Uncategorized

UWA library environmental scan

Uncategorized

The library at my alma mater, the University of Western Australia, is writing a strategic plan. They have generously released the preliminary environmental scan, Strategic Plan 2008-2010: scanning the environment .

It is an worthwhile read and very well researched by over 21 staff in four teams who examined

  • Teaching and Learning
  • Research,
  • Information Resources and Users of the Future
  • Information and Communication Technologies Futures.

Interestingly, the teams discovered that many of the issues in the individual areas were the same, and they wrote a lot more convergent report than they anticipated.
Two parts in particular leaped off the page at me. The first is an excerpt from

…the results of the UWA Student Services Survey of first year students (Skene, Cluett, & Hogan, 2007) [which] found:
• 95% of students surveyed have Internet access at home
• 90% are online more than once a day
• 96% own a mobile phone and 56% own a laptop
• 46% used instant messaging at least once a day
• 23% were blogging on a weekly basis
• 74% downloaded music
• 66% percent used You Tube

Yes – that’s right – 40% more students had mobile phones than laptops. I don’t know whether the survey asked about internet enabled mobile phones. I hope that libraries who spend resources on furniture for users who bring in laptops are also looking at their websites and making sure they are mobile friendly.

(By the way, an excellent description of why and how to make a library website mobile friendly was presented by Cathy Slaven at QULOC in 2006 – Designing web pages for small screen devices) .

The other bit that interested me was their “Developing People and Processes” in their “Key Issues”:

The Library must recruit, develop and retain talented staff who have exceptional skills in anticipating and responding to a quickly changing environment.
• The Library needs to review its operational planning process in order to respond more quickly to implementing changes relating to new technologies.
• The Library needs to enable timely evaluation, testing and implementation of new technologies by ensuring supporting infrastructure is flexible and has sufficient capacity for growth.

Like the little kid who eats only the pink jellybeans because they are her favourite, I rushed straight to the bits that interested me – there is something to tickle your fancy if you have different library interests like planning physical spaces and resource discovery. If you’re not sure about IPV6 or 3D Printing or Green Offices, download a copy and check it out.

I’m saving it right next to David Lewis’ A model for academic libraries 2005 to 2025 and Part one and Part two of staff responses to the McMaster University Library Strategic planning process .

Videoblogging using Facebook and Viddler

Uncategorized

Last night I saw that Connie Crosby had made a video straight into Facebook using her Macbook, so I installed the Facebook Video application and made a little movie for my own profile using my webcam.

Today I noticed that 6 of my friends have now added the ap, so I wanted to make another little video asking them to hurry up and start posting videos. When I tried to do this, there was an error saving…and by the fifth time of saying the same thing, I was sounding a little loopy.

I decided to try out viddler, which has a facility to record staight to the site. I used the “highest” quality setting, but even then the audio pickup is not as good as Facebook.

Maybe I need to get a microphone like they used for the podcast Lachie recorded in the Librarians series tonight. (Dear world, please note..they showed librarians running an English as a Second Language class, dealing with porn on public internet PCs, podcasting and handling graffiti on the building..welcome to libraryland)

I can understand how people could get addicted to daily videoblogging. Here’s the results of my viddler upload.

My raucous week of putting my meat in the game.

Uncategorized

Most of the content of Librarians Matter could be distilled to two messages:

To non-librarians:

Librarians know about new web tools as part of our jobs and we are a viable, lively profession- use our skills.

To librarians:

We need to know about new web tools as part of our jobs to stay a viable and lively profession- learn the skills.

Last week, I had a whirl of a week getting this message out – and I feel really vulnerably “out there”.

People I respect, like Stephen Abram, say things like this (about seeing himself in video interviews):

I keep telling people that these are a way to engage with our markets. I have to put my own meat in the game. I have found that it’s not as scary as I felt it could be – great interviewers make the difference. It’s a risk sharing like this but it might personalize our libraries (and me).

He’s right. And I see people like Jill promoting her library by dressing up in a tweed Sherlock Holmes hat and cape and distributing the photo around her organisation to promote her library and I think “Go, girl!”.

While I’m proud that I was able to put the profession out there, this week I felt a bit like that annoying kid in class who always puts up her hand and never shuts up. (So, of course, I feel compelled to tell you about it, instead of modestly sitting with my hands folded in my lap – I’m getting it all out of my system now and promise not to mention it again.)

On Saturday I gave the Blog Fodder session at Podcamp Perth, and was tickled to hear this said of our profession:

I’m all for nerd power, but librarians? They’re beyond nerd, aren’t they? So what’s with the domination of librarians amongst the bloggers at Podcamp? How come they talk so much? And so raucously? Where’s that pale, timid mole stereotype gone?

And how come I’d never heard of terms like “meme”, never heard of Sitemeter, never used Google Analytics in assessing my blog traffic? What the screaming fuck is Twitter? Photobucket?

Wanna find out? Have a look at Kathryn Greenhill’s blog, Librarians Matter, where she has just posted notes from her illuminating talk at PodCamp.

PS: How come the ABC is about to launch a new comedy series called…Librarians?! Librarians are suddenly hip? And funny? HUH?

On Wednesday I was interviewed by TechCrunch writer, Duncan Riley for his “On the Pod” series where he interviews “guests that might otherwise not have a high profile yet have something interesting to say”. On the Pod #10: Kathryn Greenhill . I learned that it’s better to breathe than say “um”. It didn’t come off too badly, but my nervousness did make me call a new version of a book a “volume” rather than an edition. Disclaimer: Duncan is a local and a twitterfriend.

Seems like Emerald Dumont, my Second Life Avatar, is even more publicity hungry than I am. She wasn’t content only to host a discussion of “The Librarians” TV series on ABC Island in Second Life on Thursday ( transcript here ). Oh no – she had to startle the bejeezus out of me on Friday by appearing as covergirl on the University community newspaper, Explore – under the headline “A virtual life – Murdoch Libary teleports into the future”. I knew about the interview, but Emerald hadn’t told me she was going to be on the cover too.

Add to the mix the news via HeyJude that this blog is number 31 on the list of Top 50 Australian Women Bloggers. And someone contacted me directly via twitter and told me that my blog’s google pagerank is 5 – while I naively asked back “is that good?”. And I already knew this blog sits around number 23 on Ratified.org Australia which claims to measure the top 100 blogs of the Australian blogosphere – but really measures those who submit their site.

I wonder why I feel kind of uncomfortable blogging about this when I always feel so uplifted when I hear other librarians talk about doing those kinds of things? Hope it encourages you to put yourself out there – I’m going to try to lay low for a bit.

What shall I ask about “The Librarians”?

Uncategorized

If you have a couple of minutes, please swing by this blog and leave a comment.

As I mentioned before, I’m hosting a discussion of the ABC TV series “The Librarians” in Second Life tonight and am after some quesitons to raise…please let me know what you think would be useful.

After watching it, I think that this is a bit like people who work in paper firms discussing “The Office“. It wasn’t really like “Frontline” or “Drop the Dead Donkey” which really did say things about how the news was made. It must mean that they got the library background pretty much right or else I’d be preparing for an onslaught of groaning.

Overall I enjoyed it. I thought that Frances had characteristics of a lot of people I’ve worked with. I wonder if there are people like that in other workplaces – that special blend of intelligence and ability with incredibly inflexible and conservative personality. There are bigots in other workplaces..but I think some libraries have particularly smart ones who run themselves in rings to rationalise their behaviour.

I think the returns chute topic is a definite goer. And maybe also things people have found used as bookmarks….can you say “used dental floss”?…..eeeuw….

I had a laugh at the white writing in different font sizes on the front window – MPOW has just been remodelled and have just the same iconography.

Do you think people will want to discuss whether the kids librarian was actually qualified? (sigh).

Anyone know if the animal knickers book was the genuine article?

I definitelly wil be asking “was it funny?”

Any questions / topics to raise gratefully accepted…

Lego trainset 111 – Happy Halloween

Uncategorized

Ever have a brain fry in the middle of a presentation and start raving on about things you didn’t expect? All the while you are listening to yourself thinking “Girl! WTF are you TALKING about?”. Happened to me at Podcamp during my Blog Fodder presentation where I talked for about 3 minutes about “Lego Trainset 111″ to illustrate Ellysa Kroski’s 18 Different Types of Blog posts.

Here’s the video, Podcamp Perth 2007: The blog session, that the Co-Pilot put up at Viddler. If you push play on my blog, the video magically jumps to the start of “Trainset 111″. If you view it on Viddler, then mover the slider to the white dots marking start and finish.

Disembodied voices who made it all unconferency are Gary Barber, Sue Waters and Frances McClean. Plus Maeve and Trevor and Julia and Con chiming in too.
Other Podcamp videos now at Viddler include:

During my brain fry, I made the comment that a lego blog where someone took a step-by-step photo of the construction process would probably get many, many more readers than my blog ever would. For those uninitiated in this genre…I present…17 photos in a step-by-step guide to How to make a Lego minifig costume for Halloween

UPDATE 12 Nov 2007: Viddler removed the streaming feature last week, so the clip now starts at the beginning.

(And after upgrading this blog to v2.3.1, this post is stuffing up my template, so I had to remove the embedded video – ick)

Blog fodder – what do I put in?

Uncategorized

Notes from my presentation at Podcamp Perth on October 27th 2007, which is here Blog Fodder : what do I put in ?

1. Look at your blog

  • What type of blog is it?
  • Tagline
  • “About” page

2. Look at your audience

  • What audience?
    • Sitemeter
    • Google analytics
    • Google webmaster tools
    • Statistics on your hosting service
  • What are they searching for when they get to you ?
    • Squeaky bras
    • Fear of beetroot
    • What time is the Australian Idol replay ?
    • Geek t-shirts Perth

    Where are they coming from? Domain? Location?

  • Who do you want in your audience?

3. Who are you?

  • What do you want to write about?
  • Would you read your own blog?
  • Is the voice of your blog human?
  • How much of yourself do you want to show ?
  • Your privacy. Others’ privacy.
  • Findability – forever
  • What other online conversations are you part of?

4. Some types of blog posts – from ilibrarian 18 Different kinds of blog posts

5. If you have bloggers’ block

  • Leave it
  • Get a Life
  • Really…leave it
  • Prewrite posts
  • Read other blogs
  • Tell a story
  • Make a list
  • Find a meme
  • Set a public challenge
  • Set a posting schedule
  • Go off topic…and bring it back
  • Write a post for the searchbots
  • Ask questions andsummarize (twitter and Facebook)
  • Invite a guest blogger
  • Work in another medium and embed it in your blog:
    • Take a photo
    • Draw a picture
    • Do a slidecast
    • Create an audio file
    • Make a video

SO … If you want stuff for your blog…Find your VOICE…Know the TYPES OF BLOG POSTS….Know how to deal with BLOGGERS BLOCK….PLAY

“The Librarians” discussion on ABC Island in Second Life

Uncategorized

The entire library community knows about this bit:

The Librarians, is a new six-part comedy series from the ABC, based around the highly-strung head librarian of an outer suburban Melbourne library. This new social satire premieres on Wednesday October 31 at 9.30pm. You can also watch it online at abc.net.au/tv/librarians from 10:00pm.

But did you know that on Thursday night, you can chat about the show with other librarians on ABC Island in Second Life?

In conjunction with the ABC, Emerald Dumont – a librarian avatar from the Australian Libraries Building – will host a discussion of the show in the ABC Auditorium on ABC Island. Do we really look like that? What would you have added? What do you think will happen? Would other professions be having this discussion if the show was called “The Teachers” or “The Doctors”?

Brush off you avatar, or follow this guide to create a new one, and join in.

DATE: Thursday November 1st

TIME: 7:30pm AEDST, 5:30pm (WA Daylight savings) , 1:30am SL time (PDT)

PLACE: ABC Auditorium , ABC Island in SL

(If you are logged into Second Life, click on this SLURL to get there: http://slurl.com/secondlife/ABC%20Island/128/75/24)

Instant message Emerald Dumont if you need a Teleport to the event, or contact her close friend Kathryn Greenhill for further information ( kathryn.greenhill at gmail dot com)

Podcamp for women, library workers…and kids too?

Uncategorized

Podcamp Perth is on this weekend. It’s a free community unconference about New Media – podcasting, videocasting, Citizen Journalism, blogging, virtual worlds, social networking, mobile applications, web standards – yummy! You should come too.

WHO’S GOING?

125 people are on the registration page of the wiki. Fifty one are women – just under half. And….wait for it….eleven work in libraries – that’s almost ten percent.

The Co-Pilot and I both want to go on Saturday- I’ve prepared a presentation and he’d like to help out by videoing the sessions. We don’t have babysitting, so we’ll experiment with taking the kids. And the wii. Kate is bringing along a projector and some additional controllers. And Lloyd is bringing another console…so the adults don’t push the kids off. If anyone else has a spare large monitor, that would be cool.

We hope it will keep them occupied, otherwise one of us can take them on the train to the museum. They are rather immersed in all this stuff – I helped out at kindy today and Mr5 had to draw things you’d find around a pond. Frogs, rocks, fountain, game of hangman on a table…..wha’? ….then I remembered…that’s what I put next to the pond on the library plot of land in Second Life. Oh dear.

hangpond.jpg

WHAT ARE PEOPLE DOING?

There are 16 sessions so far listed on the wiki. I like the way they are rated according to how complex they are – 101 for basic sessions up to “V” for Veteran sessions that are for experienced users.

Nick Hodge from Microsoft is flying over to present about how the company is using social media. Stilgherrian will be here to talk about how social media is being used in the lead up to the federal election. Duncan Riley is talking about branding and the new media. There are 3 sessions on podcasting with an education flavour, two about Second Life and even a feel good talk about doing what we love.

I’m offering a presentation called “Blog Fodder”- all about how to find things to write on your blog. It’s aimed at the 101 level – no need to even have a blog to get something out of it… (not mentioning any names….). I thought it would be good to add to the mix something n00b friendly.

Sunday is for “birds of a feather” sessions. I’ll be behind the ref desk at work, so I won’t be going to the twitter meetup or the Geeks in the Grass picnic in Kings Park.

The Co-Pilot? He’s being dragged off to yet another five year old’s birthday party. I don’t think they’ll be providing a wii to keep the adults entertained.

The tag for items about podcamp is: podcampperth07

Paul Reynolds at State Library of Western Australia

Uncategorized

Paul Reynolds describes himself as:

an Auckland based commentator and thinker on the topics of information access and cultural/techno change.

This morning at the State Library of Western Australia he spoke about The Power of Information: Libraries in the Web 2.0 Environment. A friend who saw Paul speak at the LIANZA 2007 conference recommended that I go along. I did. I was glad. I wish I could have stayed for the afternoon session about Digital Strategies for Museums and Libraries .

If you want to see the colourful notes I took during his talk, they are embedded as a slideshow below, Paul Reynolds at the State Library of Western Australia . They are also in a set on Flickr .

It was a pretty straightforward guide to Web 2.0 as it might affect libraries. Techie bits covered were the Web 2.0 meme map, User Generated Content, Wikis, Tagging and Folksomies, APIs and mashups. His central idea seemed to be how to locate and enhance the digital lives of the people-formally-known-as-the users . He could see a role for us to show them how to use the tools and help them create their own online lives. And unlocking some of our content and making it meaningful.

It was clear that he was concerned about libraries finding their own voices – both for our own online sites and in how we relate to our users. Having kept his own blog private for 6 months while he found the “voice” for it, he obviously approved of a couple of libraries that had done the same before launching their blogs. He compared the MySpace page of one library with its “official” page and suggested that it would be interesting to get the authors of each one in the same room and see whether they had any common ground at all.

I think he was concerned about the lack of energy and oomph of library Facebook groups. They don’t seem to be happening places or very stimulating. (My thought is that the energy on Facebook is still happening in the personal networks via communities-of-choice rather than communities-of-practice . Ambassadors from personal subnetworks visit the professional groups and do business, but wouldn’t want to live there).

Like so many Web 2.0 speakers, he recommended setting up a page like netvibes or igoogle as a cetrepoint for one’s online life. It’s something I just don’t “get”. I just have heaps of tabs open all day and <ALT> <TAB> to the one I want. “In my browser, on the net” feels like a single place to me. I get really annoyed with those starting pages where you have to click away from the window to DO anything – like send a gmail message or read more than just headlines of your RSS feeds.

I admired Paul’s vision of libraries, museums and galleries as loci of curiousity. One of his first points was that curiousity is central to what we do. He seemed to think it worthwhile to find and define a core purpose. He suggested considering what it is that makes someone enter our buildings and say with obvious pleasure “Aaah – this is a library”.

Perth was the start of his tour, so catch him if you can during the next week.

The Librarians on ABC TV

Uncategorized

It’s a 6 part sitcom with a whole swag of the cast straight from Thank God You’re Here .

The Librarians website is here.

Here’s the promo clip – The Librarians Promo .

Here’s a promo interview – The Librarians Interview .

Will I be watching the first episode on 31st October at 9:30pm? Oh yeah. If you miss it, or are outside of Australia, you can view it on ABC Online as soon as it has aired live.