Monday 9 August 2010

Final Cam23 Round-up

Back in May when I excitedly began the 23 Things Programme, I could not imagine the hot day in August when I would round-up my thoughts to write the final blog post. Although the hot long summer day did not really materialize, my experiences during this programme have far outstripped my expectations.

Although I was quite familiar with most of the Things from personal experience, it has been really worthwhile to consider their application to the library setting from the user's perspective, not just from the perspective of my own professional development.

The sense of community and shared aims that has emerged from the Programme has been a constant source of reassurance and support. The growing army of Cam23-ers on Twitter allows us to grow into a social movement positively and yet critically embracing emerging technologies.

I have learnt a lot about technologies with which I am familiar as well as learning about totally new ones. Delicious is a tool that I have heard a lot about without ever getting round to using; it is fascinating and the potential for organisation of knowledge is something that I shall be exploring further on both a personal and a professional level. I am an avid Twitter fan for professional awareness but now I am hoping to use the tool to keep in contact with our readers.

Google worries me in that it is taking over our online space and yet I still use it daily. However I am not a fan of Google calendars; I would rather use a paper diary and as I work in a small team, we have a shared physical diary to alleviate the problems of double bookings.

Cloud computing is something that I envisage changing the way that people work in the future. Remote working might become easier. However, unless we all install library management systems on our home pcs, there is a limit to what we can do in the electronic ether. Collaborative documents via wikis are the most useful form of cloud computing as far I as I can see, closely followed by technologies which allow documents to be stored 'in the cloud,' so to speak. As an aside, I do hate the phrase 'cloud computing'; it is unavoidably techy with the implicit pseudo-humour of techy people. Perhaps, 'remote storing' would be better. The 'library in the sky'? More work is needed.

Overall then, the Cam23 Programme has been a success; it has allowed Cambridge library staff to form different types of connections both physically and within the social media space. I hope that other such bottom-up intitiatives for professional development will occur.

One final thing:

Wikis

For my fast or quick post this week, I am writing about wikis

Wikis are excellent. They are flexible in their use, they provide an excellent means of creating truly collaborative documents, they embody the ethos of cloud computing, they do everything possible to make life easier when collaborating on projects across geographical spaces and they're easy to use.

Long ago, deep into the mists of time when I was a graduate trainee librarian, I used wikis to communicate and collaborate with my trainee peers. I have also been a volunteer editor for Wikipedia and can assure anyone who doubts the veracity of the collaborative encyclopedia's facts that the majority of untrue and/or unreferenced material is pulled within hours if not minutes.

Wikis are wonderful as a way of collaborating across computers and physical locations within real time. The Cam Librarian Teach Meet wiki is a prime example of this collaborative power. Wikis are a wonderful multi-purpose bit of technology that are adaptable to any environment.

Podcasts

Well we're almost at the finish line for the Cambridge 23 Things programme The experience has been an enjoyable learning curve of a ride through various emerging technologies and their application to the library environment.

I have been looking forward to podcasting's showcase as a Thing as I am such huge fan of audio-generated content. In our image obsessed culture, it is important to remember that audio is a useful way of generating content to which the consumer can multi-task. With the advent of portable listening devices, onto which it is simple to download podcasts and other audio content, listening to podcasts could not be easier.

On a personal level, I am a commuter. And as such, I have a lot of time in my day when I have to use my eyes for their primary purpose of seeing what is in front of me. I did briefly try to read whilst walking; it did not go well. Audio content is the perfect way to fill the time - podcasts of radio shows and comedy items are very easy to use.

I really like the concept of using podcasts to reach our users within the library environment. Audio help guides and general introductions to collections and services could be mounted on the library website as podcasts to enable maximum usage. Every time a new podcasts is released, Twitter and Facebook come into play as a communications channel to tell our users about our new podcasts. This is definitely an avenue worth exploring.

Monday 2 August 2010

Thing 20: Google Docs


Several months ago, my computer contracted a virus and I faced the terrible prospect of losing my documents. As I was advised not to use USB sticks in case they carried the virus to the new computer, when my wide-screen Windows 7 machine arrived, I had my documents all lined up in files in Google Docs.

Yes, it took a fair amount of time to load the files and put them into the relevant files. Yet the ability to create a file structure on Google Docs was much appreciated and fairly simple to work through.

I was and still am a little concerned about leaving documents on Google Docs for any considerable length of time. Issues surrounding copyright and ownership have yet to convince me that everything is totally uncomplicated. But for collaborative projects and short term storage issues, storing documents in the ‘cloud’ via a service like Google Docs seems like the best solution.

On a different note yet one related to file structures, I have finally found out how to add a structure to my Google reader rss feeds in order to group my feeds together: just go into 'manage subscriptions' and select into which file group each rss feed should go. Simples!

Thing 19: Marketing

Effective marketing is an extremely difficult thing to do well. The four Ps - product, price, place and promotion – used to guide services towards the best mechanisms for reaching out to users. However, as the Cam 23 Things programme has shown, we all have the power to become creators of our own products now as well as consumers. As information professionals, we need to be able to find connections and context for our content, to engage in conversations with each other and with our users, if we are to succeed in advocating our services and raising the profile of our institutions.

Branding can play a large part in service marketing but essentially our users need to be able to do two things for our marketing campaigns to be effective: they need to be able to identify a definite and unified signifier for our service and what we do, and they need to know how to communicate with us. Emerging technologies give us many more channels through which to communicate and a diverse array of platforms in which to engage the user: Facebook, Twitter, library websites, blogs, virtual pin boards, VLEs. It is even more crucial now that we present a unified image for our service which signifies what we do and what we offer within this diverse plethora of communication platforms.

It is more important than ever that we engage in conversation with our users, something made possible by new technologies in the sense that conversations now become public and debates may emerge from within the heart of the library’s technological space. These conversations in context are to be encouraged and promoted. We hope to implement a library Twitter and Facebook presence as soon as practically convenient.

Yet in the midst of these new possibilities brought forth by emerging technologies, it is important to remember that older ways of marketing are perhaps not yet dead. Front-line staff recommendations, physical pin boards, recommendation boxes where requests are responded to and pinned up for all to view, leaflets and signage – these are important marketing and communication mechanisms that push out to our users all the added value services which we can provide for them from within the library and beyond.

We need to push a presence out into the virtual space, for example by including links to podcasts of information skills tutorials on our homepage or by pointing our users via a Twitter feed to a Youtube video introducing library staff and our diverse range of services, without forgetting that effective marketing often takes place directly in the physical library in user conversations with physical staff.

Oh, Oh, Oh - Zotero

My, my, my, Zotero. Anyone can see, this bibliographical management tool is really good for me, I’m no longer lost in a citation mire that no one can see.

On a serious note, Zotero is an imaginative and useful tool for capturing, storing and retrieving bibliographic references. It is visually appealing and highly useful to share references with others.

I am glad to have had the opportunity to find out more about this tool. Whilst I personally prefer the ease and simplicity of end note's web based reference management tool, Zotero’s advantage of collaborative sharing could make it more attractive to our users (or perhaps not!)



My end note web now also has a ‘cite whilst you write’ plug-in to rival the paid version of the software. The ease with which references are captured from various electronic databases and manual entries to produce a bibliography is extremely useful.

A knowledge of Zotero is useful knowledge gained and which will inform my answers to future queries regarding reference management methods. (At break of day when that reference went astray, I opened end note - bah bah baah...)