Please read obligatory apology for blogging about blogging .

Yesterday I talked about what blogging has done for me. I want to spend a bit more time talking about what I mean by “blogging”. This is a personal definition about how I relate to this thing I do on this site, not something aimed at starting a debate or fine-tooth-comb examination of definitions.

To me, “blogging” does not just mean writing posts. To me that is broadcasting.

For me to feel like I am really “blogging”  I need to be reading other people who are creating in a similar space, commenting, joining in on other parts of social media about discussion of topics that may or may not end up as more fully-developed posts. The richness of what I write here is dependent on this thinking with others, and takes place as a node in conversation.

I do think that there are a group of people with a “build it and they will come” mentality who write some (often very well-considered and interesting) posts and then are surprised and affronted that there is not conversation happening and their posts are not noticed. I think this is a bit like getting in some food, nice drinks, putting on some mood music, opening doors … then sitting on the sofa complaining that your party is not a success…

For me blogging done satisfactorily and effectively takes huge amounts of time, a lot of discipline, involves building knowledge of where disciplinary conversations are taking place, creating discussions when possible and getting in there boots and all.

Anyone who has been reading this series of posts should be concluding that, to me, blogging  is not simple, mechanistic and easy. I see a blog as an anchor site for my presence on social media, rather than a series of posts arranged in date order. It is a place devoted to the opinions and thoughts of a single channel and, for the way I use my blog as a node in a larger ongoing conversation, should contain a comprehensive “about” page, a way for people to get in contact and some indication of presence on other social media. All this requires crafting and gardening.

It’s all very well to be part of a conversation, but the way I am talking it seems like I am implying that it is just a matter of putting in time and anyone can do it. Actually, I do think it is that simple (and hard). The thing is, I make a choice about how I define “blogging” and what it means to me. I do not expect this definition to be the same for everyone – in fact I would expect most people not to be doing it like I do. In the next post I want to go on to thinking about blogging and the “imposter syndrome”, as raised by Wendy and Lyndelle on Kate’s post does anybody actually care? blogging and professional discourse

Please read obligatory apology for blogging about blogging .

Like Con, I began this blog when I was investigating blogging for work , but according to one of my first posts (where I outline the fact that I have already started four blogs in the last two months ), it was around nine years ago. I wanted to understand by doing, rather than reading the rather puzzling and confusing accounts of what blogging was and how it was useful. Around mid-April 2006 blogging was at the stage of the peak of inflated expectations in Gartner’s Hype Cycle. It was hard to find anything sensible that did not seem to be promising that third world debt, embarrassing personal itches and all issues in professional communications could be fixed by a good blog.

Doing worked.

I understood how hard it is to write clear, short prose that conveys an original-enough idea, has a personable voice and is appropriate for audience.

It took me about a year of blogging rather freely to find out what I was actually interested in/capable of blogging about. That is when my tagline changed from:

“It is and we do. Here’s an apostrophe if you want to add it somewhere ‘ I’m in Fremantle. A librarian at a University Library. Mum to two boys. Balancing both is interesting.”

to

“It is and we do. Musing, enthusing, libraries, technology, balancing, being mum”.

The word “creativity” currently in the tagline came around 2013 … so I guess it is an ongoing process.

I learned how to read, read, read what else was happening in the same space and to engage with the discussion both by commenting and by expanding further on my own blog.

I made mistakes and learned what not to do (Oh, having an RSS feed means that if I publish something then change my mind and amend it there are still some people who have read the first version in their RSS reader???… Ah – check, check, check then publish). I learned to sit on posts that didn’t feel quite right, even if I was unsure why. I learned how to pre-write posts, breaking them up if necessary and to schedule them for later so I didn’t flood my feed. I learned my own limits for personal and professional sharing, Drawing the veil, which on reflection stills feels sensible and like a good fit for me.

I blogged very regularly for about four years. This lead to a lot of opportunities.

People in the profession, who I did not know, knew me. Sometimes I could approach them to ask for advice or information and feel far more comfortable about doing so, because we had “met” and, due to a positive comment on a post, I was confident that they would not think me a total idiot. It worked both ways, people approached me for information/favours and I was delighted to know that I could contribute.

I was invited to speak places. At many events, and in many places I traveled to, I already “knew” a crowd of like-minded and interesting people. That broke down my usual social hesitancy and unsureness so I felt like I didn’t need to get on a similar page with a group of strangers gradually, but I could dive in and play straight away. I have had people come to stay in my house and stayed in other people’s houses on the strength of a blogging relationship. I met people who transcended the “blogging relationship” and who I now consider personal friends rather than “people from the internet”.

The best, best, best thing was connecting with sharing, generous and questioning minds. I was stimulated by watching other people explore and “think out loud” about some topics I was puzzled by, and other topics that I hadn’t even considered. I saw the elegance and tact with which people skirted potentially divisive issues and were able to say “I disagree, for these reasons” with an elegance and grace. I would consider myself lucky if I learned a skerrick of how to do this.

I developed a lot of my own ideas and found out more clearly what I thought. To make claims I needed to think through things, express myself clearly and provide evidence. Very often I was able to present a point in a professional meeting, or writing in my job, extremely clearly and quickly because I had privately (?) done the “grunt-work” earlier in my blog.

All through this, I have been using the term “blogging”. In my next post, I am considering how I define “blogging”. Writing a blog, right? Well, for me, not exactly. It’s more.

Those kinds of posts make me want to RUUUUUUUN.

I usually just want to hear what you have to say about whatever your blog is about, not about the whole blogging process, why you are doing it so much, not enough, less, more or where your blog fits in the cosmology of blogginess…

City Center Reflection, Las Vegas. (n.d.). Retrieved June 14, 2015, from https://www.flickr.com/photos/dawilson/4978421628/

Which is why I am writing this apology post as a precursor to a few posts about just that, blogging… stimulated by many of the discussions that are happening for #blogjune ( particularly some posts from snail, Con and Kate ). Turns out that I had a lot to say, so I am turning it into a series of posts…

Read on over the next week for scintillating meta-bloggy topics such as:

• What has blogging done for me?
• Blogging and being a node in conversation
• Professional blogging and imposter syndrome
• Collaborative blogging
• State of the biblio-blogosphere
• If not blogging, then what?

Sometimes I am inspired by an article that states the obvious that, well,  I need to have pointed out for me to see…

college.library. (2012, February 7). Wendt WisCEL: students collaborating. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/collegelibrary/8596551768/

Hunter Rawlings, president of the Association of American Universities beautifully considers the value contributed to a degree by the “buyer”, the student. The whole article is worth reading.

…If we are going to treat college as a commodity, and an expensive one at that, we should at least grasp the essence of its economic nature. Unlike a car, college requires the “buyer” to do most of the work to obtain its value. The value of a degree depends more on the student’s input than on the college’s curriculum. I know this because I have seen excellent students get great educations at average colleges, and unmotivated students get poor educations at excellent colleges. And I have taught classes which my students made great through their efforts, and classes which my students made average or worse through their lack of effort. Though I would like to think I made a real contribution to student learning, my role was not the sole or even determining factor in the value of those courses to my students.

A college education, then, if it is a commodity, is no car. The courses the student decides to take (and not take), the amount of work the student does, the intellectual curiosity the student exhibits, her participation in class, his focus and determination — all contribute far more to her educational “outcome” than the college’s overall curriculum, much less its amenities and social life. Yet most public discussion of higher ed today pretends that students simply receive their education from colleges the way a person walks out of Best Buy with a television…

I have been working in libraries for about 28 years and been professionally qualified for about 25.

Here are some things I have done in my career that we don’t do any more.

1. Found pictures of (insert name here) .

Working in a Fine Arts and Architecture specialist library in an academic library, and in a public library, I was often the only person with the resources and training to satisfy a request for a “cow grazing” or “picture of Anais Nin”. Often the request was from a trainee teacher who absolutely needed this for a class. I presume that school libraries have felt the change in this demand even more…

Mammals-7-147 – Zeby or Brahmin Bull, Alderney Cow, Scotch Cattle, Durham Cow. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/artvintage1800s/15908916478/

2. Found phone numbers, street directions, names of specialist professionals, statistics about countries, names of local government representatives.

All these were common questions on reference desks – not just from people with issues with functional literacy, but almost anyone who wanted to find non-local information.

3. Maintained a collection that would answer all the queries in 2.

Keeping electoral roles up to date, Australian Bureau of Statistics pamphlets in order, street directories re-shelved, seeing in an article in the daily newspaper that the Dental Association had issued a new directory and ordered it.

4. Taken a student’s library card while they used the University Handbook to find the units that they may want to study, or to photocopy a record of the units they previously studied.

If the University Bookshop had sold out of recent handbooks, or it was night time, or the student had the financial position of most students and could not afford to buy a handbook each year – then the library reference desk was the place to go. Of course, if not carefully guarded by library staff or students were not forced to hand over something of value, then the items would surely walk, so at least one query each night involved this transaction of suspicion.

5. Public library. Car service manuals. Driver’s licence, See 4. above.

6. Advised people about the author of a book, when it was published and how to get hold of it

Once upon a time libraries had copies of “Books in Print”. Librarians knew how to use them. Booksellers did too, but did not necessarily do so for members of the public. Members of the public had to go through one of us to find out bibliographic information

7. Photocopied indexes of recent journals, stapled a circulation list to the top and sent them around the in-trays of professional staff in the office.

… and called it “Current Awareness”. I suspect this still happens in some places where older members of staff expect this – but I could be totally wrong.

8. Showed a student how to use a printed Citation Index to find academic papers on a particular subject.

Once upon a time the path to a relevant journal article was far more of a tiger safari than it is now. Students would get an article from the unit reading list, look at the references at the back, physically go to the shelves and hunt down the next journal article and leap frog onwards and onwards toward on-topic nirvana. Citation indices were about finding the information needed not just about bibliometric impact.

Microform Readers. (n.d.). from https://www.flickr.com/photos/kapungo/1697320296/

9. Advised a dizzy patron to just sit down, get a drink of water and then turn the knob on the microfilm reader more slowly next time.

Microfilm readers were like a long strip of film with negative photographs of pages from articles, books and newspapers. Each frame could be magnified to display on a screen and (in really flash ones) print out a smudgy copy of the page. People would get a page reference (if lucky) and then turn a knob to view the right part of the filmstrip. Those who just knew the item had been “in the Times in February 1975” would have pages and pages to look through, and did so by whizzing the filmstrip, stopping, looking then whizzing on to the next page … and usually did so too fast and ended up getting motion sickness. Microfische? – even worse because you were dealing with a grid of pages on a flat plate and could whizz in all directions all over the page, and still had to keep an eye on what you were seeing so you knew when you hit the right spot.

10. Re-spliced the tapes and joined the ends together in an attempt to keep an audio cassette circulating for a little longer.

Following Kate’s lead, here is what is happening for me:

I’m reading – Portrait of a Marriage, Harold Nicholson; A Game of Thrones George R R Martin

I’m watching – Mad Men. Waited for it to finish and so now have another 78 of 92 episodes to finish.

I’m cooking – snapper with citrus and ginger in alfoil packages

I’m drinking – Strongbow

I’m thinking – that probably my plan that allowing myself as much chocolate as I want each night after dinner on the principle that I will get sick of it and then I will conquer it as a guilty pleasure and extinguish the behaviour… is simply not going to work that way…

I’m taking – pleasure in the mild sunny days and getting out in the sunshine and walk or run or skate or swim

I’m missing – my kids half the week when they live at their dad’s

I’m enjoying – dance classes

I’m planning – a month without job, kids, cat, house, being a local

I’m listening – to  podcasts while driving- Download this Show, Conversations with Richard Fidler, Desert Island Discs (going back to the 1950s – a treasure trove). 1980’s pop while marking.  Upbeat power songs when running.

I’m training for the London Skate next month. It’s a weekly three hour 20 mile skate through central London at night. Marshals block off the roads and the routes cover similar sites like “the Museum Crawl” or “Shopper’s Delight”. A couple of hundred people turn up, with a specialised sound-system on wheels forming part of the event. Almost all people are on roller blades, but I feel much more stable on my quad skates with outdoor wheels, so I will be sticking to these…

I am also planning to do the more tame Sunday Stroll that starts at Notting Hill, as a warm up. And, co-incidentally, will be in the area for the Eastbourne Extreme Sports Festival which features Europe’s only outdoor Roller Derby event over a weekend… as spectator not bouter …

I was contemplating completing the Pari-Roller as part of my break away. Every Friday in summer more than 10000 (yes – no typo – that many zeroes ) skaters start in the hill near Sacré–Cœur in Montmartre and skate a different route around Paris from 10pm to 1am. Scheduling would have meant that I really needed to do this on the second day of my break away and I was just a little too nervous about possible injury to do this. There is an outside possibility of making a special trip to do it at the end, however I would have to really, really enjoy the London Skate to do this …

Adrian Chandler has given me a taste of what to expect in this Go Pro footage from the London Friday Night Skate, that tends to go a bit faster than the Wednesday night one …London Skate 2013 .

Then again, taking all my gear with me means that I will have compromised my proud membership of the “Travelling with Carry-On Luggage Only” cult anyhow, so maybe I may as well take advantage of it. Trying to hire skates would be like trying to run a marathon in running shoes that many, many other people had worn, designed to be hardy and generic, rather than useful to me. So, given that I have the gear, will be kind of in the neighbourhood anyhow, I may just find myself speeding in a crowd down the Boulevards of Paris…

Yesterday I considered Andrew’s suggestion that maybe it was counter-productive to have a separate “e-Services Librarian” position in libraries because it may give the message to other staff that they did not have to integrate things “e” in their workflow, If someone else is doing that then I don’t need to…

Kristina Alexanderson. (2012, June 23). T as in teaching Tech. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/kalexanderson/7588800922/

Part of my job at the moment is teaching a unit called “Technologies for Information Services” to qualifying librarians, archivists and records managers. It is one of the first units in the undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. It makes sure all students are on the same page with their tech skills, that they get their hands dirty by doing a number of practical exercises, that they understand how to find out about new tech if they get stuck and that they know how technology is discussed and used in information services.

It means that my colleagues can be confident that students who go on to study in their units are competent with downloading and using software and have sufficient skills to deal with the tech covered in the units. It means that students who are returning to study after a career break (and this is a higher proportion in our department than others) are eased back into using technology.

But, but, but … I wonder whether we are taking up some of the course time with what should be a basic literacy that is the student’s responsibility, rather than necessary for us to teach. Whether by saying “this is what you need to know about tech” in one of the first units we are limiting student skills, rather than letting them experiment with tech applicable to each new unit. Having “done” the tech unit does this mean that they do not consider how new technologies fit in with the more-traditional library school subjects? Does it mean that my colleagues are less inclined to make sure students are developing their tech skills in other units because there is such little time to teach the other subject matter, and they can be confident that the students have “done” tech in my unit?

I tell potential students that to do well in the profession they need to understand and love working with both technology and people. I am 100% certain that technology should be an integral, core part of any professional qualification involving connecting people and information. I am not, however, 100% certain that the way to achieve this is in a separate, sequestered unit concerning technology, any more than Andrew is convinced that having a separate “e-Services librarian” is the best way to make sure e-Services are put front and centre of a library.

K. (2014, December 21). Teaching tech early, courtesy big brother. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/printthis/17188061100/

I see what my 12 year old is doing at school – using his iPad to film the coke and mentos experiments in Science and then comparing his footage with that of friends who did the experiment on a different day, playing it back in slowmo to watch the reaction blow by blow, superimposing a friend’s face over a still of the fizzy foam so that he looks like he has a hoodie on … and wonder what on earth I can teach the generation of undergraduates that will be in my class next year or the year after? Will they need the same confidence and competence building exercises? How will I be able to co-teach these students with the postgraduates who still use Internet Explorer and have never used Facebook or Twitter?

The scatter of competencies among students has changed in the five years that I have been teaching the unit. I have noticed far more on the “more competent” end of the spectrum, but the students who are unfamiliar with tech are still as puzzled and stumbling in the same areas as their counterparts were five years ago. I wonder whether we will get to a point where the page that I am trying to get all students on to is a little more advanced than it has been in the past, and if so, what that will mean for the less tech-confident students who most need to learn about technologies for information services.

If you are an employer, or a student who has recently completed an Information Studies course, I would love to hear your ideas. At the moment I am firmly sitting on the fence…

Andrew mused yesterday day about eServices librarians. He concluded that:

The question is, are eServices Librarians helping or hindering libraries? In an ideal world all our staff would be involved with eServices and the divide between the physical and digital branches minimal. …Ideally in the future we won’t need a separate role but integrated in all our roles, a digital Jiminy Cricket whispering in our ears.

Orin Zebest. (2005). Joyous Space. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/orinrobertjohn/50059475/

This touches quite a chord with me.

Previously I was employed in what was a dream position, that I more or less was allowed to write for myself. Unfortunately I didn’t get to write the rest of the organisation’s positions or allocate the resources just to suit me. ( How unreasonable ! 🙂 )

The intent was to look at new educational technologies, play with them, show them to people, advise about how they could be used, set up pilot projects … and then move on to the next shiny thing, rinse and repeat. You can see the problem there, right? I didn’t for quite a while. In all likelihood there would not be someone to pick up that pilot project once I moved on. My choice would be to say “I don’t care, not my responsibility” or to try to continue cossetting it beyond the pilot stage and into production… which would stop me nimbly leaping to the next investigation.

It also felt like, as Andrew pointed out, having my position meant that responsibility for technology was not evenly distributed in the organisation. Sometimes it felt like everyone else could tick the “keeping abreast of technology” box because my position existed. They may not be personally investigating new technology, but someone on staff was, so they were working for an organisation that valued this – without even having to engage with anything new.. I must stress that this is a caricature, not a description of anyone in particular’s behaviour, but I do understand Andrew’s suspicion that sometimes assigning responsibility for technology may result in less investigation across an organisation rather than more.

Tomorrow… how Andrew’s thoughts resonate in my job currently… (but with far less toast than his follow-up post …. although there may be a teaspoon post coming up later…)

Yesterday I asked how the GLAM sector can maximise both use and support for our image collections, and whether these two things may involve contradictory actions, Images. We have old images. Now what? .

Of course, we can always try different methods of discovery and do silly and amusing things to attract new users, making the very serious point that the collections are actually there. We can also promote serendipity; something that is often lamented as vanishing by the wayside as we digitise…

So, it’s nice to know that Tim Sherratt, Manager of Trove (and academic at the University of Canberra) has continued his experiments with using facial recognition software to sense-make from large wodges of historical documents.

Tired of your old face? Then visit Dr Sherratt’s Vintage Face Depot .

Follow the instructions on the site and you too may find yourself tweeting something that looks like Image A to @facedepot ….

….and both discovering a new tiny corner of the Trove Newspapers database and looking as attractive and glamourous as Image B…..