language" according to TP, who was in the audience taking photos of me. Let's try to find one such photo... I look terrified. I had a script. I kept to the script. I spoke too fast (to a European audience!). On the plus side, as I was presenting, I was able to tell the 90 people in the room that I had two posters outside in the exhibition area and encouraged them to go and have a look. I got lots of attention from people who came up to me afterwards to ask questions. I felt more involved and engaged with the conference, with the 350+ delegates from all over Europe and the rest of the world. And it meant that I got to go to Portugal!

I stuck, mainly, to a script again at Birmingham this year, as I don't trust myself not to get horribly nervous, again speaking in front of a captive audience of 90 people. I enjoyed myself though. I enjoyed talking about the particular subject, and the Q&A session was useful too. The fact remains: I definitely need to work on my presentation skills.

I enjoy going to conferences: I get to learn new things, think about how to apply them to my work situation, think about other people and their jobs, and meet friends and new people. I'm sure that I could organise a conference, if I needed to, but I think I would need a lot of support from colleagues. It's hard to think of a good subject, too, for medical/outreach/clinical/healthcare librarians. I've run journal club sessions before in the past, organised meetings, even chaired a few, but never a conference.

A bit more on ipads

2011-09-19T17:11:00.002+01:00

I still haven't found it to be very useful. Not impressed by this £600-bit of kit. Couldn't use it for outreach purposes last week, so consigned it to my locker at work for now.

Post: Krafty Librarian 15/09/11 Apple Makes Finding Medical Apps for Professional A Little Easier

Reminder of this post: Krafty Librarian 16/06/10 iPad Use in the Hospital and IT Departments

We are so far behind the times that I wonder if there's any point in trying to catch up?

Presentations

2011-09-16T17:01:00.002+01:00

My colleague Amanda came to work after lunch raving about the great training session she'd had this morning with one Nick Davies on how to give better presentations.

Think about YOU, YOUR AUDIENCE, and the CONTENT.
Don't use powerpoint if you can help it (rats).
Include anecdotes, props, anything to make the presentation more lively, engaging, energetic.

Links!!!

See videos on his website: http://www.reallygreattraining.co.uk/videopage.html
Download the PDF of his booklet on this topic: http://www.reallygreattraining.co.uk/RGT_BookofPublicSpeaking.pdf
See his blog!: http://nick67davies.wordpress.com/

CPD23: Thing 14 - Trying out Mendeley

2011-09-16T11:28:00.007+01:00

My reader is using Mendeley to manage her references for a systematic review AND MSc thesis. I therefore have... not much time to learn how to use Mendeley in order to export the 7793 references from my Endnote Library what I've spent about 8 hours working on this week... as an appropriate file for her to import into her Mendeley account. I am on a Mission.

I've already noticed though, being iPad-aware at the moment, that the Mendeley homepage mentions something about iPhone and iPad apps... Which sounds good, doesn't it!?

Right. Downloaded the programme onto my PC. Next up: read the (frigging) manual - http://s3.amazonaws.com/mendeley-desktop-download/Getting_Started_Guide.pdf I think I shall treat myself by printing it off, instead of trying to do the inevitable two-things-at-once-or-more.

While that prints, can I just say that in my short career as an information scientist, information specialist, and now Librarian, I have used the following reference management software progs: ProCite (i liked this one); Endnote (my favourite); Refworks (grrr sums up my experiences); and ReferenceManager (yucky). I will probably need to start teaching PAs who work in my building how to use and make the most of Endnote, which will involve providing 1-2hr group training sessions for 4-6 people in our group study room at some point when the Oncology Dept have decided that they like me. I would also like to know how to use the Oxford-based Colwiz, as well as Mendeley, so let us proceed.

I've opened my Mendeley programme on my PC, uploaded some test PDFs, and followed the instructions for exporting from Endnote, importing into Mendeley.

At this point, a) the Endnote file mysteriously now has 7799 refs instead of the desired 7793, and b) the whole thing has crashed.

Whoops.

I'll see if my reader can open the Endnote file (XML document), or if she wants to wait until she's purchased the Mac version of Endnote for just over £80 from the Ox Uni Computing Services shop (as advised by me just now in an email...), and wants an Endnote-compatible file, I'll send her big files after lunch.

I like Mendeley so far, apart from causing it to crash with too many references to import.

I really should try out Zotero, as we've mentioned it in the past in training sessions for evidence-based people as a good free reference management tool and I've never tried it!

That's it for now. More later. If the programme un-crashes.

(10 mins later, on KC help desk) -

It works! I can analyse my references in my Mendeley account from another PC! But will it work for my reader?

(several hours later...)

The reader has reported that Mendeley is too annoying to work with. It is unstable with Word. So she has bought Endnote x4 for her mac, and I have sent her the files as Endnote import text files for her to import herself, along with instructions for Endnote and Macs.

A mixed result. We are both happy that the references (7793, don't forget) can be imported into a Library, but have concluded that Endnote is better for people doing systematic reviews than a free product such as Mendeley.

Useful links from the latest HLG newsletter!!

2011-09-13T10:20:00.002+01:00

Useful links to try out on the iPad and elsewhere:

The latest issue of the CILIP Health Libraries Group newsletter is now available online at:

http://www.cilip.org.uk/get-involved/special-interest-groups/health/pages/newsletter.aspx

What a useful issue! Full of subjects that I've been mulling over lately, such as:

IPADS

Conferences coming up (not that I'd be able to go...)

Educational

MLA 2011: NLM Theater Presentations
Presentations from EBLIP6 now online and see here too - lisresearch blog
A PREZI presentation to get my head around

Other free tools to explore

Quertle ("relationship-driven biomedical search")
AnatomyEXPERT

Very useful for work purposes! I will explore all of these further and will reflect on how they can be used in my work...

CPD23: Thing 13 - Google Docs, Dropbox, Wikis

2011-09-12T11:43:00.005+01:00

I tried out Google Docs last year for the Oxford 23 Things project. I've just had a look in my Google documents, and find someone's Chartership portfolio, there for inspiration, and my dissertation proposal from last year. And a spreadsheet that we used nearly three years ago to organise our wedding. Why haven't I used this function since early last year?

The Science, Technology and Medicine librarians on the Technology group should really use one of these tools to share documents. I should share my word document with screenshots of interesting features of the Cambridge and Yale uni library websites, to encourage others to upload their documents comparing other uni library websites and find some common features that Oxford should really think about. Aha. I've tried to upload my word document, and it has been rejected.

Maybe one of the other tools will be more successful?

Is Dropbox secure enough? Can I access documents that I upload ... via the ipad, which is currently sitting at home not doing much (although I hope my husband isn't playing with it today, as he seems to have used it for the following Play-Not-Work functions so far: checking out football results; checking out cricket results; checking out his facebook) ??

Aha. I've registered with Dropbox, downloaded it onto this PC, and now found the link for the ipad: https://www.dropbox.com/ipad

I'll see what use it is... later on today!

I'm familiar with wikis already, as I participated in a CritApp wiki project last year. We used the wiki to try out critically appraising papers as a team of geographically dispersed librarians. It was successful at the time, but no one has taken it forward, and we haven't done anything further with the project.

Interesting - the Wolfenden report on Thing 13

iPads

2011-09-09T15:32:00.005+01:00

Doing some quick ipad research: how can they be used, either for work or for play?

I googled 'libraries lending ipads' and got lots of hits... from blogs etc written in 2010. Again, it seems we are behind with the times if we've only just bought two ipads for lending in the libraries.

Useful webpages, for brevity:

http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/techlending/ipads.html
http://librarienne.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/ipadtemporarylibraryloan/
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1415050
http://library.binghamton.edu/services/laptops/index.html
http://crln.acrl.org/content/72/4/212.full Eg. "Most patrons were simply curious and wanted to find out what the device was like. I have heard from other patrons that they have not checked out an iPad because they are not sure what exactly they would do with it. On the other hand, interest in the iPads has encouraged conversations on campus about ebooks and the future of textbooks, with librarians being included in the discussion."
http://jeahil.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/ipad-lending-project-first-results/ Best sentence from this article: "Lending is a great way to whet the appetite for a new way of using library resources." Good point!
http://jeahil.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/sex-jogging-and-the-ipad-lost-in-distraction/
http://web.resourceshelf.com/go/resourceblog/58842
http://view.fdu.edu/default.aspx?id=587
http://librarienne.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/ipadtemporarylibraryloan/
http://blog.librarylaw.com/librarylaw/2010/06/may-a-library-lend-e-book-readers.html

The MANUAL:

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/iPad_User_Guide.pdf

CILIP in the South East: meeting

2011-09-08T15:44:00.004+01:00

CILIP in the South East's Thames Valley sub-branch: information here for my future ref.

I attended the branch meeting last night in the Great Expectations pub in Reading (nice beer) where Anne Marley (Outreach & Schools Library Service Manager of Hampshire Library & Information Service) gave a talk about her work with children as a librarian. She has worked in schools and in children's public libraries. I found it fascinating that Anne said that she has only learned how to tell a story and read a poem to children... by reading aloud stories and poems to children. She was a brilliant speaker. She sat on a table, read from her notes, and used old racist and sexist books as props for a discussion about the need to constantly weed children's libraries appropriately. Children are the readers of the future, they will be future users of libraries, so get them young!

Anne didn't mind what you read, as long as you read something. As long as it wasn't too racist or sexist, e.g. material from the 1950s and 1960s about future career options for boys and girls, and a book found in an education department which compares San Bushmen with gorillas. Oh, for heaven's sakes, why hadn't that been weeded out years ago?!

I enjoyed myself. It was good to meet colleagues from Reading university, from other healthcare and HE libraries and a few from school libraries. The food wasn't amazing but at least it was provided free, courtesy of CILIP. I am planning to attend the next session in October...

CPD update and reflection

2011-09-06T16:43:00.003+01:00

I've been catching up with some CPD over the last two days. I've been meaning to finish the Oxford Learning Institute's online management course for several months now, having started it in April when I took over my current management role, and am pleased to say that I successfully completed it this afternoon. I have also finished reading 'Management for Dummies' at long last, as I felt guilty that I've had it on loan from the staff library for.... many, many months... and needed to get a handle on highlights of management, especially issues such as recruitment and motivating staff.

I did several management courses earlier in the year, including the CILIP Moving into Management course and one offered by the Bodleian Libraries' staff development team, The Assertive Manager. They were brilliant courses and very helpful, but of course I attended both days, learned a lot, and then went back to work and didn't have time to REFLECT on what I had learnt.

For example, I must must must remember that the goal is to be assertive and not aggressive with people. To cite the handout from the course, "Assertive behaviour is saying what you want to say, in a way which respects the other person." Communicating clearly, confidently, maybe also sensitively but whilst knowing your own mind and what you would like to get out of an event, a conversation, etc.

How to confront someone... nicely, but get a result.

The big thing that I have kept in my mind from the Assertive Manager course is the guidance to BE PRESENT at meetings, in conversations with others etc. You can daydream (and in fact I read somewhere yesterday, in Management for dummies in fact, that daydreaming is GOOD because it reduces stress and enhances imaginativeness, creativity etc!) at work on the computer, but when dealing with PEOPLE, you should be there, in the moment, alert, awake, and giving the other person/people your full attention. I don't do this with my husband, friends on the phone, family, and I really must try to be PRESENT more often. It's polite, helps with the relationships, and makes sense.

As a line manager, I think I'm pretty sorted for the time being about how to monitor performance, motivate, and keep tabs on absence. It's remembering to take time out for 1-1s, and not just relying on the fact that I see my staff members most of the time around the library anyway, so I am available if they have questions... I must discipline myself to have regular 15 minute slots (at least!) for the two gentlemen I line manage. Maybe have a slot for one on a friday morning, and for the other at 4pm on friday afternoons?

It's been great to give myself time to tick these two things off my mental To Do list, and to prepare myself for the Introductory Certificate in Management sessions that I'm about to start later this month.

CPD23: Thing 12 - Social Media and Social Networking

2011-08-30T12:43:00.004+01:00

What do they mean by social media?

Social networking, online communities... does that not include email listings, facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc...? We covered this in CPD23 Thing 6: Online Networks.

To answer the questions included for this Thing:

1. Advantages of social networking for professional development

Easy. I can 'do it' at my desk, when I have a spare five minutes between work activities, and I can use it to catch up with colleagues, check out trends, check out the competition (what are Cambridge Medical Library up to?), I can keep tabs on tools that I really ought to know about for my work but haven't had the time to invest (eg Mendeley, Google docs!), and I can see what librarians in other sectors are doing, eg Digitalist and the business world.

2. Disadvantages of social networking

Takes up valuable work time and makes it easier to hide behind a computer instead of getting out there to meet people face-to-face. Well, this is good and bad.

3. How has CPD23 helped me to connect with others

I've enjoyed, thus far, reading The Wolfenden Report and other blogs which I wouldn't have had on my radar (or my Google Reader RSS feeds) otherwise.

4. How I used social media for professional development pre-CPD23

I've kept tabs on other librarians' blogs via my Google Reader RSS feeds for a while now, and had discovered last year via the Oxford 23 Things project that I didn't find Twitter very useful for my work, although i've enjoyed reading tweets following conferences such as the 2011 International Clinical Librarians' Conference in Birmingham in June...

5. Does social networking really help to foster a sense of community?

It depends on how you use it, and what you put into it! I feel more 'connected' to other librarians just by reading their blogs, for example, even if I never meet them or have any other interaction with them. It's more psychological than I had realised.

Quickfire reading list:

Librarians using Facebook

2011-08-30T12:40:00.002+01:00

New article:

Phillips NK. 'Academic Library Use of Facebook: Building Relationships with Students', The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Article in Press:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0099133311001625#s0060

Librarians are using Facebook to interact with users. Users may be sceptical but are engaging with this, to some extent. Librarians are using this tool to promote library services... shocker.

Thing 11: I love my mentor

2011-08-23T16:54:00.006+01:00

I think that I have at least two mentors. I have my colleague, TP, who has been a rock ever since I joined the BHCL nearly three years ago. I can't remember my first impressions of her, and how we have formed such a great relationship, but I am very glad to say that we have. We even went to Portugal together to attend a conference last year! She never stops encouraging me: whether it's to leave my husband (don't ask, really, I don't so you had better not), or to submit papers to journals or conferences, or to say NO to colleagues, or to get involved with presenting to 4th year medical students... She brightens up my day. I did get a teensy bit fed up with her at the end of the second conference that we attended together last year, and behaved like a hideous stroppy child to her when we parted ways at Oxford train station, but she forgave me and we go from strength to strength. I have been lucky enough to have a few other similarly supportive colleagues, but as they work in London, this support comes electronically via email and Facebook, not in person. Mentors are the BEST. In return, I get her espadrilles every time I go abroad, if I can. I've given her at least four pairs so far, although she keeps insisting on paying me back for 5 Euro footwear from Valencia...

I also now have my CILIP Chartership mentor as well to be thankful for. We've met once, emailed several times, and she has been most supportive as well. She suggested that I get involved with this CPD23 Things project as part of my Portfolio. She suggested that I attend the Library TeachMeet, which was great. Yes, mentors are the best.

One day, I hope to be a mentor for someone. But right now, I have a lot on my plate and have to learn how to be a better librarian (and person).

Thing 10: Routes into Librarianship

2011-08-23T16:42:00.002+01:00

I didn't set out to be a librarian. I like libraries. I love libraries. I've spent an awful lot of time in them, in the physical buildings, reading the physical items, enjoying the space and the quiet. But to be a Librarian?!

My background is in social anthropology. In my third year, when I was working on my dissertation, I started to wonder about Evidence. What is 'evidence'? How is something proved, proven? When is something 'evidence' and when is it not? So, after a twisted path and some life-experience, I enrolled for the MSc in Evidence-Based Social Work at Oxford Uni, now renamed Evidence-Based Social Interventions. It was a very good course. I did well at statistics, I learned that all the hot men visit the Social Science Library, so I duly followed them in, and I enjoyed the course. When I left, (ahem, graduated), I found that I could get a job as an Information Scientist. In the course of this job, I found that this position was similar to other people, known as Information Specialists, and Knowledge Officers, Librarians etc... Hang on! Librarian!

I didn't like that job very much. So I looked for a Way Out. The Way Out involved enrolling for another Masters degree, this time in Information and Library Management. I did a 2 year distance learning course, fully funded by myself through the rise in pay that I got from Getting Out of crap job and being accepted for Good Job.

I graduated in that masters last year, in October 2010. I waited for a bit, while my Good Job changed and there was much insecurity about my job and eventually I could apply for my Present Job. I also moved house, got a kitten, went through several other stressful experiences, wrote a few conference papers, gave some presentations, wrote a few journal articles etc etc, and now I feel ready to start the process of Chartering.

I have a mentor. We met in June. I've recently received her approval on my CV and annotated job description. My PPDP should have reached CILIP over a month ago. They have my £50. I am in the process of compiling my portfolio, asking our admin staff for a current copy of the Organisation Chart, and generally getting on with both my job and all the CPD it currently involves. I intend to Charter as soon as possible, get comfortable with Managing, and then see what else is out there for me. If there is nothing, then I will make the most of my current position, and do the best I can. If there is something else out there, then I will make sure that I have the skills and the enthusiasm.

I didn't mean to be a librarian. But now that I am one, I rather like it.

Image above from http://www.theliterarygiftcompany.com/gift-boxed-librarian-badge-3188-p.asp

"This book... has been one long reflective practice essay."

2011-08-23T16:06:00.004+01:00

Above quotation from p.289, In Stitches: The Highes and Lows of Being an A&E Doctor, Dr Nick Edwards (2011).

I've just finished reading this book, which is brilliant and funny, insightful, tragic, and thought-provoking. If I, as a librarian, sat down at the end of each working day to think about, reflect on and write about one moment in my day, I doubt it would be an iota as interesting as Dr Nick Edwards' time in an A&E department. I've enjoyed being able to read the book, which is on our shelves as part of our Book Swap initiative, a way of enticing people into the library with the promise of free books, and a place for them to deposit worthy reading material for other people. I've read it at work in those pauses while waiting for files to upload, or when importing files from LISA into Endnote, as I am currently doing...

I'm now a Believer in reflective practice. I've done a lot of it this month, as I've been on leave (and enjoyed being on leave immensely). I've been reflecting on the nature of my present job, the endless struggle between wanting to do my outreach work and yet having numerous Management tasks fulfil ASAP, in addition to having an ambitious pile of books on my desk to help with my CPD that I just haven't had the chance to look at yet. I now have to learn how to induct a new member of staff while starting to read up on recruitment and update a job description/ person spec/ advert. I have numerous tasks on my To Do list which i am avoiding like the proverbial, which involve talking to people who work in our building and asking them questions. I have enough to do... managing people here and making sure that books are circulating happily (not yet possible with our new library management system for books from the Bodleian stacks). I'm rather stressed just being here. I must manage this better in future, with or without the aid of amusing books such as this one by Dr Nick Edwards.

N.B these are all my posts on 'reflective practice'. Plan>Do>Reflect/Review. - see this article as well !!

And for my chartership... Good things that I've done recently: Induction plan for RT; Visits to Gladstone Link; CILIP Update Gazette reading; blog attempts; toe in the Recruitment water...

A poem about librarianship

2011-08-18T16:08:00.000+01:00

... Is here

!! Useful pages for me to catch up with...

2011-08-17T17:13:00.003+01:00

Thing 8 - Google Calendar: Library Wanderer Wolfenden report (things 8-10)

Thing 9 - Evernote: Library Wanderer

Thing 10 - chartership etc: CPD23 page Library Wanderer Too much info

Thing 11 - mentorship: CPD23 page Library Wanderer Wolfenden report Too much info

Thing 12 - social media: CPD23 page

Thing 13 - googledocs, wikis etc (this will be useful for Technology group!): CPD23 page

Interesting post on drs using ipads - Krafty Librarian and here

I've been on leave

2011-08-16T13:12:00.003+01:00

And now I'm trying to catch up.

Watch this space.

CPD23: Thing 9 - Evernote

2011-07-27T16:14:00.003+01:00

Evernote is a handy tool for storing thoughts (ie 'notes'), photos, clippings from online articles, all sorts of information and titbits. Unfortunately, right now I feel that my life is complicated enough without yet another handy tool for storing information, and I'm happy to keep using pen and paper for now. I have looked at the Getting Started webpages, I now have a better understanding of this tool, I just don't need it.

I'm happier to stick to a combination of emails, bookmarked links, word (etc) documents, My Pictures files, and save as much of these items to memory sticks and my data storage gizmo for posterity. There is already enough 'data' in my life. I am happy to forget some things.

CPD23: Thing 8 - Google Calendar

2011-07-26T10:54:00.002+01:00

I'm familiar already with Google Calendar, as my previous employer used it to organise the business, and I found it easy to use as well as convenient, 2-3 years ago. Times have changed, and now I rely on my Outlook calendar to organise myself and the Knowledge Centre/ staff. Unfortunately, we don't have a massive calendar for all 25 staff and to book the various rooms we have, but we live in hope that one day, it will be possible to see that X, Y and Z are on leave on A Day therefore cannot help with a training session, etc.

I use my Outlook calendar much as I would use my Google calendar: for appointments, to show when i'm on leave or using our Group Study Room, and for personal reminders about my tap class etc. It is Very Useful.

CPD23: Thing 7: Face-to-face networks and professional organisations

2011-07-22T16:23:00.003+01:00

I am a member of CILIP, and therefore of the Health Libraries Group. I've written articles for their newsletter, attended the conference last year armed with my two posters, and follow emails on the mailing list.

I don't often get the chance to go out in the evening to meet other librarians. I mainly see them at work (ha!), at conferences, at Bodleian staff development training events, and online via Facebook or silly emails. My colleagues are tremendously helpful. For example, when I got a query last december about current awareness for nurses working in the transplant department, it was through talking to my colleagues that I started a blog. They are a constant source of morale, support, and work...

I've now been out twice in the last 10 days to see other librarians face-to-face, taking advantage of other Oxford librarians' initiatives. I've attended the Oxford TeachMeet (12th July), and the CPD23 informal meet-up at the Turf after work on Tuesday this week (19th July).

The Oxford TeachMeet

This event took place upstairs at the University Club, from 7 - 9pm on Tues 12th July. Attending it were about 40 young brunette librarians/ library assistants/ graduate trainees, and four men. (I still haven't gotten used to this female-dominated profession, and how young the people are who bother to attend something voluntarily after work). I met a graduate trainee from the Law Library who is lovely and bubbly and enthusiastic about law and libraries, as well as a few familiar faces from training sessions at the Osney One building for staff development.

The first 7-minute presentation was by Ollie Bridle and Isabel McMann, about QR codes and how they are using them in the Radcliffe Science Library to help readers to find their way around. QR stands for Quick Response. You need an iPhone or a similarly expensive and unreliable model to read them. As the Government has put up the fees for undergraduates, and Oxford has joined in, the RSL librarians think that the new intake of students will all have these smart phones and will want to make the most of their expensive investment in their education by taking full advantage of the library services, including the QR codes. As I don't have a smart phone, this is pretty meaningless to me, although I now understand what the funny symbols in magazines etc mean.

Next up was the presentation on colwiz. I need to know about colwiz, or get the team behind it to come and give a presentation to the scary scientists working in my building who might find it useful for their collaborative projects. Colwiz is a research management tool designed for post-doc scientists. It has a library and PDF reader. You can integrate references with Google scholar, PubMed etc. You can annotate PDFs. It works on Macs, PCs, and Linux. It is free. A really useful and interesting feature is that you can see how often certain authors publish, whether two authors publish together and how often (etc), using the statistical tools. On the downside, there are questions about copyright, as this tool allows you to share PDFs of papers with people from other institutions with different access rights. But my mum might find it useful. It is better than Mendelay, which I *still* haven't investigated..

Alison Prince gave the third 7 minute presentation about her experiences of Making Online Exhibitions. In this case, it was an online exhibition of a physical exhib., Shelley's Ghosts. See here. There must have been an article about this amazing website in the Bodleian staff newsletter, Outline, but I missed it. Therefore I am very glad that I found out about it via the TeachMeet! It is quite a beautiful website. Alison talked about how difficult it was to build a website which reflects the physical exhibition and make it interactive, and widen access to a huge potential audience. Another thing that I learnt from this presentation is that Twitter hashtags are now "maybe the most powerful marketing tool" we have.

A quick one on #AskArchivists' day on 9th June 2011... using twitter to ask Qs and spread the word about this profession. A good use of Twitter that I approve of!

Another quick presentation, 2 minutes, on making secure, long, complex, unique passwords. Have a master password, very complicated set of letters, numbers, symbols, and then additional tags for each website you need a password for.

Finally, two 7 min presentations on redesigning the Corpus Christie college library pages on WebLearn, and one on the Science Museum based at Wroughton Airfield, which sounds cold and a long way away. They were neither terribly relevant to my job and my interests, but good to see what a variety of activities there are in this profession, and the enthusiasm of the graduate trainee from Corpus Christie in particular!

By the way, the University Club does very nice beer from the Lake District as an extra incentive to go there. £2.90 for a pint of Jennings. Heaven.

The second informal event: CPD23 in Oxford (5.30-6.45pm Tues 19th July)

There were seven of us young brunettes sat around a pub table, and one older man. We talked about how hard it was to find the time to start a blog, let alone keep up with all the Things, but how worthwhile the whole experience is. We talked about the BRANDING question, and how our profile photos on Facebook appear in Google searches, and so it is important to NOT have a publicly-accessible photo of yourself with three cocktails ... The New Professionals' Network was mentioned, which I must follow up. Sonya, the organiser, said that she started her Twitter account last year and has added people to follow that she has met at conferences. I then talked to the only man in our group and learned all about cataloguing the legal deposit material that the Bodleian receives each week (up to 2000 items in a week!) 11 staff catalogue 2000 items in a week = roughly 40 items each per day. Wow.

Hopefully there will be another informal pub meeting like this one soon. it was good.

CPD23 Thing 5 (and7): Reflective practice again

2011-07-22T16:08:00.003+01:00

I've spent 38.5 hours working on 11 searches for a colleague's readers while she has been on leave over the last two weeks. No wonder I am very tired.

If I take a reflective approach, i might think that I spent too much time on these searches, time which I could have used in writing up a survey to determine the info and service needs of people working in our building, or which I could also have used in working on my Chartership portfolio. Yet I have learned a lot: I have created a complicated search strategy for one reader, then replicated it in five other databases, learning how to use three in the process and learning to manage my own deep frustration at not being able to export search results from Ovid on my PC (I had to use a public PC instead). I have learned how to search using very basic phrase search terms for someone looking for information about diet myths. I was too sophisticated at first, and retrieved search results about a particular medical condition which refers to people who eat late at night and have weight problems as a result. It turned out that this was NOT what the reader wanted, so I had to redesign my searches and use the databases in a simpler way to find the right information. And it worked... !

I've been going home exhausted though. This is also the week when we had a new library management system start up (yesterday morning, in fact), which meant that I had to quickly learn how to return, loan and renew books, as well as register new readers for this library, as well as show another member of staff what to do. The patience that I had to practice (breathe in, breathe out, hope that Endnote will now import the files...) during the difficult searches was put into practice with the staff member as I felt my frustration levels rise.

I haven't been able to do Important Bits of Work this week, which I will now have to do next week, if I am not swamped with literature searches (I have three for next week already).

3 searches
Survey people in the building
Tell people in the building about two aspects of our library service: group study room and laptop loans.
On the help desk at the KC: Monday lunchtime, Thursday and Friday lunchtimes, Friday evening. On the help desk at the other place: 10-1pm on Weds.
Chartership stuff - complete the draft PPDP and send to mentor, review and revise my CV and send to mentor, likewise for my job description with annotations about how I do the job and examples of what I've done so far in the four months I've held this delightful position. I should also write up notes from the CPD23 informal pub meeting on Tues 19th July, and from the TeachMeet last Tuesday 12th July... for my portfolio and for this blog, which are two examples of face-to-face networking!
PREPARE FOR TWO WEEKS' LEAVE!

CPD23 on Twitter

2011-07-20T14:39:00.001+01:00

Search for #cpd23.... interesting results.

I blogged earlier on today about linkedin. Blogger hasn't saved my post. Why is that?

Hmmmm.... LinkedIn

2011-07-20T13:23:00.002+01:00

A colleague just invited me to be friends or whatever the appropriate noun is for LinkedIn.

Which reminded me that I wanted a good answer to the question: Why should I use LinkedIn? What's in it for me?

This article is useful for answers, eg:

"With LinkedIn, in addition to the standard information about your current job, you’re able to not only create
a showcase for past projects and engagements, but also provide a summary of your most outstanding
career highlights, areas of expertise, and specialties, all without worrying about exceeding the standard
single/double page resume restriction. In the “Experience” section, you can post information about
previous jobs and/or projects, and can then expand and enhance that information via
“recommendations,” or statements about the amazing wonderfulness of your work, from colleagues,
bosses, clients, etc., should they choose to post (and if they are also members of LinkedIn).

"Under the “Additional Information” section, you can list your websites, interests (including a couple of
your personal passions/commitments may help “round you out” to potential employers or clients),
groups and associations, and honors and awards. Here would be the place to note the special interest
groups you belong to, that “innovative librarian of the year” award, and your interest in social
entrepreneurship. The goal here should be to give someone (such as a potential employer) a deeper
understanding not only of what you can contribute, but who you are and what’s important to you."

CPD23 Thing 6: Online Networks

2011-07-19T17:11:00.003+01:00

I joined LinkedIn and never used it. I'm busy keeping up to date with people via their blogs (i.e. via RSS feeds), via librarian friends' facebook pages, and via CILIP news. I am happy with this. I have been a member of LIS-MEDICAL for years now, and although I find most of what people email about to be rubbish, there have been some gems over the years. I do enjoy keeping in touch with people on Facebook though, as librarian friends in London write about weird and wonderful things, post links to songs on YouTube, and generally cheer me up that way.

I should head off and leave work right now, thinking of networks, as a group of Oxford Librarians are about to meet in a pub in town in 20 minutes to talk about the CPD23 Things project...

Reference for me to CPD23 Thing 6 page

CPD23 Thing 5: Reflective practice

2011-07-19T16:59:00.003+01:00

I have to reflect that since my colleague went on holiday, I have taken on a lot of her workload and a) I am exhausted from searching, figuring out how to export results from X database (eg the WHO Global Health Library today) to Endnote X4 and b) am shocked at how much work she handles, the variety, and how well she has her readers trained to send her their searches in a well thought-out manner.

So I haven't had a lot of time to write up my Personal Professional Development Plan for my chartership... draft, nor revise my CV or job description for the same, nor write up notes from last week's Oxford Teach Meet. I have to reflect that maybe my time management skills need improving, or I prefer the challenge (exhausting but exciting) of completing difficult searches for my colleague's readers to completing paperwork and reflecting.

I must TAKE TIME to REFLECT more.

Do > Plan > Review

What? > So what? > Now what?

I could evaluate and reflect on my first nearly-four-months in my new job...

And on the fact that my desk has exploded since I took it on, because I am constantly juggling literature searches, 1-1s, other training sessions, my Management reading, notes from meetings that I now attend, my promotion plan for the Knowledge Centre, my survey for people who work in this building, managing two part-time library assistants and whoever else is managing the help desk at the KC, managing the line manager, thinking about other training that I need, keeping up to date with events in the world/ country/ library affairs/ medical affairs etc, and thinking about Chartership. (And about whether I am ready to become a Mum. !!)

I have learnt an enormous amount since March. I have learnt an enormous amount about my organisation, good and bad, that I didn't have to know in my previous role. I have had to have difficult conversations with staff and I have been in tears after an awful experience at work. I have also had a week off during all this with a torn muscle in my shoulder and dreadful pain.

I will come back to this theme, hopefully tomorrow or later this week (again, depending on time and energy). Thank you, CPD23 Thing 5, for helping me to take the time to REFLECT.

Thing 4 2011: Twitter

2011-07-08T14:19:00.003+01:00

I've just read Grace Dent's article on the Guardian site about her relationship with Twitter. Very good article. Give it a read.

Can I be cheeky and copy and paste a Comment? I happen to agree with it:

by hoskas 07/07/11 9.12pm
"Twitter is always addictive and funny, but really it was made for live tv. Eurovision, The Apprentice, The X-Factor, breaking news stories, The Royal Wedding etc, these are all vastly more hilarious when being live tweeted by Joe Public."

Brilliant stuff. And I still don't feel the need to join or look at Twitter.

CPD 23 Thing 4 - Current Awareness

2011-07-07T11:58:00.004+01:00

Twitter is great for fun and I can see how it can be useful for evidence-based medicine when people can instantly review a new systematic review by Tweeting and using hash tags to make it easier to search for all related tweets. But I personally don't find it useful for my work.

RSS feeds, on the other hand, are vital for my work. I used to have a Bloglines account, but when it looked like Bloglines might die a death last year, I switched to Google Reader. I have other 100 feeds, categorized into Fun, Library stuff, Blog stuff (feeds relating to my Outreach work which are vital to follow for my other blog), and Science, so that I can keep up to date (ish) with the latest in cell biology. I have set up RSS feeds from PubMed searches, from the Cochrane library, from all sorts of places. Current Awareness is my thing.

CPD23 Thing 3 - My professional brand

2011-07-06T16:56:00.002+01:00

Oh dear. Not only am I procrastinating by writing this blog post on my 'brand' instead of making a start on my Chartership work, following my first meeting with my mentor last Tuesday, but I am listening to a Spanish radio station to subliminally absorb some Spanish and get back in that particular game, and I am hanging my head in shame at how my blog presents ME.

Brand Eli.

My sister googled one of my many names recently and found a paper that I wrote for the EAHIL 2010 conference last year in Estoril. She was very impressed with the paper. She found it incomprehensible because it was in library-speak, and not in whatever-academic-field-she-currently-affiliates-herself-with-speak.

The problem with my blog in terms of my 'brand' is that it is a shambles. I started this blog in 2008 at a previous job just to see what this blog thing is all about. I took it up again last year for the Oxford 23 Things project, and then used it to post photos of my friend Lesley and our cat, both of whom died last year, as I wanted somewhere online to view the photos to help me to grieve.

And now I'm back to using the blog for 23 Things - CILIP-style.

And I should probably use the blog to record my CILIP Chartership progress...

Which may involve a bit of re-branding of the blog along the way. I can't change the name, the URL, but I can remove the Flickr photos and the Google Search bar, both of which I consider now to be superfluous and unnecessary, and I can change the strapline of the blog. All of which I've just done.

Back to Brand Eli: The Google exercise

Googling one of my names, the top results are for: posts on a friend's blog; a link to CILIP HLG 2010 conference posters that I created last year; my facebook page; my LinkedIn page (which I don't use. I only signed up for it last year as part of the Oxford 23 Things project); my Blogger profile; the conference programme for the International Clinical Librarians' conference 2011; a post on Phil Bradley's blog about the poor state of the search functionality on the BBC website; a link to my latest ICLC 2011 presentation on ... blogs; and a tweet about the ICLC 2011 presentation.

Page 2 of the Google search results pulls up more work-related results, instead of frivolous social networking pages.

What I would like to come up... the article about my new post here at the KC; conference presentations and posters etc; the transplant blog; and other worthy things. Not the Facebook page, with my current profile photo showing me enjoying a night out with cocktails.

In conclusion, I think I need to work on my Brand.

Thing 2: Exploring other blogs

2011-07-04T15:13:00.005+01:00

Now, I think I'm rather good at investigating other blogs. As I've been developing and working on the Oxford Transplant Nurses' Information blog (http://oxfordtransplantnursesinformation.blogspot.com), over the last few months I have become aware of the many different uses for blogs, the variety in authors, topics, quality etc. I'm now following a few medics and paramedics' blogs, for work purposes of course, as well as those of some friendly boaters, so as to keep up to date with whatever they are up to on the Oxford Canal. I even follow some blogs written by librarians, such as Digitalist http://www.digitalist.info/about-2/, who I have great respect for. I like the fact that Emma posts her presentations, and posted videos for Library Day in the Life (e.g. http://www.digitalist.info/2011/01/28/library-day-in-the-life-round-6-day-5/), using all sorts of media to share her teaching and experiences. Our jobs are fairly similar and it is interesting to see how she's getting on with her job, as I first met her at a Train the Trainers session two years ago, when her hair was just as quiffy as it still appears to be.

I keep up to date with... let's count them...21 different blogs via Google Reader, as well as the RSS feeds for some Tables of Contents pertinent to my job. My Google Reader feeds are somewhat out of control, as I subscribe to over 100, but I've now categorised them and prioritise reading the Librarianship ones over the Fun ones... most of the time.

Anyway, getting back to the task at hand, this is what I've learnt from fellow CPD23 blogs:

Librarians create PRETTY BLOGS! I love the book backgrounds, the birds on Alice in LibraryLand's blog, and all those other blogs making good use of Blogspot features.
Librarians use WORDPRESS as well as Blogger! See for example: Addicted to Story and New Health Library.
Healthcare librarians are also participating and blogging about their Chartership! I will keep tabs on this one for inspiration... passionatemedicallibrarian

I end by stating that I hope my blog is registered with CPD23 soon...

Back to librarianship - CPD23 Thing 1

2011-07-04T14:49:00.005+01:00

I've recently started on the path to Chartering with CILIP, and thought it might be a good idea to restart this blog and see what the world of Web 2.0 and librarianship looks like 16 months on from finishing the Oxford 23 Things project (http://fredonboard.blogspot.com/search/label/Thing%2023). Welcome to CPD23! Or... the CILIP 23 Things project, 2011.

The greatest thing that I took from participating in the Oxford 23 Things project last year was the confidence to start another blog. I started a blog last December which has begun life as a blog targeted at the nurses working for the Oxford Transplant Centre, and which is branching out and developing so that it meets the current awareness needs of up to 200 nursing staff in the Transplant Centre, Oxford Kidney Unit and in the urology department at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford. What will I learn this year? What will I learn and put into practice for user education purposes?

Furby!

2010-10-26T15:45:00.003+01:00

Fred

2010-08-03T15:10:00.004+01:00

One of Lesley, lots of Fred

2010-07-15T14:58:00.007+01:00

More Fred (I miss Lesley)

2010-07-15T14:49:00.006+01:00

Fred

2010-07-15T14:40:00.004+01:00

Our friend Lesley

2010-04-21T16:15:00.003+01:00

Our friend Lesley died less than two hours ago. I should go home but I can't quite face cycling. I like the safety and comfort of my desk and computer in the office, while my colleagues are on the help desk being kind and leaving me to cry in peace.

Last photos of Lesley: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fredonboard/sets/72157623579309564/

And damn me and my depression, as the last time I saw her I shouted at her (and Ali) for being drunk on board while I needed some space and peace and wanted to watch Control. That was 15 days ago. Damn me. So sorry.

23 Things: report

2010-04-06T11:43:00.004+01:00

Thank you, OULS-as-was, for putting on this 23 Things challenge. It's been really good, and a cost-effective way to get people in the library services to interact and engage with new Web 2.0 tools as well as each other.

I like my iGoogle page, but mainly for the Word of the Day, which makes me feel clever because I already know most of the Words so far. I'll keep it as my homepage, if only to remind myself of 23 Things and to recommend Google Reader to readers who don't want to use Bloglines to read their RSS feeds. (I LOVE Bloglines, it's brilliant and is crucial for my job).

I also like Flickr, but am irritated that I now have to pay to upgrade in order to view my photos, if I want to upload any more. I really liked Picnik. That's a very cool tool. I'll use it again in the future for sure.

Delicious has also been a very useful tool - see the blog about using it in a training session to record URLs for trials registers sites. It's already come in handy several times to remind myself of useful URLs to pass on to readers!

It seems that after Week 5, I got a bit fed up with all these new-fangled Web 2.0 tools. I already use/ listen/watch podcasts and YouTube videos, so that was nothing new, and yes we are investigating podcasting library-related stuff for our users - and unfortunately for me, I haven't been invited to participate in creating any of these!

Facebook I use for personal stuff. Not for library stuff at all. Let's keep the two nicely separate.

LinkedIn *may* be useful for my dissertation. Watch this space for more.

Twitter I already use, when I remember to. I'm not so fussed about it as I personally much prefer my RSS feeds. Sorry. I'm rather conservative (with a small 'c') when it comes to these things.

Wikipedia I already use as well. I'm not that interested in contributing to wikis at the moment. They may become more important and useful in the future.

I'm glad that I had the opportunity to play with Google Docs. Now, that is a useful tool and I must play with it more often. On several occasions now, I've had documents emailed back and forth for corrections. Let's just have one Google Doc to edit and correct in future?!

I think that we should do this 23 Things thing again in a few years' time, to update our knowledge and discover all the new 'things' which will be invented in the future. I'll try to make a mental note to return to this in 2013 or so....

So long, 23 Things, and thanks for all the fish!

LinkOut? - Thing 23 reflections

2010-03-29T16:23:00.004+01:00

Nice wee article in the back pages of this week's New Scientist (27 March 2010; p.76) about LinkedIn. The Feedback author reports his experiences of joining LinkedIn, only to be contacted with requests from strangers who turned out to be "fraudsters": "It seems our Nigerian scammers have moved on from simple phishing and are now building social networks."

Maybe I'll LinkOut in future.

A reminder to self about 23 Things

2010-03-29T11:26:00.004+01:00

Week 1 – Introduction and personalised homepages (drop-in Monday 18/01/10 14:00-17:00)
1. Set up your Google ID -yep
2. Customise your iGoogle page so that it contains at least 5 gadgets - yep: recipes, news, word of the day, gmail, wikipedia
Week 2 – Blogging
3. Create your own 23 Things blog and make your first post - ha ha sounds silly now, doesn't it?
4. Register your 23 Things blog and explore others - must explore other blogs....
Week 3 – RSS Feeds
5. Sign up for GoogleReader and add the RSS feed from the 23 Things blog - yes, done.
6. Find some more feeds to subscribe to - subscribe to far too many feeds! over 120 now!
Week 4 - Online photos and images (drop-in Wednesday 10/02/10 14:00-17:00)
7. Create a Flickr account, upload some of your own photos, tag them and add descriptions - done...
8. Go to the Picnik site and connect to your Flickr account, try out the different editing tools on your photos and save them back to Flickr - done. particularly liked this one. see pic of boat.
Week 5 - Social bookmarking and tagging
9. Sign up for a Delicious account, bookmark and tag some of your favourite web sites - came in handy during trials registers training session.
10. Add other Delicious users to your network so that you can easily view their bookmarks - not so handy unless colleagues join delicious!
Week 6 - Podcasting / YouTube (drop-in Monday 22/02/10 09:00-12:00)
11. Find and listen to some podcasts which interest you - must still explore Oxford Learning Institute podcasts. Like listening to Radio 4 news quiz and other friday night comedy as podcast.
12. Search YouTube for some videos on a topic of your choice and discover YouTube channels - done. Prefer YouTube for music videos but can see uses for libraries.
Week 7 - Social networking
13. Write a blog post about how libraries can use different features of Facebook to connect with their users - done. Not convinced this is so useful for HCL.
14. Explore http://learn.linkedin.com/ and sign up for LinkedIn - done. But not found useful yet. Probably will be more useful when I get engrossed in my dissertation!
Week 8 - Twitter
15. Sign up for Twitter and find people to follow - must tweet more... about kidneys etc...
16. Start engaging with your network using @replies and retweets - yes.. good point.
Week 9 - Wikis
17. Explore and contribute to a wiki - Oxford Libraires wiki.
18. Discover Wikipedia - discovered it years ago!
Week 10 - Office 2.0
19. Create a Google Document and share it with another 23 Things participant - dissertation proposal agonised over.
20. Sign in to ThinkFree Office with your Google ID and try its Write application - didn't find this helpful at all. Slow!
Week 11 - Widgets
21. Use a blogger Gadget to display your Flickr photostream on your blog. - very nice toy.
22. Use a widget to put your Delicious bookmarks on your iGoogle page - also useful reminder of delicious bookmarks.
Week 12 - Summary of experiences
23. Summarise your thoughts on the 23 Things @ Oxford programme and register completion via Google Form - kind of what i'm doing now but will do properly next week!

iGoogle word of the day

2010-03-29T11:20:00.001+01:00

vivacious	(adjective) Full of animation and spirit; lively.
Synonyms:	vibrant
Usage:	She was no longer the alert, vivacious American beauty who had charmed and delighted all who came in contact with her.

I'm not particularly vivacious, but can name a few friends who are.

Things 21 and 22: Gadget, Widget

2010-03-29T11:13:00.002+01:00

Right. Done Things 21 and 22: Added my Flickr photostream to this 'ere blog, which is rather cool, and added my delicious bookmarks to my iGoogle page. And reorganised my iGoogle gadgets while I was at it, deleting some of the news feeds and having a look at my Google Reader feeds (still prefer Bloglines, by the way).

So. Nearly finished with 23 Things. And can smell cigarette smoke, which has absolutely nothing to do with 23 Things, but which is horrible when you're sat in an air-conditioned library office and spent much of yesterday afternoon in the cockpit of our boat breathing in fumes from our neghbour's generator. (Why does Jamie have to run a generator at all?? Get a few solar panels, run 12-volt gadgets, no problems).

There. I can grumble on my blog. Hee hee.

Wikipedia blog post

2010-03-25T11:01:00.002Z

Krafty Librarian has blogged about Wikipedia here: http://kraftylibrarian.com/?p=473 which suggests that medical librarians in particular 'hate' wikipedia, as it isn't an evidence-based resource etc. Well, one reads everything with a critical eye, so I'd tend to disagree. As long as students etc don't just rely on wikipedia to find out how to treat otitis media or somesuch.

Things 19 and 20

2010-03-23T12:26:00.005Z

Most impressed with Bibliophile in Cyberspace's blog on the Things for this week:
http://bibliocy.blogspot.com/2010/03/googledocs-and-thinkfree.html

(that's all from me for now)

Thing 20: ThinkFree Office

2010-03-22T11:25:00.002Z

ThinkFree Office, http://www.thinkfree.com/, is slow and clunky and not nice. I tested it out, typing up some notes from a book I wish I'd read last week before I sent off my dissertation proposal: Your Masters Thesis: How to plan, draft, write and revise. !!

That's Thing 20 done for. I doubt I'll use ThinkFree Office in Real Life. Google Docs, yes, but not this application.

Thing 19: I've created a Google Document!

2010-03-22T11:03:00.003Z

I uploaded my MSc dissertation proposal to Google docs, and then realised that I posted two copies of this to Newcastle on Friday without altering the title. Not sure the title makes great sense:

“Reaching out to healthcare library users:

Using the Delphi method to gather expert recommendations about promoting and evaluating healthcare outreach library services”

So I've changed it to:

“Reaching out to healthcare library users:

A Delphi study to gather expert recommendations on the most effective methods to promote and evaluate healthcare outreach library services”

Which one is better? Which one makes sense? Am I going to be horribly penalised for having such a stupid title?

Google documents could be extremely useful. I'm trying to create a newsletter at the moment for a community group I'm a director of (for my sins). I'm writing and creating it using Publisher, but as the others don't have access to this programme, I've had to send out the drafts as PDFs to everyone. Really not very efficient! I'll explore this functionality further.........

Wikis: Things 17 and 18

2010-03-15T11:06:00.002Z

Are we on things 17 and 18 already? Good!

Wikipedia is a very useful tool, even if it isn't all that reliable and you get told off for referencing it in MSc essays (who? me?! well, if I admit to this heinous crime then I only referenced a Wikipedia page cos the stupid people at Northumbria Uni can't reference their workbooks properly, and the only reference I could find for a management thing was on this particular website!). You can find out the dates of birth for famous actors and musicians, you can look up lyrics or lines from poems and find out more information, you can look up stuff about kidney diseases for quick reference.

I must admit that I've never bothered with the History of a Wikipedia page before, but yes, good stuff and helpful in the reliability stakes.

As for wikis generally, I'm signed up to an OULS/ Bodleian Libraries wiki, but never had the opportunity to use it. The http://socialouls.wetpaint.com/ site is good to know about, particularly the Web 2.0 links on this page http://socialouls.wetpaint.com/page/Bibliography+%26+useful+links.

Does this count for my Things for this Week? I hope so, as I need to get on with my day job!

Twits and twats

2010-03-08T09:46:00.003Z

We were encouraged to join Twitter and start tweeting updates to the NHS Evidence specialist collections back in October. I joined Twitter and started tweeting. And then felt that it is more appropriate for following what Sarah Brown has had for breakfast than for serious evidence-based medicine-related information. The kidney diseases and male urogenital disorders twitter feed is here: https://twitter.com/NHSEvidenceKDMU

Since October, I've only tweeted 13 times, and have 12 followers. Some of the kidney charities I'm following have useful things from time to time, but generally, I'm afraid, I forget to update the feed and so am a bad Twitterer. Someone from another specialist collection said that they've hooked up their collection RSS feed to Twitter, to directly tweet those feeds.

Anyway, I am glad that I've played with this toy, but will stick to other Web 2.0 toys in future.

Thing 14: LinkedIn

2010-03-01T11:42:00.002Z

http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/eli-bastin/1a/b72/551

I've done it. I've signed up for LinkedIn. I'm not sure why though, as I'm happy with my networking skills and contacts at the moment but hopefully this will prove useful when I attend professional conferences later this year, unlike Facebook, which is more for fun and informal stuff.

Thing 13: Libraries using Facebook

2010-03-01T11:16:00.002Z

I joined Facebook a few years ago to keep in touch with friends from University. I went to a party and discovered that everyone was using this social networking site to keep in touch (!!), post photos of themselves at parties etc, and I felt left out.

I'm not a Friend of any libraries. If I need to know when the Social Science Library will close tonight, i'm afraid that I'll go to their website to find out instead of looking on Facebook. I know that various Oxford libraries have Facebook pages to connect with their readers, and maybe that is more appropriate for the libraries with undergraduate users. Our library is more serious than that (hee hee) and so I think Facebook is inappropriate for health care.

Having said that, I can keep in touch with fellow medical librarians on Facebook for informal purposes, to strengthen friendships and improve my morale when I'm fed up with the NHS project I spend 80% of my working life on. No bad thing, that...

Oh yes, Thing 2

2010-02-26T12:11:00.004Z

I did Thing 2 a few weeks ago - adding gadgets to my iGoogle page. I added Google News, To do list, BBC Good Food recipes, Simply recipes, Joke of the Day, Word of the Day, Weather etc.

I've also added my Google Reader to my iGoogle to make it easier to read feeds (tho I still prefer to stick to Bloglines).

Library of the future

2010-02-22T11:37:00.001Z

Nicked from Phil Bradley's blog

Thing 11: Podcasts

2010-02-22T10:58:00.002Z

Podcasts. I like the idea in principle, and can see how podcasting would be useful for our library users in the community or in the West Wing at the JR who think that the Cairns Library is too far away to visit. I haven't listened to many recently. I've listed to the Radio 6 Adam and Joe show podcast in the past, and added a link to a podcast to the kidney diseases and male urogenital disorders specialist collection recently on green haemodialysis (Let's talk renal rubbish, by Mary Thomson).

I've added the Radio 4 friday night comedy podcast RSS feed to my Bloglines, as well as Excess Baggage, in case I want to listen to travellers' stories and feel really jealous whilst looking out of my window at... snow.

I will also investigate the Oxford Uni podcasts, esp ones from my old department (Social policy & Social work), Archaeology (my BA), and the Oxford Internet Institute. The medical sciences division podcasts should be on the list as well............ but then again, can you have too much health information?

YouTube

2010-02-22T10:46:00.004Z

I like YouTube for the music videos, clips of live music filmed ?illegally by spectators, and for the odd useful (for work purposes, I mean) clip about haemodialysis or whatever. One of our bosses showed us a YouTube clip a few months ago about how NOT to serve customers (or readers) in a library. That was an educational use of the site.

I've had a look at Cambridge Uni's 'channel', by browsing through the Education channels. It's a shame it's not easier to search, and it's a shame that not more lectures are filmed, as that would be a great tool for distance learning! For one of our library and information management MSc modules, we were sent the powerpoint slides from a lecture to help with an assignment on cat&class. The slides didn't make much sense to me... and confused me so much that I freaked out about writing the report and had to be talked down by various colleagues. I'll see if Northumbria Uni have a YouTube channel yet... Nope, just the usual rubbishy clips from students! Quel dommage!

re: Delicious

2010-02-19T10:22:00.002Z

I found a use for my Delicious page yesterday at a training session in York. I was able to add 10 URLs for trials registers to the page, and two links to sites to help manage searches, during the session. It was quick, easy, pain-free, and now I can send my colleagues the best of the links for them to use when searching for current trials and reports of closed trials. Good stuff.

Thing 10: Beyond Delicious - library use of the tool

2010-02-15T13:26:00.005Z

1. The Health Care Libraries currently don't have a delicious page of their very own that I can link to/ bookmark from my delicious page. And what would we link to anyway? PubMed, NHS Evidence/ specialist collections, NHS Athens registration page? All these pages would be useful for our users, but then again so will the newly improved HCL website, due to launch in March.

2. I've tried out the Network thing by linking to Angela Carritt's delicious links. Hee hee.

3. I'll have a play and see how I get on with this tool, see if it could be useful for one-to-one training sessions etc. A list of useful Kidney websites would help me in my job, for instance. We shall see...

Thing 9: Delicious

2010-02-15T13:12:00.004Z

I've always wondered about delicious. What is it for? Is it at all useful? Well, yes, and yes especially if you are on the move and not always at the same PC with all your favourite links bookmarked in Firefox etc.

My delicious account is here: http://delicious.com/gekh2

It's in the early stages of development.

Let's see what Thing 10 is now...

Last Thing 8

2010-02-09T15:19:00.006Z

Hmmmmmmmm.............. and this is me.................... Must get back to work now!

Thing 8 again

2010-02-09T15:10:00.002Z

This is Fred's boat. The colours have been messed around with using Picnik. Saturation etc.

Thing 8: Picnik

2010-02-09T15:01:00.005Z

Picnik is rather good fun. If you don't want to use Windows Picture and Fax Viewer to edit images, as I've done in the past, this is just as good.

As you can probably see above, I've edited Fredthecat, colouring in the sheet she sleeps on and 'sharpening' her. Aww.